The Impressionist Exhibition, 150 Years Later
Today, the Impressionists are a ubiquitous presence in museums around the world. But the First Impressionist Exhibition, held in Paris in 1874, was met with uproar.
This essay is the first in a series celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition, which debuted in Paris in 1874. If you’d like to read other essays on the history of Impressionism, you can do so here.
We sat in a circle on the carpet of a cramped dorm room, chatting over a mediocre, half-devoured pizza, its cardboard box soggy with grease. Somehow, the late-night conversation had turned to art, and given that the participants were college freshmen, things were bound to slink towards the pretentious.
Someone had asked the group to share our favorite artists. When the eyes in the room turned to me, there were numerous answers I could have given. I loved Gustav Klimt and the artists of the Vienna Secession. I loved the Romantics. I loved Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. The masters of the Utagawa school. Greek antiquities. Jan Vermeer, Botticelli, Rembrandt…
Before I could rattle off a list, my first answer proved polarizing. “I’ve always loved the Impressionists—”
Someone snorted.
One boy rolled his eyes. He leaned towards me and offered the sympathetic gaze one would give to a toddler. “The Impressionists are basic.”
My lips parted. Basic?
“Compared to Surrealism, Cubism… Dada…”
Basic? In what world was an artist like Mary Cassatt basic? “Just because something’s popular doesn’t mean—”
“I’m just saying, once you learn more about art,” he said in between bites of his chain-store pizza, his chin stained with marinara, “you’ll see that Impressionism’s just not that deep.”
Annoyed as I was by his arrogance, I knew even then why some people look down on the Impressionists. For frequent museum-goers, Impressionism was a pop song heard one too many times. Masterpieces like Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) or Edgar Degas’s The Ballet Class (1874) are instantly recognizable. The works of Claude Monet adorn journals, bookmarks, stationary, and tote bags. Perhaps compared to the likes of Salvador Dalí and Marcel Duchamp, the sun-dappled beauty of the French countryside appears quaint. Simplistic.
Therefore, the modern viewer might be surprised to learn that Impressionism was extremely controversial when it made its debut.
The word “Impressionist” was initially a pejorative. We’ve explored this phenomenon before, in which artistic styles from the Gothic to Rococo receive their names by way of insult. This particular moniker came about in a critical review of the very first Impressionist Exhibition, which opened to the public from April 15th to May 15th, 1874. Art critic Louis Leroy coined the term in a satirical review for Le Charivari. In his article, “The Exhibition of the Impressionists,” he wrote a fictitious account of being led through the exhibit by an imaginary painter named Joseph Vincent. As Vincent beholds the radical art of Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and more, he fumes over the painters’ short, unblended brushstrokes and lack of precise detail. Art—real art—was supposed take a long time to do. These paintings appeared as if they had been completed in a single sitting.
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Upon seeing Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872), Vincent riffs, “Impression—I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it… and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape.”
Ever the satirist, Leroy makes fun of the newly-dubbed “Impressionists” just as much as he teases the stuffy establishment.* But the response from the general public was no more encouraging. As Sue Roe writes in The Private Lives of the Impressionists:
The public flocked in, screamed with horror, and alerted their friends, who were also aghast. There was pandemonium. The newly affluent middle classes… wanted art to supply them with the education they lacked, not taunt them with feelings of inadequacy. They expected exhibitions to make them feel elevated, not to undermine them with images they could not understand.
Why did Parisians have such an intense reaction to the Impressionists? To understand that, we must explore why these artists were compelled to host their own exhibit in the first place.
When Claude Monet arrived in Paris in 1860, the city was undergoing a dramatic transformation. Napoleon III had tasked Baron Haussmann with turning the chaotic maze of medieval streets into a modern city of broad avenues, elegant buildings with stone facades and mansard roofs, and crucially, an updated sewage system. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the middle class was growing, and a new cohort of entrepreneurs and merchants began moving into Haussmann’s stylish apartment buildings.
The result of this urban development meant that working class communities got pushed to the outer edges of Paris. But for the artists, the growing bourgeoisie provided a vibrant ecosystem of potential buyers.
A few weeks ago, we explored the patronage system that defined the pre-19th century art market; instead of painting whatever they pleased, artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo often created works to the specifications of their wealthy patrons. The Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class changed this: now, artists typically attempted to sell their works after they were completed.
In Paris, the major-league of the art market was the Salon des Beaux-Arts, otherwise known as the Paris Salon, held every May in the Palais de l’Industrie in the Champs-Elysées. (Previously, the Salon was hosted at the Louvre.) Thousands of potential buyers visited the Salon, whose jurists determined the standard of what constituted “good” art. For painters, being selected to show at the Salon was a potentially life-changing opportunity. As the art market faced the growing pains of abandoning the patronage system, artists didn’t yet have the vast network of smaller galleries that exists today. The Salon, therefore, was the best way to find buyers.
But how could one get into the Salon?
In order to submit work for consideration, a painter had to be either a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, a student of the École des Beaux-Arts, or a student of an affiliated studio. The prevailing taste of the Salon jury steered toward what is now called “academic art.” While rebels like the Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix had their place, the attitude of the Académie (and by extension, the Salon) was overwhelmingly restrictive. “Good” art, in the Académie’s view, was accurate, polished, and in keeping with the technical conventions pioneered by the Old Masters. Acceptable subjects included mythological, biblical, or historical events, as well as traditional portraits and narrative scenes from canonical works of literature. Above all, the establishment preached that art should be grounded in a sense of morality.
In this environment, the studio of Martin François Suisse probably felt like a dream. Suisse’s studio was loosely affiliated with the Académie, but his teaching style was far more laid back. Rather than offering strict instructions, Suisse gave his painters the freedom to create what they wished. It was at this studio that Monet would meet Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne. Later, at the studio of Charles Gleyre, Monet would befriend Renoir and Alfred Sisley.
The initial stirrings of artistic rebellion would arrive in 1863. That year, the jury of the Salon had rejected two-thirds of applicants, particularly the works of Realists. Realism was a growing artistic style that dismissed the idealism of French academic art, and instead endeavored to portray life as it was. Artists like Gustav Courbet and Jean-François Millet painted scenes from ordinary life, often of working-class people. Among the aggrieved artists was none other than Édouard Manet, whose work would toe the line between Realism and Impressionism.
After sending their complaints to the government, the rejected artists received a response from Napoleon III: Paris would host a “Salon des Refusés” to showcase the “refused” painters, and the public could decide for themselves.
The result was sensational: thousands of visitors came to see the Refusés, and among the attendees were Gleyre’s pupils. By then, Monet was already growing frustrated with academic art, and the budding Impressionist’s frequent trips to the country inspired a fervent interest in natural scenes.**
Seeing Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) must have been a jaw-dropping experience for Monet and his peers. Of all the works displayed at the Salon des Refusés, at which Pissarro and Cézanne also showed, it was Manet’s painting that proved most noteworthy—and the most scandalous.
Already, one can see hints of Impressionism in the landscape beyond the picnic (above). But what made this work especially notorious was the nude woman on the left. The problem wasn’t that she was naked—nudes had long been included in mythological scenes. The problem was that this was a contemporary scene; it was too close to reality for comfort, especially in comparison to, let’s say, a painting of Venus. Furthermore, the woman is staring at the viewer. She is transformed from an object to be admired into an actual person; she is watching you, watching her.
Sure enough, it was the painting that would make Manet famous.
This salon of rejects sparked uproar, and to the art establishment, it seemed to confirm the wisdom of rejecting radicals. For years, it was business as usual, and the Salon des Beaux-Arts mostly continued to dismiss the Refusés.
Meanwhile, what we now call Impressionism was beginning to take shape. Drawing inspiration from a range of influences, from French Realism to Japanese woodblock prints, our gaggle of bohemians were experimenting with how short, visible brushstrokes could capture light and atmospheric conditions. Particularly important to the Impressionist style was working en plein air. It may seem like common sense to us now, but the idea that one should paint an outdoor scene while actually being outdoors wasn’t yet a given.
Rejecting the stuffy motifs of academic art, the Impressionists applied their new style to realistic subjects. Monet captured ordinary moments from country life; Berthe Morisot turned her brush to the intimate scenes of womanhood that were absent from establishment art; Pissarro, once accepted by the Salon, began experimenting with a style that served as a precursor to future pointillist works. With the advent of photography, it seemed all the more imperative that artists could communicate with viewers in ways that a camera could not. Impressionism provided an answer.
Politically, France had once again entered a turbulent period. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, culminating in the Siege of Paris (September 1870 to January 1871). Following the capture of Napoleon III, the Second Empire’s government fell apart, leading to the declaration of the Third Republic. An angry working class, particularly among the French National Guard, seized control of Paris that spring. With a mix of socialist and anarchist views, the Communards wished to abolish child labor, forego traditional religion, and give sweeping powers to workers.
By the end of May, after what is known as the “Bloody Week” in which 10,000-15,000 Communards were killed (and hundreds of pro-Republic political prisoners were executed), the French National Army retook control of Paris. The Commune was no more.
For our artists, this meant facing staunch conservatism from the Salon. France was once again a Republic, but that didn’t mean acceptance of radicalism. Despite their diversity of viewpoints, and in some cases, lack of political interest altogether, the Impressionists’ works were largely deemed unacceptable by the Salon.
Something would have to be done: they needed to get their paintings in front of art dealers in order to expand their reach. Thus, the idea of forming their own society was born. And at their exhibitions, there would be no snooty judges and no medals.
Manet was resolutely against the idea, as he still craved the approval of the Académie and didn’t want to anger the institution. But the others plowed ahead, forming a joint-stock company, naming themselves the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc., and inviting over thirty artists to participate in their first exhibition.
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When the doors opened to the public on April 15th, 1874, the attendees were largely scandalized. Here were “half-finished” images of ordinary people—rural peasants, Parisian crowds, urban workers, and heaven forbid, ballerinas—often in incomprehensible settings. At least the Barbizon landscapes were fit for a bourgeois home. But this crop of painters used far more vivid colors than was common in academic art, thanks to the recent development of synthetic pigments. It was all too much.
The review in Le Charivari cemented the name “Impressionists,” and for a time, it seemed as if they were done for. With summer around the corner, the Impressionists retreated to the countryside under the assumption that their exhibition had failed. How would the Impressionists turn things around, and eventually, conquer the hearts of art lovers around the world?
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the First Impressionist Exhibition, I’ll be profiling a different Impressionist each month for the remainder of the year. As we explore their triumphs, failures, and personal relationships, we will follow our intrepid painters from the smoke-filled cafés of Paris to the open air of the seashore and the splendor of the countryside.
The Impressionists remain influential today because they were willing to push the boundaries of expression, right when photography was threatening to upend the techniques that previous generations of painters had taken for granted. With one foot in the pre-industrial past and one foot in our modern world, their transformative style paved the way for the artistic movements of the 20th century and offered viewers a new way to see their surroundings.
Now, when I go on walks in the park, I pay attention to the quality of sunshine filtering through the long grass, the deepening emerald of the trees, the hazy warmth of summer. Sometimes, I’ll see a painter setting up their easel by the stream, capturing the light with each brushstroke before the afternoon fades to dusk.
*For a treasure-trove of primary sources, including letters written by the Impressionists and critical reviews from journalists, I would recommend Sources & Documents in the History of Art Series: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism 1874-1904 by Linda Nochlin (Prentice-Hall).
**Invaluable to this essay was Sue Roe’s The Private Lives of the Impressionists (Vintage Books), which offers an in-depth, intimate account of the Impressionists and their interweaving journeys.
Related essays from The Crossroads Gazette:
Art, Commerce, and the Role of the Patron - Nowadays, we take for granted the concept of “art for art’s sake.” But for Renaissance artists, their work was often intimately tied up in the instructions and desires of their powerful patrons. Read the full story here.
It’s Never Too Late to Start - Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was 48 years old when she was given her first camera as a Christmas present. Today, she is known as one of the defining artists of early photography. Read the full story here.
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iirc one critic at the time delivered the amazing burn that the Impressionists were 'trying to convince us they have discovered the Mediterranean' lol
Superb commentary- well done. I feel Impressionistic art is emotive and transcends rational analysis- maybe that's what scared folk off, awakening of the subconscious????