from an exhibition in 2024 

at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, organized with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 

in remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of Impressionism in 1874

 

 

The artists mentioned here, all French unless otherwise noted, whose exhibition in 1874 launched the Impressionist movement are:

 

Adolphe Felix Cals, 1810-1880

Camille Pissarro, 1830-1903, French born the Virgin Islands

Henri Rouart, 1833-1912

Edgar Degas, 1834-1917 

Stanislas Lépine, 1835-1892

Paul Cézanne, 1835-1906

Zacharie Astruc, 1835-1907

Alfred Sisley, 1839-1899, British

Claude Monet, 1840-1926 

Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919 

Berthe Morisot, 1841-1895

Mary Cassatt, 1844-1926, American

Guiseppe De Nittis, Italian, 1846-1884

 

**************

 

Édouard Manet, 1832-1883, declined to join his peers at the Société Anonyme and continued to submit his  work exclusively to the Paris Salon.  For the sake of his career, he said. 

 

***************

 

Where each painting was exhibited in 1874, and if it was rejected by the Salon of 1874, is noted for each painting.

 

This is the work for which the Impressionist movement came to be named:

 

 

Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas

Claude Monet, 1840-1926, French.

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

Probably the most well-known Monet painting, and among the most famous of all Impressionist paintings,  Claude Monet painted this in a few hours.  It was a view he saw from his hotel window in his native city, Le Havre, one humid day.

 

He presented it at the first exhibition of the the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. in 1874. 

 

Its name he gave it for the purposes  of the catalogue.  He did not think it appropriate to give this image the name ‘Le Havre’ because it was his impression of a few minutes only.

Within days of the 1874 exhibition, the name – Impressionist – came to be assigned to his work and that of his colleagues by critics, mostly negative.

 

 

The Salon

The annual Salon was the mechanism by which the Académie des Beaux-Arts – an institution dating to Louis XIV – enforced the state-sanctioned values of visual art in an annual presentation of juried work:

heroic and morally instructive tableaux to the ends of civic rectitude and spiritual elevation.

 

Strict rules obtained about themes: figuration and narrative were favoured above landscape and still life because they can more easily instruct.

Strict rules governed composition, perspective, anatomy; and size of the work.

 

The Salon enforced a strict hierarchy of themes: preferred were religious, mythological, classical, literary, and allegorical subjects as well as  portraits of exemplary personalities. 

 

The Salon was for realism but it had to be an idealized realism, hard-edged, clear, internally coherent, easily readable, and shiny in a symmetrically composed field.

 

To be an Academic painter, an Academician, involved rigorous training and examination. The monetary rewards were plentiful for those artists who conformed.

 

 

The Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc

was a self-organized group of  31 artists – painters, engravers, sculptors – who, in April 1874, displayed their work without being juried or authorized.  10 days before the Salon opened.

Nor did they conform to any themes or techniques but those which suited the execution of their art.

 

The purpose of the Musée d’Orsay and the National Gallery was to show the actual circumstances – historical and artistic – for the emergence of Impressionism at the Société Anonyme  so as to correct a number of misapprehensions  which have arisen over time.

 

The museums attempted this by juxtaposing a few of the paintings accepted for the Paris Salon of 1874 with some of  the paintings exhibited by artists, some of whom became known as the Impressionists, in the Société Anonyme in 1874.

 

 

These two paintings contrast the art shown at the Salon and at the Société Anonyme in 1874.

 

The first won the Salon’s Medal of Honor for its painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme. 

 

It shows the monk, François Leclerc du Tremblay, descending a staircase paying no mind to the deference of  the wealthy of his world come to petition Cardinal Richelieu.

 

The monk’s status came from his close association with the cardinal whose personal coat of arms is emblazoned on the immense tapestry at the top of staircase.

 

 L’Eminence Grise, 1873, oil on canvas.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Photograph © 2023 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

Salon, 1874

 

 

The second is the Monet painting mentioned above.

 

 

Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas.  Claude Monet

 

*************

 

 

The bottom line seems to be this:

 

1. Impressionism is not a complete break from the tradition in which the Impressionists were trained either at the École des Beaux Arts or at the Louvre. 

 

This movement overlapped with Realism which flourished from the 1840s to the end of the century. 

 

Realist artists followed the lead of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877, French) who said:  “… painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist in the representation of real and existing things.”  

 

An example  of Realism is this painting of the crucified Jesus whose realism caused a shock at the Salon of 1874.

 

 

Reproduction of Christ on the Cross, oil on canvas

Leon Bonnat, 1833-1922, French. Petit Palais Musée de Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

2. The Impressionists were not in revolt against the Salon system. 

 

In fact, even if Degas complained to the Salon about its organizing methods and quit it for good in 1870, and Morisot and Cézanne never exhibited at the Salon, the majority of the Impressionists exhibited at the Salon both before and after 1874.   

 

There could be no competition with the Salon:  in 1874, the Salon displayed 3000 works of art and was visited by an estimated 310,000 people. 

The Société Anonyme showed 215 works and there were 3500 visitors.

 

3. The  Société Anonyme was primarily an economic venture. 

The majority of the Impressionists worked to live.

 

Morisot and Cassatt were wealthy. Even if Monet and Renoir became wealthy towards the end of the 19th century, Pissarro struggled all his life; and Sisley died in poverty.

 

4. The reason for this urgency was the economic wreckage in which France found herself starting in 1870.

 

 

Dead in Line, 1873, oil on canvas.

Auguste Lancon, 1836-1887, French.  Musee de la Princerie de Verdun loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

France, at the height of her power mid-century, squandered her eminence in Europe by launching a war against Prussia in 1870.  Paris fell within 7 months. The wreckage was everywhere. 

Monet and Pissarro fled to London.  Manet and Degas joined the National Guard and stayed and witnessed the horror.

The very consequential consequence of this war was the unification and rise of Germany.

 

 

 

 

As above

 

 

No sooner had the French government sued for peace, then the radicalized citizens of Paris set up the Commune, brought to a bloody end by the full force of the state.

Between these two events, much of Paris was in ruins.  Hundreds of thousands dead. The market in ruins.

1870-1871.

 

 

 

Charge of the 9th Regiment of Cuirassiers, 1874, oil on canvas.

Edouard Detaille, 1848-1912, French. Musée Saint-Remi, Reims loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

5. Only 4 paintings were sold by the Société Anonyme; and one more after it closed.

It was dissolved at the end of 1874.

 

 

 6. The 1874  Société Anonyme exhibition was met with the greatest derision. 

 

Visitors to the Société Anonyme were said to be flabbergasted. Jean-Léon Gérôme had nothing but the greatest scorn for the work on display there. In the press, the artists were called ‘monkeys’ and ‘deranged’.

Which did not stop the artists, who came to adopt the name ‘Impressionist’  at their third joint exhibition, from organizing 7 more exhibitions.

Until 1886 when they went their separate ways.

 

7. There were marked differences in the organization of work between the  Salon and the Société Anonyme.

 

The artists took control and autonomy over their own work at the Société Anonyme:  how it was displayed;  how many works were displayed; what size of work they wanted to display; what price they wanted to charge for each work.

 

Salon art was juried. If accepted, a work was hung in alphabetical order of artist name in tight ranks, one on top of the other and very close to each other.  Some paintings could barely be seen.

 

The work tended to be large; in fact, if it was not large, it may not have been visible depending on its location.

 

 

 

The Salon of 1874, 1874, oil on canvas.  Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle, French, 1839-1902. 

Loaned by the Musée D’Orsay to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874.

 

 

8.  The first, perhaps most important marker of the admiration in which the Impressionists are held is for the courage to declare autonomy from the  Salon’s established norms at the possible cost of their careers.  

 

9. The second marker of this esteem is their determined evolution of their artistic tradition. 

 

10. The Impressionists were not a homogenous group of artists when it came to their devices and desires.

 

They were strongly individualistic. 

They shared the desire to represent their experience of what was in front of them;  and they desired  freedom of technique.

 

10a: the pursuers of light

Monet  and Renoir, close friends and competitors were the ‘leaders’ of  the artists who pursued light.

 

“I want to paint the air, the beauty of the air” Claude Monet said.

 

The shared approaches of this group to painting were:

their singluar interest in the transient effect of light and colour;

they used brighter colours than those which had been customary;

they wanted personal approaches to the portrayal of nature;

they tended to minimize perspectival depth to encourage viewers to participate in the colours and relationships in the image. 

 

10b. Among the shared techniques of the pursuers of light are:

painting directly on the canvas without preliminary sketches;

a light touch when it came to brushwork with no clear edges within the image;

the building up objects out of flecks and daubs;

painting in plein air (ie: outside in nature);  practiced already by artists from the 1840s onwards.  This practice was facilitated by the development of paint in tubes in  the 1860’s.

 

11. Degas  is sometimes pushed to the margins of the Impressionists.

He revered Ingres (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1780-1867), who insisted that line was far more important than colour. 

Ingres had Degas understand that he had to learn how to draft and sketch before all other techniques.  Degas became a master draftsman and pastellist.

Degas thought that plein air painting (in nature)  was ridiculous.

For him, the interpretation of memory in capturing and representing the view seen was essential to the artist’s task.

More than half his oeuvre dealt with the ballet.

Study of any of his works reveals that he was not about capturing the fragmentation of light.  

 

 

At the Races in the Countryside, 1869, oil on canvas. Edgar Degas.

Loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from whom this photo

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

The Dancing Class, c. 1870, oil on canvas

Edgar Degas.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY  loan to the National Gallery in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

The Ballet Rehearsal, 1874, oil on canvas

Edgar Degas. Musée d’Orsay loan to the National Gallery in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

12.  Cézanne is sometimes also pushed to the margins of the Impressionists for his isolated experiments mostly at Aix-en Provence which resulted, not in the pursuit of fractured light,

 

 

House of Pere Lacroix, 1873, oil on canvas

Paul Cézanne.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

but in an interest in the massed density of the material world; the ‘is’ness of our material reality. 

 

The flecks and daubs of the pursuers of light morphed in his work into the blocks of colour, of light and shade which secured his fate as a predecessor of Cubism

 

 

The Garden at Les Lauves, 1906, oil on canvas. 

Paul Cézanne.  Phillips Collection, Washington,DC

 

 

 

13. The Impressionists had no interest in the  subjects of greatest value to the Salon for the moral education of citizens : religion, mythology, history. 

 

These religious and mythological paintings in the 1874 Salon are representative of what was expected and customary:

 

 

Homer and His Guide, 1874, oil on canvas 

William Bourguereau, 1825-1925, French. Milwaukee Art Museum loan to the National Art Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

Monk Sculpting a Wooden Christ, 1874, oil on canvas

Edouard Dantan, 1848-1897. Loaned to the National Gallery, Washington, DC by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

Fisherman’s Chapel near Plouha, 1874, oil on canvas.

Paul Chardin, 1833-1917, French. Musée d’Orsay, Paris loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024 

Salon of 1874.  Bought by the French state at this Salon

 

 

 

On the contrary, this was Monet’s  almost anti-historical view in 1873 of the Boulevard des Capucines which in May 1871 had been an absolute charnel house of the dead of the Commune.

 

 

 

Boulevard des Capucines, 1873-1874, oil on canvas

Claude Monet. Loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024 by the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MI

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

14.  The Impressionists shared with their peers at the Salon an interest in portraiture.

 

 

 

Reading, 1873, oil on canvas

Berthe Morisot. Loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2024 

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

 

Portrait of the Artist’s Grandfather, 1874, oil on canvas

Julien Bastian-Lepage, 1848-1884. Musée D’Orsay loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

The Old Fisherman, 1873, oil on canvas

Adolphe Felix-Cals, 1810-1880, French. Loan from the Musée Eugene Boudin, Honfleur to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

Ida, 1874, oil on canvas

Mary Cassatt. Private loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

15. The Impressionist shared with Salon painters an interest in modern life and genre scenes: 

a theme whose increasing popularity the Salon bemoaned as feeding tastes which were less than noble.

 

 

 

The Parisian Girl, 1874, oil on canvas

Auguste Renoir

Loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024 by Amgueddfa Cymru-Museum, Wales

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

Splendor, 1874, oil on canvas

Ernst Duez, French, 1843-1896. Loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC by the Musée des Art Decoratifs, Paris in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

Masked Ball at the Opera, 1873, oil on canvas

Edouard Manet.  National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Rejected by the Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

 The Dancer, 1874, oil on canvas,

Auguste Renoir. Loaned to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC by the Widener Collection in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

The Railway, 1873, oil on canvas. 

Edouard Manet.  The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

Washerwoman, 1874. oil on canvas

Jules Emil Saintin, 1829-1894, French

Loaned by the Pallesi Art Gallery, Montecarlo to the National Museum of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

16.  However,  when it came to certain aspects of modern life, the Impressionists were deemed to have pushed into gross vulgarity:  there was scandalized reaction to their representations of images of theater boxes.

 

Degas’ concentration on ballet dancers was met with the same raised eyebrows and scornful comments.

 

 

 

The Theater Box, 1874, oil on canvas

Auguste Renoir. Loaned by the Courtauld, London to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024 

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

A Box at the Theatre des Italiens, 1874, oil on canvas

Eva Gonzales, 1849-1883, French Loaned by the Musée d’Orsay to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Rejected by the Salon of 1874

 

 

An indication of the mounting imposition of the ideas of the Impressionists came with the entry of the portrait of a prostitute (courtesan), Olympia, 1863, a painting of  Édouard Manet, into the Louvre in 1890 after a nation-wide subscription organized by Claude Monet. 

Even if the Louvre did not hang it for another 17 years.

 

17.  Another aspect of of modern life of whose representation by the Impressionists the Salon disapproved was that of familial and intimate life.

 

 

 

The Cradle, 1872, oil on canvas.

Berthe Morisot.  Loaned by the Musée d’Orsay to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

The Chinese Presents (London), c. 1871

Zacharie Astruc. Private loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

The Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1869-70, oil on canvas

Berthe Morisot. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

 

The Luncheon, 1868-69, oil on canvas.

Claude Monet. Loan from the Staedel Museum, Frankfurt am Main to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024.

Rejected by the Salon in 1870. Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

18. Salon artists and Impressionists shared an interest in landscape and plein air paintings.  Their styles, however, differed markedly. 

Impressionists stressed the sensations of their lived experience in nature. 

The Academicians evacuated all idea of themselves to stress academic values:  harmony, beauty, symmetry, and perfection

 

 

 

The Fields in June, 1874, oil on canvas

Charles-Francois-Daubigny, 1817-1878, French. Loan from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1854

 

 

Poppies / Poppy Field in Argenteuil, 1873, oil on canvas.

Claude Monet, Musée d’Orsay, Paris loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

The Harbor at Lorient, 1869, oil on canvas.

Berthe Morisot. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbor, Le Havre, 1874, oil on canvas.

Claude Monet. Private loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

 

 

 

 

 

The Ferry to the Ile de la Loge, Flood, 1872, oil on canvas

Alfred Sisley. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

Bercy in December, 1874, oil on canvas

Antoine Guillemet, 1841-1918, French. Musée d’Orsay loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

 

Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, 1874, oil on canvas

Giuseppe de Nittis, 1846-1884, Italian. Private collection loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Rejected by the Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

In the Wheat Fields, 1873, oil on panel. 

Giuseppe de Nittis.  Private loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Salon, 1874. Surprisingly!

 

 

 

 

Detail of Hide and Seek, 1873, oil on canvas  

Berthe Morisot. Private loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

Marguerite, c. 1874, oil on canvas

Marie Bracquemond, 1849-1916. Private loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

 Salon of 1874

 

 

 

 

 

The Public Gardens at Pointoise, 1874, oil on canvas. 

Camille Pissaro, 1830-1903, French.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY loan to the National Gallery, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

 

Terrace on the Banks of the Seine at Melun, 1874, oil on canvas

Henri Rouart. Musée d’Orsay loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

Chestnut Trees at Osny, 1873, oil on canvas

Camille Pissarro. Private loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

 

The Canal Saint-Denis, c. 1874-1882, oil on canvas

Stanislas Lépine. Private loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in 2024

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

On the Slopes of Vesuvius, 1872, oil on panel.

Giuseppe de Nittis. Galleria del Arte Moderna, Milan loan to the National Gallery of Art, DC in 2024 

Société Anonyme, 1874

 

 

 

 

The ideas and practices of the Impressionists came to spawn other artistic movements.

Its colours flowed into Fauvism, Orphism, German Expressionism, and Matisse.

The Cubists came and took away Cézanne‘s blocks to transform modern art. 

Henri Matisse paid  a very large compliment to Cézanne‘s ‘moral courage’ which he hoped would sustain his own life’s work. 

 

The Abstract Impressionists, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, paid Monet the compliment of being the first to adopt the ‘all over’ technique (no painting edge on the canvas) for his waterlily paintings: a rule which was fundamental to the work of the Abstract Expressionists.

 

 

What this story is about is the belief that the purpose of our lives is the experience of the freedom which we can construct by the training of our senses and intellect;

informed by the ethical values of our civilization;

among which are the moral courage to defend ourselves and the discipline to keep on going.

 

This is the precious gift of the Western civilization.

 

One year after the exhibition by the Société Anonyme, Monet painted his wife and son:

 

 

Woman with Parasol – Madame Monet with Her Son, 1875, oil on canvas.

Claude Monet. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC