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Home>Stories>1874: the Birthday of Impressionism

In 2024, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the exhibition considered the first impressionist show.

Artists like Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Berthe Morisot had already been experimenting with the innovations that would define the style. But it was on April 15, 1874, that the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. opened its first exhibition. This diverse group of 30 artists sought to break free of an establishment that stifled experimentation and constrained their sales. How did impressionists arrive at this defining moment?

 

The Terrible Year

Three years before the Société Anonyme exhibition, France suffered a humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Auguste Lançon, Dead in Line!, 1873, oil on canvas, Musée de la Princerie de Verdun (81.1.401), on long-term loan to the Musée départemental de la Guerre de 1870 & de l’Annexion, Gravelotte (DG2009.1.1).

After France surrendered, the National Guard and working-class revolutionaries in Paris seized control of the city. They formed the short-lived Paris Commune, an independent socialist government. When the French army tried to regain control two months later, a brutal civil war erupted. It left some 15,000-20,000 members of the Commune slain and parts of the City of Light in ashes.

As they rebuilt, Parisians sought out cultural diversions to reinvigorate the city. Art was the answer.

 

The Paris Salon’s Defense of Tradition
The Paris Salon was central to this conversation. The most prominent cultural event in France, the Salon’s annual exhibition, drew half a million people from all walks of life.

Receiving praise from the jury at the Salon could make an artist’s career. It would help ensure handsomely paid commissions from wealthy patrons. But the jury leaned conservative, largely uninterested in stylistic innovation. It favored dramatic paintings depicting biblical, mythological, and historical stories on monumental canvases.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, L’Eminence Grise, 1873, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Bequest of Susan Cornelia Warren, 03.605

Indeed, the Medal of Honor of the 1874 Salon was awarded to Jean-Léon Gérôme’s L’eminence Grise. Gérôme plotted the composition carefully—from the architecture of the staircase to the arrangement of the figures and their gestures. With its historical narrative and meticulous description , this painting exemplified the type of art the Salon favored.

Meanwhile, the Salon refused to exhibit submissions from other artists. Monet, Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir all felt the sting of rejection.

 

Works Rejected by the Paris Salon

The Salon rejected this painting by Monet in 1870.

Claude Monet, The Luncheon, 1868–1869, oil on canvas, Staedel Museum, SG 170.
A light-skinned man with thick black hair and a squared off black beard, dressed in a black jacket over a gray vest and gray trousers, sits facing us in this vertical portrait painting. This work is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes so some details are difficult to make out. The man's body faces us but he looks down and to our left. The tip of his nose almost matches the coral red of his lips. Two pale peach patches below his mouth break up his beard on his pointed chin. His hands, closed into fists, rest on his thighs, which are cropped by the bottom of the canvas. He wears several layers of clothing. The open black jacket reveals a charcoal-gray vest with a V-shaped opening over another black garment, perhaps an undervest. This is worn over a white shirt, which is visible as bright traingles at this throat and white cuffs at his wrists. The white shirt seems to be tied with a black tie and possibly a gray cravat, but this area is broadly painted. The background is painted with gray strokes over black. The artist signed the painting in black paint in the lower right corner, though it is barely visible: “P. Cezanne.”
Works Rejected by the Paris Salon

Paul Cezanne, Antony Valabrègue, 1866, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1970.35.1
A pale, nearly nude woman with dark hair sits on a mossy rock, holding an archer's bow, with a dead deer at her feet in this vertical painting. Her body is angled to our left and she looks down toward the animal with dark eyes. Her hair is pulled up, and her pale pink lips are closed. She is covered only by a light, celery-green cloth and rose-pink ribbon across her hips. She has full, round breasts and curving belly, hips, and thighs. The deer’s legs face the woman as it lies on the ground, but its head is pulled back at a dramatic angle into the lower left corner, seeping blood from the mouth and from a slash across its neck. A quiver of arrows lies to the woman’s right, farther from us, on the moss-covered rock on which she is seated. More boulders behind her create the impression of hills, nearly filling the composition. Trees grow up against a corner of pale blue sky above.
Works Rejected by the Paris Salon

Auguste Renoir, Diana, 1867, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.205
A bearded man with light skin, wearing a black costume and holding a plumed hat, stands in front of mottled brown background in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left but he turns to look off to our right from the corners of his dark brown eyes. He has heavy, furrowed brows and high cheekbones. His dark mustache curls up at either end over a full beard, and his wavy chestnut-brown hair is swept back from his forehead. His black jacket has puffed sleeves with narrow ruffles of white at his collar and cuffs, and a peek of the white shirt at his chest where the row of buttons are undone. His puffy pants gather at the thigh over black stockings, and he wears black slippers. He crosses his wrists in front of him, and he wears a gold ring with a square, scarlet-red stone on his right ring finger, to our left. In that hand, he also holds a black hat with a long, feathery plume that falls to knee level. A saber lies on the floor to our left near the man’s feet, with the grip and elaborately twisting guard facing us. The background lightens from coffee brown along the top edge to light beige along the lower edge of the composition. The portrait is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout, especially in the costume and background. The artist signed the painting in the lower right corner, “Manet.”
Works Rejected by the Paris Salon

Edouard Manet, The Tragic Actor (Rouvière as Hamlet), 1866, oil on canvas, Gift of Edith Stuyvesant Gerry, 1959.3.1

Frustrated with the Salon’s conservative tastes and near-monopoly on patronage, Edgar Degas wrote a harshly worded letter to the jury. “You better change your ways, and thereby do your duty,” he demanded.

 

A Breakaway Exhibition
After repeated rejections, these artists decided to consider a different strategy to have their works taken seriously. Thirty-one artists formed a société anonyme, or an incorporated business.

They were a diverse group. Some, like Sisley, Morisot, and Camille Pissarro, were already working in a recognizably “impressionistic” style. They painted with expressive, loose brushstrokes and a luminous pastel palette. Others, like Degas and Cezanne, painted in darker tones but committed themselves to depicting everyday life. What united them was their rejection of the status quo upheld by the Salon. They all saw themselves as independents.

On January 17, 1874, the Société Anonyme announced that an “open exhibition, without juries or prizes” would take place several months later on April 15. The photographer Nadar offered to host the exhibition in his studio at 35 Boulevard Capucines. Surrounded by grand cafés, this location was perfect for attracting a wealthy clientele.

In four short months, the organizers gathered together 200 works to display. Newspaper coverage built anticipation for the exhibition, leading Degas to remark, “This event is making more progress and is more welcoming, I swear, than I thought it would be.”

A pale-skinned girl wearing an arctic-blue ballet costume stands looking at us and almost fills this vertical painting. The scene is painted with blended strokes, giving it a soft, almost blurry look. In pale pink ballet slippers, she stands with her feet in fifth position, so the toes are turned out while her feet are almost parallel, the heel of the front foot touching the toes of the other. Her body faces our left, and she turns her head to look at us with blue eyes. She has delicate, dark brows, rosy cheeks, and full pink lips. Her long honey-brown hair is tied with a sky-blue ribbon like a headband. The fitted bodice of her pale blue dress has a lapis-blue bow at the chest, and the short sleeves tie around the sides of her shoulders. A sash around her middle is also lapis blue. The knee-length tutu has layers of light fabric, and seems to fly up behind her. She wears a black choker necklace and a black bracelet on each wrist. She holds a white object, perhaps a lacy handkerchief, in her right hand at her waist. Her other arm, closer to us, hangs down by her side as she touches the tutu. The background is painted with strokes of spring, sage, and pine green with touches of teal blue. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “A. Renoir. 74.”
Works Shown in the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874

Auguste Renoir, The Dancer, 1874, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.72
We look across a placid pond at sandstone-white buildings with brown and terracotta-red roofs nestled within a grove of green trees and plants in this vertical landscape painting. To our left, the brown roofs cover extensions to the main building, which has the terracotta roof. Between us and the buildings, the remains of a slate-gray wall are partially hidden by a vine or tree. The plants in front of the buildings are created with short daubs of yellow and green with touches of blue. The pond or other small body of water close to us spans the lower width of the canvas. The plants are reflected in the water's smooth surface. The trees to our right and behind the house have olive-green trunks stretching beyond the top edge of the composition. Their leaves blend together to fill the space next to and behind the house with a patchwork of shades of emerald, pine, and celery green. These greens are layered with short, angled strokes over smoother patches, and they fill the upper third of the composition. Patches of orange and a slice of azure-blue sky are visible among the leaves on the left side over the brown roofs. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “P. Cezanne 73.”
Works Shown in the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874

Paul Cezanne, House of Père Lacroix, 1873, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Collection, 1963.10.102
Works Shown in the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874

Berthe Morisot, Le Berceau (The Cradle), 1871, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
A tree with emerald-green leaves and laden with white blossoms grows in a dirt field, and is silhouetted against a vibrant blue sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible dabs and strokes. The tree takes up most of the left half of the painting, and is closest to us. It casts a dappled shadow onto the ground to our right. A barren tree with gnarled branches grows nearby, in the tree’s shadow. A row of more trees extends in the distance to our right. A narrow dirt path, bordered by low green growth, stretches from the bottom edge of the canvas, to our right of center, into the field. To our left and farther from us, a woman leans over and reaches for the ground. She faces our left in profile and wears a white bonnet, a brown shawl, and a blue skirt. Near the line of trees to our right, a man walks toward the woman. He wears blue pants, a white shirt, a dark cap, and he carries a tan bag over his left shoulder. There are more trees along the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. The sky above is light gray near the horizon and deepens to vivid blue with fluffy white clouds. The painting is signed and dated in the lower right: “C. Pissarro 1872.”
Works Shown in the First Impressionist Exhibition, 1874

Camille Pissarro, Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes, 1872, oil on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, 1970.17.51

A Failed Exhibition but an Enduring Legacy

But the first impressionist exhibition failed by conventional metrics. Attendance was poor: in the month it was open, the exhibition only received 3,500 visitors—mostly friends, critics, and collectors. Meanwhile, the 1874 Salon welcomed half a million attendees.

It was not a commercial success; few paintings were sold. Nor was it a critical success. An infamous review from critic Louis Leroy panned the works as unfinished. Of Renoir’s Dancer, he wrote, “What a pity . . . that the painter, who has a certain understanding of color, doesn’t draw better; his dancer’s legs are as cottony as the gauze of her skirts.” Leroy coined the term “impressions” as a disparaging descriptor of the style.

The Société Anonyme disbanded, but the circle of artists endured. Over the course of seven subsequent independent exhibitions, they became known as impressionists. Today, their paintings remain among the most recognized and beloved works of Western art.

 

Banner detail: Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan Monet, gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy, 1940. Inv. 4014. Photo: © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Studio Christian Baraja SLB

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