112 NORMANDIE IMPRESSIONISTE
Bon Marché, and the architectural legacies of the Universal Exhibitions of 1867, 1889 and 1900 confirmed the success of the capital city and the power of France. It was only in 1900 that the impressionists were invited to exhibit within the fine arts section of the event but by then artists had staged their own one-man shows in parallel with the earlier exhibitions. Few could then have foreseen the prestige that impressionism conferred on French art. Official patronage of art was often wasted on mediocre academic painting until well into the 20th century. Te power of the official system in France rested with the Salon. Its authority was absolute. It had a monopoly on art. It attracted over half a million visitors and huge coverage in the press. In 1791, it was thrown open to all artists to submit work, and by 1848 the selection procedure that had previously been via a jury was replaced by a committee chosen by the exhibiting artists. Tis resulted in over 5,000 paintings being hung, which proved unviable. Te jury system was reinstated, and the resentment this caused led to the Salons des Refusés of 1863. As Renoir explained, ‘there are scarcely 15 collectors capable of liking a painting without the backing of the Salon. And there are another 80,000 who won’t buy so much as a postcard unless the painter exhibits there.’ Te dominance of its position united the artists and provoked them to rebel against the conventions of the Parisian art world. Te Salon of 1867 was the most restrictive in its history, rejecting entirely a group later identified as impressionists. Growing resentment culminated in the formation of the Société Anonyme des Artistes. Tose excluded by the Salon met in Renoir’s studio on 27 December 1873 to promote sales through group exhibitions. On 15 April of the following year at 35 boulevard des Capucines, history was made.
‘Hungry for independence,’ Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne and 24 other artists finally decided to free themselves from the rules by holding their own exhibition outside official channels, to join forces and to show their work freely without involvement of the state. Tere were 165 works in the exhibition. As a commercial venture it was a failure. It attracted some good reviews but there was no shortage of hostile articles. One observer noted, ‘What they seem above all to be aiming at is an impression,’ a remark picked up by a facetious critic, Louis Leroy, whose article published in a satirical magazine became notorious. It was entitled Te Exhibition of the Impressionists and the artists were saddled with the soubriquet. Initially at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and now in Washington DC, a selection of works that featured in the 1874 exhibition is put into perspective with paintings and sculptures displayed at the official Salon that same year. Tis unprecedented confrontation recreates the visual shock of the new, as well as showing some of the unexpected parallels and overlaps between the two exhibitions. Te exhibition
demonstrates the contradictions and infinite variety of art in that spring of 1874, while highlighting the radical modernity of those young artists. ‘Good luck!’ one critic encouraged them at the time. ‘Innovations always lead to something.’
Te 150-year anniversary was celebrated well beyond impressionism’s Parisian picture rails. To mark the occasion, some of the movement’s greatest masterpieces left the former Gare d’Orsay’s platforms for all four corners of France. Te Musée d’Orsay lent out 78 works to 34 partner institutions across 13 regions of the country. Te museum itself, a converted railway station, will be 40 years old in 2026. It is an interesting building, with an interior that was reimagined by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti into a gutsy industrial space, basically two lines of rough stone galleries that attracted considerable adverse publicity when they first opened. Tey were referred to as bunkers, and the whole scheme as a ‘vaguely Egyptian version of postmodern architecture’. Te public loved it. Te project was a success, inspiring pleasure, interest and architectural debate. Nevertheless, it has to keep up with the times. Attracting over 3.5 million visitors a year it needs to expand. In order to do so it is moving its research and educational facilities into a building next door and revamping the main building. Te esplanade will be refurbished; visitors will no longer have to line up for tickets outside; and the permanent collections will be rearranged and rehung. Te museum will remain open while the changes are made. Work is scheduled to start in 2025 and finish by the end of 2027. Its focus will remain that particularly complex and crucial period, the 19th century, but as that century becomes more remote, no longer the last century but the century before that, it will no longer remain a train station with impressionist paintings hanging inside. So many things are rooted in the same period: economic and medical developments, scientific discoveries, photography, cinema, railways, transportation, together with colonialism and the impact of orientalist painting in France. Tis additional context will help visitors appreciate the revolutionary times in which the paintings were created. Te complete rehang will begin with sections dedicated to the Universal Exhibitions and the revolutions of 1848 across Europe.
Te impressionist exhibitions, eight of them, mounted from 1874 to 1886, constitute the most important historical model for artist-organised group shows that were central to the life of art until the 1960s. Tey led to an increasing number of shows created as alternatives to the stultified selection system of the Salon. Another criticism of the Salon had been the way in which the paintings had been hung, walls stacked sky-high with pictures. Te hanging committee of impressionists changed all that. Paintings were hung spaciously in just two horizontal rows, something that was critical to the new private market that had
commercial objectives very different to the floor-to-ceiling display of the Salon installation. Te goal of the shows was to entice people to purchase paintings for their homes, something the third impressionist exhibition of 1877 made perfectly clear: it was held in an apartment rented for the occasion by Gustave Caillebotte. In 1882, the penultimate exhibition was the most ‘impressionist’ of all the shows held to date, the criticism was more favourable, yet Monet was pilloried. In 1884, between the seventh and eighth exhibitions, a new Société des Artistes Indépendants broadcast its opposition to the Salon. Its motto? ‘No Jury, No Prizes’. A serious fight broke out at their show of 402 artists that
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