Museums celebrate 150 years of Impressionism
by Ruth Lopez
“Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., organized with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, celebrates the 150th anniversary of the first impressionist exhibition. Of all the origin stories that exist in the field of art history, the birth of Impressionism is perhaps the most mythic. The exhibition, which opens on September 8, 2024, runs through January 19, 2025. It was first shown at the Musée d’Orsay earlier this year.
Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle, The Salon of 1874, 1874, oil on canvas, 39 3⁄8 x 32 1⁄16 in., framed: 49 x 41 5⁄16 in.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, gift of Galerie Ary Jan and Segoura Fine Art, 2023. Photo: © Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Sophie Crépy. Cat. No. 2 / Object ID: 5649-075
Auguste Renoir, The Dancer, 1874, oil on canvas, 56 1⁄8 x 37 3⁄16 in., framed: 64 5⁄8 x 45 3⁄4 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Widener Collection. Cat. No. 163/Object ID: 5649-003
It begins with the Paris Salon—the annual juried art exhibition sponsored by the French government which existed in various forms beginning in the late 17th century. For artists to show in the Salon meant they had the blessing of the illustrious Académie des Beaux-Arts, the organizer of the exhibition, along with the possibility of having their work enter a museum collection. It was crushing to be rejected, yet artists found a way to deal with the situation by creating new opportunities to show their work. The Salon des Refusés in 1863, for instance, (which included work by Édouard Manet and James McNeill Whistler) was a satellite exhibition that thumbed its nose at the official Salon, with its themes and official categories, by showing the rejected art.
In 1874, a group of 31 artists banded together and called themselves the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs. They would launch a show at around the same time independent of the salon and without the baggage of rejection. The Société Anonyme included Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. The year prior the Salon had turned down work by Renoir and Henri Rouart, so their participation was also an act of defiance.