The exhibition proposed by the Parisian Orsay museum from March 26 to July 14, 2024, “Paris 1874 – Inventing Impressionism” aims to revisit the birth of Impressionism, born 150 years ago in Paris.
The first Impressionist exhibition is held on April 15, 1874 in the former studio of the photographer Nadar in the heart of the Opéra district. The premises are made up of eight rooms, in full light and the exhibition, which requires a fee, is also open at night to attract a wider clientele.
Thirty-one artists exhibit their works there. Their names include Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas and Pissarro, they paint luminous and blurred paintings with small touches and are sometimes friends, even if they are of different ages and social backgrounds. It is hardly an aesthetic principle that unites them but rather the desire to freely exhibit, in a common rebellion against the official Salon, the great annual gathering which aims to be the guardian of tradition and academicism.
Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle – The Salon of 1874, 1874. The paintings represented on the wall reproduce works actually exhibited at the Salon of 1874 and were painted by the authors of the originals paintings
An essential showcase of current artistic production, the Salon is an annual event open to the public. It is essential for artists, because it is there that their success and their careers have been played out for two centuries. Selected by a jury from the French Fine Arts, more than two thousand paintings are hung edge to edge and must all conform to a pictorial genre – history painting, portrait, landscape, genre painting, still life.
The Impressionists – who do not yet bear this name – are supported by certain collectors and art dealers, including Paul Durand-Ruel, however the approximately two hundred works presented have not experienced the sanction of a jury – unlike those presented at the official Salon.
Their works are marked by their time. Barely emerging from the trauma of the 1870 war, the defeat, the shameful armistice and the Paris Commune, the Impressionists depict life as they see it, live it and feel it. Unlike the academic paintings of the Salon, no biblical or mythological knowledge is necessary to fully appreciate the Impressionist works – which probably explains their success.
Feelings are widely represented on their canvases, whether maternal love with the works of Berthe Morisot or romantic desire with the paintings of Auguste Renoir.
But the Impressionists are above all witnesses to the immense transformation that the city of Paris is experiencing under the aegis of Haussmann, and it is not insignificant that their first exhibition takes place a stone’s throw from the new Opera house, in the heart of a new district which will become the epitome of business, luxury and pleasure.
On their canvases, the peaceful and pastoral countryside often contrasts with a bustling capital which lives to the rhythm of the industrial revolution. Railroad stations, factory chimneys or trains often appear in their works. The difficulties caused by modern and city life also come to the surface, when the underground world of prostitutes and Opera dancers who sell their charms is represented.
They are witnesses of their time and in this respect join the writings of Émile Zola, who is never very far away.
Camille Pissarro, June morning, Pontoise – 1873
Berthe Morisot – View of Lorient port, 1869
Claude Monet – Les Dindons, 1877 – Presented at the third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877
Berthe Morisot – On the cliff, 1873
Claude Monet – Impression, Rising Sun, 1873
Armand Guillaumin – Setting sun in Ivry, 1873
Claude Monet –Saint-Lazare station, 1877 – Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877. Monet likes to paint these cathedrals of the industrial age
Claude Monet – Boulevard des Capucines, 1874. The touches are rapid and illustrate the hustle and bustle of the modern city, and more particularly the Opera district, symbol of the industrial revolution
Claude Monet – Les Tuileries, 1876
Auguste Renoir – The Opera box, 1874. Theaters and performance venues multiplied in the capital and were painted many times by the Impressionists
Eva Gonzalès – An Opera box in the Italians Opera house, 1874
Auguste Renoir – Dancer, 1874
Jules Émile Saintin – Linen laundress – 1874. Rather than evoking the difficult living and working conditions of the laundress, the painter evokes a young seducer, thus playing with the reputation of easy virtue from which the workers suffer
Paul Cézanne – A modern Olympia, 1874. The painting was seen as an outrage in 1874. It depicts a naked prostitute under the gaze of a client
Berthe Morisot – The Cradle, 1872
Auguste Renoir – The Swing, 1876. The garden of the house rented by Renoir in Montmartre serves as the setting for this painting which shows Jeanne, a young Parisian who regularly attends the Montmartre balls, surrounded by two men and a little girl
July 5, 2024
