Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland.
Now, instead of a model skilfully placed upon a pedestal, they had nature before them and the infinite variations of the shimmering foliage of trees constantly changing colour in the sunlight. “Our discovery of nature opened our eyes,” said Renoir. (J. Renoir, op. cit., p. 118). No doubt an equally important influence on their passion for nature was the public exhibition that same year (1863) of Édouard Manet’s painting Luncheon on the Grass. The painting astonished the future Impressionists, as well as critics and observers. Manet had begun to accomplish what they dreamt of: he had taken the first steps away from neo-classical painting and moved closer to modern life. Truth be told, “burning down the Louvre” was little more than a spontaneous expression bandied about in the heat of discussion, not a conviction. When asked if he had got anything out of Gleyre’s neo-classical studio, the elder Renoir replied to his son: “A lot, in spite of the teachers. Having to copy the same écorché (anatomical study) ten times is excellent. It’s boring, and if you weren’t paying for it, you wouldn’t be doing it. But to really learn, nothing beats the Louvre.” (J. Renoir, op. cit., p. 112–113).
The First Impressionist Exhibition
6. Édouard Manet, Self-Portrait with Palette, 1879.
Oil on canvas, 83 × 67 cm.
Private Collection.
7. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Claude Monet, 1875.
Oil on canvas, 85 × 60.5 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
The future Impressionists believed they were making a clean break with academic painting when they left Gleyre’s studio. Eleven years later, they were developing a new concept of painting as they worked en plein-air (out-of-doors). The time had come to announce this concept, as well as their independence from official art, and to show their canvases in the context of their own exhibition. But organising such an event was not as easy as one might think.
Up until then, there was only one venue for exhibiting contemporary art in France: the Salon. Founded in the seventeenth century during the reign of Louis XIV by his prime minister Colbert, the exhibition was inaugurated in the Louvre’s Salon carré, whence its name. Beginning in 1747, the Salon was held biennially in different locations. By the time the future Impressionists appeared on the stage of art, the Salon boasted a two hundred year history. Obviously every painter wanted to exhibit in the Salon, because it was the only way to become known and consequently, to be able to sell paintings. But it was hard to get admitted. A critical jury made up of teachers from the École des beaux-arts selected the works for the exhibition. The Académie des Beaux-Arts (one of the five Academies of the Institut de France) picked the teachers for the jury from among its own members. Furthermore, the teachers in charge of selecting the Salon’s paintings and sculptures often chose work made by the same artists they had as students. It was not unusual to see jury members haggling amongst themselves for the right to have the work of their own students admitted.
The Salon’s precepts were extremely rigid and remained essentially unchanged throughout its entire existence. Traditional genres reigned and scenes taken from Greek mythology or the Bible were in accordance with the themes imposed on the Salon at its inception, only the individual scenes changed according to fashion. Portraiture retained its customary affected look and landscapes had to be “composed,” in other words, conceived from the artist’s imagination. Idealised nature, whether it concerned the female nude, portraiture, or landscape painting, was still a permanent condition of acceptance. The jury sought a high degree of professionalism in composition, drawing, anatomy, linear perspective, and pictorial technique. An irreproachably smooth surface, created with miniscule brushwork almost indiscernible to the eye, was the standard finish required for admission to the competition. There was no place in the Salon for the everyday reality young painters were anxious to explore. Finally, there was another, unformulated requirement: the paintings had to appeal to the potential buyers for whom they were made.
8. Pierre Auguste Renoir, Self-Portrait, c.1875.
Oil on canvas, 36.1 × 31.7 cm.
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown.
The victorious revolution at the end of the eighteenth century had given rise to a nouveaux riches class. Former boutique owners who had profited from the revolution built luxurious townhouses in Paris, bought jewels from the most expensive stores on the rue de la Paix, and bought no less expensive paintings from celebrated Salon painters. The newly rich had questionable tastes that required some getting used to. It was precisely in the second half of the nineteenth century that the term “salon painter” became pejorative, implying a lack of principles and venality, the sort of eagerness toplease that was indispensable for commercial success. The very fact of admission to the Salon demonstrated extreme professionalism on the part of the painter and under these circumstances changing his manner of painting and his style was no great feat. It was not unusual to find a neo-classical composition next to a canvas painted in the spirit of romanticism by the same artist. It was nevertheless a matter of honour for the Salon to retain its prestige and consequently, to maintain the spirit of classicism upon which it had been based up until then.
Salon favourites were derisively called pompiers (firemen). The original meaning of this word has been lost over time. It may have stemmed from the constant presence of real firemen in the rooms of the Salon, or it may have been that the shiny headgear of the antique warriors in Salon paintings made one think of firemen. Or perhaps pompier was an echo of the French word for Pompei (Pompéi), as the Pompeian lifestyle was frequently depicted in the Salon’s antique compositions. One story attributes the origin of the term to the famous phrase by the academician Gérôme, who said that it was easier to be an arsonist than a fireman. By that the honourable professor meant artists like himself fulfilled the difficult and noble duty of firemen, whereas those who one way or another attacked the foundations of the Salon and the classical ideal of art, naturally seemed like arsonists. The four former pupils of Gleyre, along with Pissarro who had joined them, consciously took the side of the arsonists.
9. Camille Pissarro, Self-Portrait, 1903.
Oil on canvas, 41 × 33.3 cm.
Tate Gallery, London.
10. Édouard Manet, Portrait of Berthe Morisot with a Fan, 1874.
Oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm.
Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille.
Academic stagnation was already inspiring protest among artists. Even the great Ingres, an Academy member and professor of painting for whom the defence of classicism was a matter of honour, was saying that the Salon was perverting and suffocating the artist’s sense of grandeur and beauty. Ingres saw that exhibiting in the Salon awakened an interest in financial gain, the desire to achieve recognition at any cost, and that the Salon itself was changing into a sales room by selling paintings in a market inundated with items for sale, instead of a place where art dominated commerce. Moreover, too many artists remained outside of the exhibit, either because of professional mediocrity or because they failed to meet the criteria of neo-classical painting. In 1855, only 2,000 out of 8,000 submissions were accepted for the Salon that coincided with the Universal Exposition. Gustave Courbet’s best work was rejected, including his famous Burial at Ornans. Jury members felt that his artistic leanings would have a fatal effect on French art. Indeed, Courbet was the first serious arsonist: “I have studied the art of the ancients and moderns outside of the system and without taking part in it,” he wrote in the catalogue to his individual exhibition. “I no more wanted to imitate the one than I wanted to copy the other…No! From a full awareness of tradition I simply wanted to draw the intelligent