What Impressionism really changed
A mocked painting, a sardonic critic and a handful of painters rejected by the Salon: in 1874, a group of artists unwittingly invented modern painting.
On 15 April 1874, at 35 boulevard des Capucines in Paris, an exhibition opened that was like no other. It was held in the former studio of the photographer Nadar, and it brought together some thirty artists who had decided to do without the official Salon, the institution that then decided painters’ careers. Among them were Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne.
A jibe turned banner
Among the canvases on show was the port of Le Havre drowned in mist, with an orange sun resting on the water and a few barely sketched boats. Monet had called it Impression, Sunrise. In an article in the satirical paper Le Charivari, the critic Louis Leroy mocked it and spoke of an “exhibition of the Impressionists”. He meant to ridicule them. The painters adopted the word, and it has since named one of the most loved movements in the history of art.
Leaving the studio
For centuries, painters worked in the studio, from sketches. In the nineteenth century, the invention of collapsible paint tubes changed everything: you could take your colours into the fields, to the seaside, onto the banks of the Seine. The Impressionists painted on the spot, in the open air, seeking to capture what they saw at a precise moment: the light of a morning, a cloud’s reflection on water, the blue shadow of snow.
Monet took this logic to its conclusion with his series, Rouen Cathedral, the haystacks, the poplars, painted again and again at different times of day. The subject is no longer the cathedral, but the light passing through it.
The visible brushstroke
Instead of smoothing the paint to erase the trace of the brush, as the Academy demanded, they placed small strokes of pure colour side by side, which the eye blends at a distance. Up close, everything seems blurred, unfinished, almost a rough draft. Take a step back, and the scene comes alive, vibrates, breathes. It was this visible brushwork that so shocked the public of the day.
Painting their own time
Railway stations, riverside taverns, boulevards, cafés, popular dances, regattas, dance halls: Impressionism painted modern life rather than heroes of antiquity or religious scenes. Degas settled in the wings of the Opéra, Renoir beneath the trees of the Moulin de la Galette, Caillebotte on Haussmann’s grand boulevards. This may be its deepest revolution: saying that ordinary life deserves to be painted.
On his death in 1894, the painter and collector Gustave Caillebotte bequeathed his collection of Impressionist canvases to the State, on condition that they be exhibited. The Academy protested violently. After long negotiations, the State accepted only part of it. The works it accepted now form the heart of the Musée d’Orsay’s collections.
Where to see them
- The Musée d’Orsay in Paris holds the largest Impressionist collection in the world.
- The Musée Marmottan Monet holds Impression, Sunrise.
- The Musée de l’Orangerie houses Monet’s great Water Lilies.
- Giverny, in Normandy, lets you visit the painter’s house and garden.
The Impressionists did not paint what they knew, but what they saw.
