“Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment” has now come to Washington, DC. The exhibition, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the seminal exhibit in Paris that gave birth to Impressionism, opened at the National Gallery of Art last week and will be on display there through January 19, 2025. Organized in conjunction with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay (which had its own version, “Paris 1874—Inventing impressionism,” that closed in July), the show—aptly subtitled “A Tale of Two Exhibitions”—presents a kind of split-screen scenario, juxtaposing works that appeared in the landmark 1874 Impressionist exhibit with paintings displayed that same year at the official Salon, the influential juried art exhibition of Paris’s Académie des Beaux-Arts. (Note that all the works in the show are meticulously labeled either “Salon 1874” or “Société Anonyme 1874.”)
The 1874 Impressionist exhibit was mounted by the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs, a cooperative of 30 artists who wanted to break free of Paris’s art establishment in order to have greater control over how their art was selected and exhibited. The 1874 exhibit featured such artists as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot. The luminescent, bright, color-filled scenes that these artists were creating reflected a dramatic departure from the subdued palette, dark tones and political, historic and social focus of Salon paintings. A palpable sense of atmosphere and light radiates from these Impressionist works, many of which were painted out of doors, directly from nature. With an emphasis on beauty rather than import, they convey a feeling of relaxation, pleasure and healing, much needed since just three years prior to the 1874 exhibitions, the Franco-Prussian war and political turmoil had devastated life in Paris. The ruin and rubble were still visible.
A key member of this cohort of artists was Danish-French artist Camille Pissarro. The only one of the original 30 members to participate in all eight Impressionism exhibitions, he played an important role in mentoring and keeping the group together. His compelling canvases (six are included in the show) reflect his interest in how light influences color. His loose brushwork and play of light and shadow are distinguishing features of Impressionism and his dedication to painting directly from nature and depicting the specific effects of light and weather on his subjects made him central to the movement. His luminous landscapes are a highlight of the exhibition. It was hard to tear myself away from them.
One of the first paintings you encounter upon entering the National Gallery exhibition is Monet’s iconic 1872 Impression Sunrise, the work from which the artistic movement’s name derived. The painting, which pictures the sun rising through smog, captures the sense of immediacy and spontaneity that was central to the Impressionists. Nearby is a massive canvas by Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle titled The Salon of 1874, which actually pictures some of the works that were included in the exhibition that year (some entrants were guaranteed acceptance in advance due to previous work and Cabaillot-Lassalle had them paint their entries onto his canvas). The painting aptly evokes the look and atmosphere of the official Salon. The contrast is clear.
If you get to the exhibition, and I hope you will, you are in for a visual treat and a unique perspective on the development of Impressionism.
“Obviously, this is not the last word in art, nor even of this art,” read a review of the first Impressionist exhibit from the Paris-Journal of May 7, 1874, “But what a bugle call for those who listen carefully, how it resounds far into the future.”
A few works to be on the lookout for:
*A series of four small pastels by French artist Eugène Boudin (Monet’s first art teacher) recording the dramatic effects of coastal weather (Société Anonyme)
*Portrait of the Artist’s Grandfather by Jules Bastien-Lepage 1874 (Salon)
*In the Wheat Field by Italian artist Giuseppe De Nittis was in the Salon show, but could easily have fit in the Société Anonyme exhibit.
*The Synagogue, c. 1860s-1880s by French artist Edouard Brandon, who after a time in Rome devoted himself to painting scenes of Jewish life. (Société Anonyme)
*The Railway by Edouard Manet (Salon)
*The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (Société Anonyme)
*Jupiter by Ludovic Napoleon Lepic (Société Anonyme)