Monet and the Birth of Impressionism (Part 1)

In 1870s Paris a group of radical young artists led by Monet, Degas and Renoir decide to take on the art establishment and stage their own exhibition, independent of the enormous state-run art show - the Salon. It was a completely new idea that would transform how artists showed their work forever. But first they need to find a venue and recruit more artists to their cause. Then there’s the nagging question - how are they going to pay for it all? And when it finally opens, will anyone come? Join James and Alastair as they tell the story of the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874, a turning point in the history of art that marked the beginning of a now world-famous art movement - Impressionism. If you want to see the artworks discussed in this episode you can switch on video in your podcast app at any time. Artworks in this week’s episode include: Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris Jean-Léon Gérôme, L'Éminence Grise, 1873, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic, Jupiter, 1861 For more great art content visit www.heni.com or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction to Monet's Impression Sunrise 00:05:21 Second Empire France in Crisis 00:10:28 Understanding the Salon System 00:19:17 The 1874 Salon: Conservative vs. Progressive Art 00:31:37 Formation of the Société Anonyme 00:37:41 Nadar's Studio: The Perfect Venue 00:41:57 Preparing for the Exhibition 00:44:26 Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Alastair Sooke?

  Welcome to Stories of Art. I'm Alastair Sooke.

• 0:04James Fox?

  And I'm James Fox.

• 0:09Alastair Sooke?

  Like a neon gobstopper, surreally floating in midair, the reddish-orange disc of the rising sun appears amid, as Jimi Hendrix might have put it, a purple haze. Through this soft blue and light lilac fog, other forms, less distinct than the sun, slowly become apparent. Shadowy figures in boats, the masts of spectral ships, smoke drifting from factory chimneys. So what at first seems like an indistinct but pretty vaporous scene, the brushwork so sketchy the subject is hardly identifiable, is a little more industrial and smog-saturated than we might think. That, James, is my description of a really famous 19th-century painting

• 0:53Alastair Sooke?

  of the commercial port of the city of Le Havre in Normandy, which rightly or wrongly, as we're going to discover and discuss, is now considered one of the origins, if you like, of modern art. And because, a year or so after finishing it in 1872, the artist who painted it, Claude Monet, wanted to include it in an exhibition, he had to give this picture a name. He recalled a quarter of a century later, "I was asked for its title for the catalogue. It could not really count as a view of Le Havre. I replied, 'Put down 'Impression'."

• 1:31Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, exactly. Thank you for providing those very expensive sound effects. At a stroke, he may even have given a name to an entire art movement. So, James, I must ask, what is your impression of, as this picture is called, Impression Sunrise?

• 1:48James Fox?

  I'm impressed, Alistair. Very impressed. No, look, it's a lovely painting. It's a really lovely painting, but we must be honest... The only reason it is so astonishingly famous is because of its title. It's because, at the spur of the moment, Monet plucked that word "impression" out of thin air and so, as you say, inadvertently, indirectly, invented the idea of Impressionism, which must be the most successful art movement in history.

• 2:19Alastair Sooke?

  And I think it's worth saying, right at the outset, that the story we're telling today, it is the story of that painting, but it's the story as well of something else. It's the story of an exhibition. Because this picture, which inspires the name for the movement of Impressionism, is shown in the spring of 1874 in an exhibition in Paris that has since come to be known as the first Impressionist exhibition. And it's a show that ran for about a month on one of the grandes boulevards in Paris. It had about 200 works of art in it. There are around 30 artists and lots of those artists. Well, "lots" is maybe an exaggeration, we'll come on to that,

• 3:01Alastair Sooke?

  but a few are those big, big names we now associate with Impressionism. So people like Edgar Degas, as well as Monet, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissaro and Auguste Renoir.

• 3:12James Fox?

  Yeah, and one of the fascinating ironies, if you like, at the heart of this story is that the exhibition itself was a disaster, really. I mean, it was a non-event at the time and yet it is now seen, in hindsight, as a pivotal moment in the story of modern art.

• 3:30Alastair Sooke?

  You see, I find that fascinating and I'm really glad that we're telling that today because I quite like being, I like those moments in art history where you can be a bit iconoclastic. And I think there is this narrative, there's a sort of mythology, a myth around this first Impressionist exhibition, that it was a bunch of young avant-garde artists doing their radical thing, pitching up in Paris and the public come and see it and they're scandalised and some journalist, I also like the fact that journalists being one, it plays a starring role in this story, sees Impression Sunrise and starts mocking it in print. So you've got this idea of the avant-garde versus the mainstream and there's a big clash. But as you are suggesting, it kind of wasn't really like that.

• 4:13Alastair Sooke?

  And I actually think the reality, even though in some ways you could say, is it more prosaic? I think it's much more complex and interesting. Because it is.

• 4:22James Fox?

  Yes, but it was audacious.

• 4:24Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, it was.

• 4:25James Fox?

  It was, it was a really risky thing to do for artists in that time. And I think we can't, we just think that anyone can put on an exhibition now. But back then, there really was a very established framework in the art world. And these guys were really taking it on. And so it required a great deal of bravery, great, great deal of vision, great deal of dedication.

• 4:46Alastair Sooke?

  And independence.

• 4:47James Fox?

  And independence to put this on. So it's a fantastic story. Can't wait to tell it.

• 4:51Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, so do not be deterred by the idea that this may be a non-event. I, I, I think it is an event, but it's just not quite the event that perhaps people think it is. This then is the first episode in a two-part series on the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.

• 5:14Alastair Sooke?

  So James, look, I've been thinking about this because it's, it is a complicated story. And there are lots of ways into it. I, a couple of years ago, I was sent to Paris and I reviewed a very big exhibition that commemorated the first Impressionist exhibition. It marked the 150th anniversary of that show, took place at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It was also seen in Washington. And it was a fascinating thing. And they created a sort of VR, virtual reality vision, if you like, of what it was like to wander through the rooms of the first Impressionist exhibition. And I hope that later on, we may be able to do the auditory equivalent of that for listeners.

• 5:56James Fox?

  So our listeners don't need headsets for this.

• 5:58Alastair Sooke?

  They, no, no, no, no, just their ears will do. And they will be transported through the magic of our incredible descriptions into the first Impressionist exhibition. But before we get there, I think we need to, we need to contextualize things, don't we?

• 6:12James Fox?

  Yes, I think, yeah, I think if we want to understand the significance of this moment, we have to understand the social, political and economic context.

• 6:20Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 6:21James Fox?

  And in order to understand that, we do need to go back by a few decades before the exhibition. We need to go back to the 1850s and 60s, when this was the, a period known as the Second Empire, when France was run by Napoleon III, who was the nephew of the first big Napoleon. And this was a period of unbelievably glittering opulence and splendor and spectacle. And it was a period, very importantly, When Paris itself was being completely rebuilt.

• 6:51Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 6:51James Fox?

  By a man called Baron Halsma, the prefect of Paris.

• 6:53Alastair Sooke?

  So he's, he's pretty famous. I mean, he transforms the city.

• 6:57James Fox?

  He transforms the city. He is the one who is responsible for the boulevards and the promenades and the arcades and the parks and the sewers and the opera houses and the theatres. He is the person who built the Paris that we today know and love. So they spent the 1850s and 60s building this new form of Paris. But then this whole wonderful, if you like, Second Empire opulence came to a terrible end in the early 1870s because in 1870, France declared war on Prussia and was whipped.

• 7:28Alastair Sooke?

  This was not good for them.

• 7:30James Fox?

  This was, this went very badly. They were defeated very quickly. The Second Empire fell.

• 7:34Alastair Sooke?

  Uh huh.

• 7:35James Fox?

  Napoleon III was captured. France lost quite a bit of its eastern territory, Alsace-Lorraine, that they only recovered during the First World War. They had to pay an enormous fine and France underwent this terrible period of internal crisis.

• 7:51Alastair Sooke?

  There are all these ructions that continue for several months. I think the, the famous writer Victor Hugo, he has, he has this phrase, doesn't he, to describe this moment in French history?

• 8:00James Fox?

  Yeah, the année terrible, the terrible year.

• 8:02Alastair Sooke?

  Uh huh.

• 8:04James Fox?

  And Paris does not escape unscathed. Uh, it first of all is under siege by the Prussians during the war. So a lot of this newly built city is destroyed.

• 8:13Alastair Sooke?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:13James Fox?

  Then there's a revolutionary administration that runs Paris, very briefly called the Paris Commune. Then there's another siege when the French army take on the commune and they sort of destroy even more of the city and they kill over 10,000 people. And so at the end of 1871, when this period of crisis comes to an end, France and Paris emerges humiliated, impoverished, uncertain about the future. But there are a lot of people, Alastair, who think that art is going to play a really important role in France rediscovering its mojo.

• 8:46Alastair Sooke?

  Can I, I mean, it's fascinating to hear you describe that. And one of the things that strikes me as I'm listening to you is. We haven't reached a point in the story where there are a group of artists called the Impressionists, but clearly we're building towards that. And one of the things the Impressionists are known for is they begin painting modern life. And your description of Paris, it's fascinating context because it seems to me that these young artists who are emerging in the 1860s before those cataclysms, on some level, they must be, what, influenced by the spirit of the age?

• 9:24James Fox?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 9:24Alastair Sooke?

  The excitement of what's going on?

• 9:25James Fox?

  Absolutely. Yeah, they are absolutely part of this mid-19th century Parisian scene. They are painting the boulevards and the promenades and the pleasure places and the parks that had been built by Baron Haussmann. And in the aftermath of the crisis of 1870-71, they become very important, just like many other artists, in trying to reshape a vision of a new France.

• 9:50Alastair Sooke?

  And interestingly, they're not really that often directly referring to those terrible events that you've outlined. So indeed, many of the Impressionists, they're not really even in Paris.

• 10:03James Fox?

  No, they scarper. Many of them go to England.

• 10:05Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah. So there is a sort of strange, that is the context for what's going on, but their reaction to it is almost to ignore it and draw a veil over it. And you sort of feel as if Paris is a city, this is certainly my understanding of the history, is it rebounds remarkably quickly.

• 10:25James Fox?

  Okay, so we've talked about the wider context. Now, Alastair, let's talk about art. Because I think if we really want to understand the French art world in this period, we need to understand something called the Salon.

• 10:40Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, the Salon is unavoidable if you look into 19th century art. And this is the biggest exhibition in Paris, it's the biggest exhibition in the world of contemporary art. And traditionally, the way it's understood is it's an official enterprise.

• 10:57Alastair Sooke?

  In the 19th century, it starts taking place annually. It's been running since the late 17th century. And it's seen as upholding certain values in art, which you might characterize as a little more towards the conservative end of the spectrum. So there's a sort of grand peinture, grand painting tradition, where artists who paint so-called history paintings, who paint mythological paintings, paint religious paintings, these are seen as the fit and proper subjects for for painting, for art. And these are the things that the salon likes to champion. In truth, that whole tradition has probably been in crisis for, you know, almost half a century, where you have successive waves and generations of younger artists.

• 11:42Alastair Sooke?

  And of course, the Impressionists will be the latest iteration of those younger, more radical artists. Come along, try and change art, and they are submitting work to the salon. And more often than not, they are being rejected. Because the crucial thing you need to understand about the salon is it has a jury.

• 11:58James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Alastair Sooke?

  It has this jury of men. And these men have a vested interest in preserving and upholding those more conservative ideals of the salon. They are either members of the state, state functionaries. They are perhaps artists who have won medals and awards at previous iterations of the salon. But the point is, there aren't very many of them.

• 12:20James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Alastair Sooke?

  And every year, they would be these younger aspiring artists who just want to be on their way career-wise, are submitting work. It passes before the salon, many thousands of pictures in the case of 1874, we know. And the jury, more often than not, is looking and going, I'm afraid not. No, no, we can't possibly have that in the salon. And these things are being rejected. And it's hugely frustrating for younger artists.

• 12:44James Fox?

  Well, it's not just frustrating, Alastair. I think that in the mid 19th century, there were no other opportunities really for most artists to exhibit. And so if you were an artist in the mid 19th century, it was the salon or nothing. And if you could not get your work exhibited at the salon, if you could not get your work past that jury. You basically didn't have a career. You didn't have any opportunities.

• 13:06Alastair Sooke?

  So what you see happening in the lead up to the first Impressionist exhibition is artists, there's clearly a new spirit abroad. And what they start doing is staging. There are little other shows that you might see do sit around Paris, but they're really, really small scale. They might take place in an artist's studio. They perhaps take place in a newspaper office sometimes. And that's the context for in the 1860s, amongst these young artists who were known as Impressionists, they first have the idea of like, hang on, do we need to do this? Do we need to abase ourselves, submit our work, which we believe in, to the salon for either it to be rejected, or sometimes the work that made it in would actually be quite well received, but other times, if it was in, it became a huge disaster. It would

• 13:51Alastair Sooke?

  be ridiculed by the public. And there is a move afoot, thinking, there must be another way of doing this.

• 13:58James Fox?

  Yeah, it feels very masochistic, doesn't it? You're submitting your work to some government stooge who's hiding behind the kind of shadow of this, you know, very non-transparent jury.

• 14:09Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 14:09James Fox?

  And they're saying you're worthless. It's very frustrating. And what you actually see, in the 1860s, as the French art world moves forward, as artists start to be slightly more experimental, the salon becomes increasingly challenged. And it becomes increasingly seen as unrepresentative of the larger cultural landscape. And in 1863, in fact, Napoleon III has to open, he's persuaded to open this parallel exhibition that runs along at the same time as the salon, called the Salon des Refusés, which is the pictures that have been rejected from the salon. And in many ways, that's more successful, more popular than the real salon. So there are pressures here, aren't there? Artists are increasingly

• 14:52James Fox?

  coming to think of alternative ways of trying to get round the salon.

• 14:55Alastair Sooke?

  And I think you see this oscillation in terms of the people who run the salon, where they're more or less tolerant of new tendencies in art. Sometimes they might allow things that we now see as out and out sort of quote unquote, modern Impressionist pictures into the salon. Sometimes they don't. And they might end up at the Salon de Réfusée. And crucially, you were describing before that the Année terrible. You have, in the aftermath of that, another moment perhaps of a reflex of conservatism within the people who are running the salon. And so the idea of widening the access, it suddenly narrows again. And it's really interesting. I mentioned going to this exhibition that marked the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition.

• 15:41Alastair Sooke?

  The thing I almost found most interesting about it was that they had a section that showed you what the salon of the same year of 1874 was like. And you have to imagine this huge space, the Palais de l'Industrie. I think that means the Palace of Industry, by the Champs-Elysees and by the Seine.

• 16:02James Fox?

  So on one of these boulevards that have been built by housemen, of course.

• 16:05Alastair Sooke?

  Indeed, and many, many thousands of people in the run of the salon are going along. Either they're paying, or I think on Thursdays or Sundays, it's free. And unsurprisingly, more people turn up on those days.

• 16:16James Fox?

  I think it's worth pausing for a moment. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to see the salon. I mean, this is, you know, the salon is probably the biggest cultural event in France in the year. It's pretty amazing that art has that position so centrally in society, isn't it?

• 16:32Alastair Sooke?

  It's just making me feel slightly sort of melancholy. I mean, I think it does to a similar degree today, but this is dictating cultural discussion. So every year, the salon's opening and lots and lots of, the equivalents of me in the 19th century, journalists and critics are sent along and they are writing long, hopefully involved and well thought through pieces, really engaging with what they're seeing. And in a sense, I don't necessarily envy them that job because of the way the salon would be staged. And this was the thing that came across to me when I saw the recreation of some of it at the recent exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Because you had, for example, well, I think, let's say,

• 17:18Alastair Sooke?

  3,657 works in total at the 1874 Salon, almost 2,000 paintings. And the thing that slightly blows my mind is that You're not getting a curator who comes in and thinks, okay, can we group these paintings by theme or by subject or by genre? Or perhaps we could make some really interesting juxtapositions and contrasts? No, they are just hung alphabetically by artist's name, totally random. I mean, you go along and you have a look at this and you're looking at thinking, this makes no sense. It's sort of, it's almost pictorial gobbledygook, where you could have a portrait of a grandfather and there's a battle scene and then there's a still life. There's this wonderful line I came across.

• 17:59Alastair Sooke?

  Someone who went along to see the Salon of 1874 was asked for my impressions and they wrote, "An excruciating migraine, a kilometre of paintings to navigate, just thinking about it makes me seasick." And I think that does paint a picture as well of, if you're a young artist and you want your work to stand out, but the odds are totally stacked against you because first you've got to get them past the jury, who are really conservative, and then it's just going to be in this bizarre juxtaposition world with all of these other works that are nothing to do with the kind of thing you're doing. And it's no surprise that as a result, quite often what happens at the Salon is particular works of art become these, what do the French say? Succès de scandales?

• 18:43James Fox?

  Succès de scandales.

• 18:44Alastair Sooke?

  Thank you, that's much, much better pronunciation. And the idea is that caricatures are coming along, the public are almost pitching up because they've heard that one or two pieces really stand out that year at the Salon for ridicule and they turn up to laugh and to mock. I mean, that must be pretty dispiriting if you're a young artist.

• 19:02James Fox?

  Really, and you can totally understand their motivation to bypass that whole system if they can.

• 19:08Alastair Sooke?

  So can we, just before we move on, I mean, it might be worth, because it's quite nice as well to, I think, slightly complicate the picture when we can. The 1874 Salon is very interesting because I was hoping we could just really briefly discuss two pictures that were very prominent that year. One is a picture called Lomine en Grise, The Gray Eminence by

• 19:31James Fox?

  The man sitting opposite me.

• 19:33Alastair Sooke?

  Indeed. Jean-Léon Jerome. Now, this is a guy who was an academic painter, also known later as an orientalist, so he's painting sort of Asiatic scenes and themes. But for this picture, which he shows at the 1874 Salon, he depicts a

• 19:51Alastair Sooke?

  Cleric from the 17th century, who was the Ominous Greece, someone who's very influential from the sidelines. He was an influential advisor to Cardinal Richelieu. And it is, I mean, it's quite an interesting painting.

• 20:08James Fox?

  I'm looking it up now. It's beautiful. I love Jerome, actually.

• 20:11Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, right, okay, exactly. So it's very easy in the traditional account of Impressionism to sort of imagine that people like Jerome, they're bad. Impressionists, radical and exciting and new, good. Of course, it's not really like that. They're completely different styles. And this is, it's very smooth, it's very finished. You see this guy, in his monks robes, coming down a very grand palatial staircase. And all of these courtiers in their finery are bowing to him at one side. In a way, it's typical of the sorts of paintings that really did well at the salon. And that year, it wins the highest award. It wins this very prestigious medal. And so it's picked out. So there we go. That's sort of like textbook salon picture.

• 20:53James Fox?

  Yes.

• 20:54Alastair Sooke?

  But the other picture, and I just find it very interesting that it's there at all, is a painting called The Railway by Edouard Manet. So Manet, you know, someone we really associate with the Impressionists, ever so slightly older, but painting modern life in a radical way, in a way that shows the way forward for his younger Impressionist colleagues. And Manet, in 1874, submits several works. Some of them are rejected, two are rejected, two are in. And one of them is this picture, The Railway.

• 21:25James Fox?

  Yeah, it's a wonderful picture, actually, this one. I'm looking at it now. And it's a very modern picture in many ways. It's got, the subject matter is modern, it's the railway, it's the steam of the trains at the Gare Saint-Lazare. It's got this very interesting composition. So you've got the main figure cropped to the left. It's set against these very sort of austere black railings. You've got the girl there in the middle, who you can't even see her face, she's looking away.

• 21:48Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, it's two figures, isn't it? There's a sort of a woman and then a girl. And the woman's staring at the viewer. The girl, as you say, is looking out through the iron railings towards the steam and the activity of the station beyond.

• 21:59James Fox?

  And it's, compared to the Jerome, it's painted very loosely. I mean, there's a blue ribbon on the back of the dress the girl is wearing. It's as free and easy as anything you'll see in that period. So the question for me, Alistair, is, I mean, when you look at this picture, it's hard to understand, how did this get past the jury? Well, I have a theory, but I'd like to hear your theory.

• 22:21Alastair Sooke?

  No, no, I mean, I, um, there is a moment in the 1860s when clearly there are different factions. So all I can imagine is that there are some people who are looking at it and thinking, we quite like these newer tendencies. They can perhaps see how these works are not a radical break necessarily, but are also connected with a tradition that's come before. But, you know, it is a fact that during the 1860s, pictures by people that we now think of as impressionist painters, as modern painters, they are exhibited, they're accepted and shown at the salon. This is a really great example. And in a way, this is the kind of thing that you would assume, if you didn't know, was shown at the first impressionist exhibition.

• 23:04Alastair Sooke?

  But no, no, no, it's shown at the, um, the much more academic official salon. So what's your theory?

• 23:10James Fox?

  My theory is that Manet was a very celebrated figure already. He was notorious. He had made his name in the Salon des Refusés of 1863, where he'd shown a painting called Dejeune sur leup. He'd also shown later a picture called Olympia. He was a big celebrity in that sense. And I, I think in a way the salon felt he was too big to be excluded. It's, I know, it's almost like, do you remember when Sven Goran Erikson kept playing Wayne Rooney even when he wasn't fit? In a way, you've just got to, you've just got to lean in and you've got to, because it becomes more of a controversy if you keep Manet out. So I think that might have been the reason. But I think the point that this makes, that you are trying to make it, is that this idea of seeing a salon as entirely conservative

• 23:55James Fox?

  and then this radical impressionist exhibition on the other side, which we're about to discuss, is, is not quite right. It is more complicated than that, isn't it?

• 24:03Alastair Sooke?

  It, it totally is. I mean, I, I like your, um, your theory a lot. It's reminded me of, there's that line Andy Warhol said, you should always weigh your reviews, don't bother reading them. And I think there is a sense here because we know that actually the railway. Which must have just seemed so modern, as you say. It it becomes the target of lots of caricatures in the press. And so it becomes that piece, that year, where people are, they're coming to the show to see this picture and to laugh at it.

• 24:33James Fox?

  Yes.

• 24:34Alastair Sooke?

  And perhaps you're right, perhaps some slightly more far sighted members of the Salon's administration know that having that sense of controversy can't hurt with ticket sales.

• 24:45James Fox?

  All publicity is good publicity.

• 24:47Alastair Sooke?

  Indeed.

• 24:48James Fox?

  Well, let's get back to this story, Alistair, because to sort of backtrack a little bit.

• 24:51Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 24:51James Fox?

  We've got the Salon, it's very difficult for the vast majority of French artists to get a look in in the Salon.

• 24:57Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 24:57James Fox?

  There's growing resentment building through the 1860s into the 1870s, especially among progressive artists whose works and styles doesn't really match what the academy's standards are. And over the course of the beginning of 1873, a group of these artists, a small number of these quite progressive artists, decide to take on the Salon. I mean, it's it's like a Hollywood film, isn't it?

• 25:24Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 25:24James Fox?

  A small group of rebels take on the evil empire. But, I mean, this begins to happen in 1873. There are a group of artists who meet at this café called the Café Galbois, which is again on one of these great boulevards. It's where they have conversations, debates. In fact, there are even some jewels. I think Manet is involved in a jewel. And they think, what can we do? How are we going to get around this? How are we going to find a way to show our pictures and not have to submit ourselves masochistically to the jury of the Salon? And not have to worry about whether we win prizes or do really badly? How are we gonna do this?

• 25:58Alastair Sooke?

  And you can find out just how they get on after the break.

• 26:06Alastair Sooke?

  If you want to see the artworks we're discussing, you can switch to video in your podcast app at any time. And if you're enjoying this episode, please consider following Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:22James Fox?

  Welcome back to Stories of Art. We are telling the story of the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. Before the break, we left Monet, Degas and the rest trying to work out how to bypass the salon and its dreaded jury.

• 26:38Alastair Sooke?

  What I love about this is you've given it the big Hollywood setup, the great tease. And the payoff is, on December 27th, 1873, they set up a joint stock company.

• 26:49James Fox?

  Oh, it's so exciting. That's pure Hollywood.

• 26:51Alastair Sooke?

  Isn't it? Which has this very catchy name, the Société des Artistes Paints, Sculpteurs et Graveurs.

• 26:59James Fox?

  Oh, you missed something.

• 27:00Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, did I?

• 27:00James Fox?

  Et cetera.

• 27:01Alastair Sooke?

  It's true, of course.

• 27:02James Fox?

  I've always wondered why they had the word et cetera at the end of it. It's very lazy, isn't it?

• 27:07Alastair Sooke?

  It really isn't a pithy name whatsoever, but in itself, it's really interesting and telling. Because, you know, I hear what you're saying. I get your anti-salon line. I'm not sure I totally agree with it being that that's the motivation, although clearly there's on some psychological level, there's a bit of that impulse going on. But all this seems to really be about is independence.

• 27:33James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Alastair Sooke?

  It's not about, here's a new group of artists. I mean, some of these people you've mentioned who are meeting in the café, they are like-minded. But what they're setting up is this company where artists are shareholders in it, who are going to stage their own exhibitions, plural, because originally that's the intention. And...

• 27:54James Fox?

  Without a jury?

• 27:55Alastair Sooke?

  Without a jury.

• 27:56James Fox?

  If that's really important.

• 27:57Alastair Sooke?

  Absolutely key. So the whole thing is about, rather than it being, here we are showcasing our new aesthetics, it's, here are loads of different artists, and the thing we have in common is one thing. We want to be able to exhibit without submitting our work to that jury process at the salon. We want to be independent. That's kind of all it is. That's the concept.

• 28:21James Fox?

  That's the concept of it. I think we should sketch out some of the characters involved in this, because they all have slightly different motivations. So the person whose picture started this podcast, we have Claude Monet. Now, Monet at this point, so 1873, 1874, 1873, he's in his early 30s.

• 28:41James Fox?

  He has been rejected many times from the salon, so he's pissed off with the institution.

• 28:46Alastair Sooke?

  He's had one or two successes there as well.

• 28:48James Fox?

  He's had one or two successes, but overwhelming failures. But the biggest motivation for him is financial. He is cash strapped. I mean, he actually comes from a quite wealthy family. His father is a well-to-do grocer. He wants Claude Monet to follow him in the grocery business. Monet doesn't want to do it.

• 29:04Alastair Sooke?

  And this is in Le Havre, isn't it?

• 29:06James Fox?

  This is in Le Havre, and we will go back to Le Havre later on when we discuss Impression Sunrise. So the father refuses to give him any money. So Monet is impoverished. And, you know, the only way he can make money is selling his pictures. And if he can't get his pictures into the salon, he's got no money. His friend, very close friend of his, Renoir.

• 29:23Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 29:23James Fox?

  And they did a lot of painting together, similar age, early 30s, also rejected regularly by the salon, also in desperate need of money. So those guys, there's a financial motivation as well.

• 29:34Alastair Sooke?

  Mm hmm. It's not the case for everyone involved, is it? Or is that where you're going?

• 29:38James Fox?

  No, it's not the case for everyone. So if you go to, say, someone like Edgar Degas.

• 29:41Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 29:41James Fox?

  Or Degas. Um, he's a little bit older than them. He's more conservative, more traditional. That's very important.

• 29:48Alastair Sooke?

  A different background as well.

• 29:49James Fox?

  Yeah, he's from a, he's from a banking family, I think. He's wealthy.

• 29:52Alastair Sooke?

  Upper bourgeoisie.

• 29:54James Fox?

  Upper bourgeoisie, doesn't need the money, unlike Monet and Renoir. And actually, for him, this is not about painting on plein air. It's not about a radical Impressionist takedown of the establishment. He just doesn't like this idea of the jury deciding whether his works are good or not.

• 30:10Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 30:10James Fox?

  So he's got different motivations. Then you've got one of the most interesting characters, actually, in this is Camus Pissaro.

• 30:16Alastair Sooke?

  Mmm.

• 30:17James Fox?

  I love Pissaro. He's.

• 30:19Alastair Sooke?

  Ah, do you? I once wrote that, has anyone ever looked at a picture by Pissaro and been excited by it?

• 30:23James Fox?

  Well, I'm excited by him as a person.

• 30:25Alastair Sooke?

  Okay.

• 30:26James Fox?

  The pictures, they're not great. They're not, they're not the best. But Pissaro wasn't born in France. He was born in, I think, the Caribbean. He's Jewish and he's a political radical. He's actually an anarchist. And so for him, there's another element to all of this. It's taking on the establishment.

• 30:41Alastair Sooke?

  He's a bit older as well, isn't he? There's younger impressionists.

• 30:44James Fox?

  He's in his 40s and he's actually seen as the father of this group as the years go on.

• 30:48Alastair Sooke?

  And he's the only one, because we're talking about the first impressionist exhibition, but there are a number of them that art historians refer to stretching on into the 1880s. And he's the only one of them who exhibits at every single impressionist exhibition.

• 31:01James Fox?

  Every single one. So for him, there's a political motivation. Then there's Berta Morisot, so great female artist. She had actually had some success at the salon, but she wanted to establish herself as an independent professional artist. So she's got her motivation. Then you've got Paul Cezanne. I mean, Paul Cezanne has been humiliated richly and regularly by the salon because frankly, Alistair, his paintings at this point are terrible.

• 31:23Alastair Sooke?

  It's not quite the Cezanne we think of, which is that later constructive brushstroke style.

• 31:27James Fox?

  Yeah, it's really, it's not good stuff at the moment. So all of these artists, these are the progressive ones anyway, the ones that we might consider to be impressionists, they all have their motives. And as you say, on the 27th of December, 1873, just after Christmas, they form their stock, joint stock company with et cetera at the end of it. It's a radical system, so they all pay a membership fee, don't they? A couple of hundred quid, the equivalent of today.

• 31:53Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, I think at the time, something like 60 francs. And the idea is this buys you supposedly, you can therefore submit, depending on how much you put in, a certain number of pictures into the show. And there's also, there's going to be a commission they set up so that anything that's sold in the show, 10% of that will be a commission. And then all these profits that they're hoping that they're going to get will be shared between all of the investors, all of the artists.

• 32:18James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Alastair Sooke?

  I thought, I mean, that was an extremely lively description. I thought I would really carry on in that vein by just very briefly reading to you from the statutes.

• 32:27James Fox?

  Oh, please, thank you.

• 32:28Alastair Sooke?

  Of the joint stock company, if I could.

• 32:29James Fox?

  Let's keep the excitement running.

• 32:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, absolutely. There are three, so just get ready. The first one is they say, because you're right to point out that there are competing motivations going on, but this gives us a sense in like what really the collective is thinking.

• 32:44James Fox?

  Yes.

• 32:45Alastair Sooke?

  So they're saying they want to organise one, organise free exhibitions with no jury and no awards. Two, market their works. And three, publish at the earliest convenience and newsletter dealing exclusively with the arts. So of those, clearly, number one is just the overriding driving concern. They just want to be able to do their thing and show what they want to show in the hope that it will sell. And as you say, for some of them, make them some money.

• 33:11James Fox?

  And I think something we have to say here before we proceed, and it really has to be emphasised. This is not an impressionist group. I have listed the artists who we might consider to be impressionists. There is no real stylistic unity here. This was not about that. They are not advancing some radical cause of painting. It was simply about creating an independent form of exhibiting your work outside of the established institutions. That's all it's about.

• 33:39Alastair Sooke?

  Completely, and quite fluid as well at the beginning. Because to start with, there is this document that's signed, which has those statutes in it. And there are, in terms of founder members, 22 artists. So this is at the end of 1873. But quite soon, at the beginning of 1874, six of these founder members, they defect.

• 34:03James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Alastair Sooke?

  They play no part in this story. I don't even know necessarily who they, I'm not sure whether posterity knows particularly who they are beyond their, beyond their names. But you suddenly have this moment where the artists have grouped together, they have this plan. They're thinking, it's going to cost something to put on this show.

• 34:19James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Alastair Sooke?

  We need to find some other people who are going to be able to chip in. And so there's this, there's this recruitment drive essentially. And interestingly, the ringleader is that character you described, Degas.

• 34:31James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Alastair Sooke?

  Who, as you say, has got a slightly more conservative, traditionalist streak. Such a beautiful touch as an artist. I mean, just utterly stunning.

• 34:39James Fox?

  Nothing more delectable than a great Degas.

• 34:41Alastair Sooke?

  Indeed.

• 34:42James Fox?

  But he doesn't want, you know, he is deliberately, so he's, he's out running around Paris, nobbling people.

• 34:48Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 34:48James Fox?

  He deliberately wants people who we wouldn't consider to be impressionists. Because he does not want, he does not really, he does not really consider himself to be that kind of painter. He wants to just have a wide range of some very traditional, some people doing different things who are all exhibiting independently.

• 35:04Alastair Sooke?

  Are we, are we, are we inching towards one of his friends that he brings on board? Who I just find completely absurd was involved in this enterprise whatsoever.

• 35:12James Fox?

  Which one is this?

• 35:13Alastair Sooke?

  Well, I'm just going to-

• 35:14James Fox?

  It's a dog man.

• 35:15Alastair Sooke?

  It's dog man. So it's the close friend of Degas, the painter and engraver, Ludovic Napoléon Lepic. Now, I don't know, were you familiar with Lepic's work?

• 35:28James Fox?

  I was, I'm afraid to say not familiar.

• 35:29Alastair Sooke?

  Neither was I. When I went to review the show, recreating some of it, I had never heard of Lepic. I don't think many people have today. And he's one of the artists that Degas gets on board. And you have described him as dog man, because what he shows at the First Impressionist exhibition are some prints. And the ones that I have seen, there are two in particular. One is called César and the other is called Jupiter.

• 35:55James Fox?

  Yes.

• 35:56Alastair Sooke?

  And they both depict dogs in the guise of a Roman emperor or an ancient mythological god. So César is, I think, is he a Scotty dog? And he seems to be standing up on his hind legs.

• 36:09James Fox?

  I know.

• 36:10Alastair Sooke?

  There's like a spear or something that is kind of going over the dog's shoulder. And I remember kind of looking at this and thinking, I'm sorry, what? This is almost sacrilegious to discover that something this bad, this abysmally bad, was in the same room as Impression Sunrise.

• 36:28James Fox?

  I mean, they were clearly scraping the barrel, weren't they?

• 36:30Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 36:30James Fox?

  They needed, they needed a certain number of people in order to have enough money to put on the show. And as you say, six people had defected. Degas had been asking everyone he knew. Monet was asking everyone he knew. All of them were trying desperately to recruit people. They tried to ask Manet, for instance, and Manet said, no, I'm going salon. I'm a salon guy.

• 36:49Alastair Sooke?

  He didn't want to do it.

• 36:50James Fox?

  He didn't want to do it. So.

• 36:51Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, that was a blow for them, really.

• 36:53James Fox?

  They were desperate for Manet. But Manet, and you know, that again communicates the complexity of all of this. Manet was an artist who was a modern painter, really. I mean, the definition of a modern painter, painting modern subjects in a very modern style, challenging bourgeois conventions. But for him, the only place for his work was the salon. So, you know, he could have those, both of those things in his head at the same time. So, so Alistair, they formed this joint stock company in December 1873. They immediately lose quite a few people. They're recruiting more people for the show.

• 37:26Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 37:26James Fox?

  What else do they need to do in the lead up to this exhibition?

• 37:29Alastair Sooke?

  Well, there are a number of things that they require. And one is because they want to have the show, they really need to find a venue for it. And the venue they end up. With is utterly fascinating in itself. It's like a, it's a sort of mini chapter in this story, which is really worth kind of going through. Because they end up staging what becomes known as the first Impressionist exhibition in rooms within what was a photography studio, which was run by the great French photographer and journalist and balloonist.

• 38:08James Fox?

  Yes.

• 38:08Alastair Sooke?

  And caricaturist, who's known as Nadar.

• 38:11James Fox?

  Oh, I'd love to do a whole podcast on Nadar.

• 38:14Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, yeah, it'd be a brilliant, brilliant subject for, for an episode.

• 38:17James Fox?

  He was such an important figure in Second Empire Paris. He photographed all of the great figures, actually, in Second Empire France. He photographed Charles Dolel, Victor Hugo. As you say, he was up in balloons doing pioneering aerial photography. And in 1860, he gets hold of this lavish new studio, by coincidence, on a boulevard designed and built by Baron Haussmann.

• 38:39Alastair Sooke?

  So this is the Boulevard des Capucines.

• 38:41James Fox?

  Capucine.

• 38:42Alastair Sooke?

  Capucine meaning nasturtium.

• 38:44James Fox?

  Oh.

• 38:44Alastair Sooke?

  So this is at number 35.

• 38:47James Fox?

  And it's one heck of a building.

• 38:48Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, so, so the thing, you've probably, I mean, you've given this impression already. Nadar is quite a flamboyant figure. And what he creates in this studio is this luxurious, this kind of destination where people want to go and, not even necessarily clients, but somehow you, you would just want to go and experience.

• 39:08James Fox?

  It's a kind of salon itself, isn't it?

• 39:09Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, it, it totally is. It, it, you know, you'd have big, grand department stores at the time. You'd also have photography studios like Nadar's. And just to give you a sense of his ego and the showmanship, he installs on the outside of this big building, which he increases the height of. And he has this massive sort of plate glass and these modern metal framed windows to bring in lots of light. And on the outside of the building, he has this huge sign with his name in massive letters. So that everybody knows that's Nadar's place.

• 39:39James Fox?

  Well, not just in letters. This is an illuminated sign.

• 39:43Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 39:43James Fox?

  It's gaslit, it's, and it's one of the first illuminated signs in Paris.

• 39:48Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 39:48James Fox?

  Not only that, if you went into the building, Alistair, it was air conditioned.

• 39:53Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, I know.

• 39:54James Fox?

  In the 1860s, air conditioned, there was a waterfall inside the building.

• 39:58Alastair Sooke?

  This is the detail that is, I can't quite get my head around.

• 40:01James Fox?

  No, I can't understand.

• 40:02Alastair Sooke?

  So just describe the waterfall.

• 40:03James Fox?

  Oh, I mean, I think it was a waterfall somewhere.

• 40:06Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 40:07James Fox?

  There was a waterfall at some point in the building. There were lino floors, which doesn't sound very interesting to us, but lino had only just been invented.

• 40:15Alastair Sooke?

  Possibly more interesting than the statutes I was reading out earlier, but yeah.

• 40:18James Fox?

  There was a lift, there was an elevator running up through the building. So this was a kind of, it was a bit like an apple store, you know, it was state of the art, retail environment. But in the early 1870s, with all those political crises that we've described earlier on in the podcast with the war and everything, Nadar's run out of money. So he vacated the studio and started-

• 40:39Alastair Sooke?

  He's probably emptied it. So a lot of these things we're describing, well, the waterfall and so on, whether they're still there.

• 40:44James Fox?

  I hope it was still-

• 40:45Alastair Sooke?

  I know, it'd be a lovely, lovely idea. But this is a space that suddenly, he's kept hold of the lease and he's renting it out. And so probably in one of those cafes that you were describing before, he's coming across the impressionists who are creating this show. And I think Degas may have something to do with it.

• 41:01James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Alastair Sooke?

  And essentially, they realised that this would be a great place. It's a stone's throw from this big, grand new opera house that's being built in this region of Paris. It's a place in Paris where there are lots of luxury shops, it's quite near the stock exchange, the Bourse. So there's a clientele that will be bourgeois, banking, commerce, maybe people with money, who are the kinds of people who might pass by. It's established as a place to, where exciting things would happen because of that history with Nadar. And eventually, even though Monet later claimed that good old Nadar gave us this space for free, we know that isn't true. Eventually, the group, the society, the anonymous society, they do sign a lease with Nadar. And it's expensive. I think it's something like 2,000

• 41:46Alastair Sooke?

  francs to have this space. And they have it for a month in the spring of 1874.

• 41:50James Fox?

  Okay, so they've got the venue, they've managed to nobble a number of artists, they've got sufficient artists to put on the show. As the spring of 1874 arrives, the intensity of the organisation of the show builds up. So Edgar Degas, as I said, is out nobbling people. Pissaro, I think, is responsible for doing the catalogue. Some artists are responsible for sending announcements to the press. Renoir is heavily involved in the hanging.

• 42:17Alastair Sooke?

  Well, the hanging story is quite fun.

• 42:20James Fox?

  Go on then.

• 42:21Alastair Sooke?

  Because clearly, you've got all these artists, around 30 of them, and they all submit work that's going to be shown in this exhibition at the venue. And of course, as you're saying, they have to kind of kit out the venue. And maybe later, when we do our great auditory tour, we can describe what it all looks like. But- Clearly, the works have to be hung. And the people who do it are the artists themselves. And we know that Renoir plays a big role in this. The idea was that, unlike in the salon, at the first Impressionist exhibition, they take a slightly different tack. So they have only two rows of paintings. They're organised, which is more coherent by size, so that the look is going to be a bit better. And the idea is that you shouldn't be able to have lots of concentrated works

• 43:06Alastair Sooke?

  by single artists until Renoir gets involved in the hang, because he's allowed to do his thing. And we know from slightly later that a journalist who comes along to see it, there were several works by Renoir, bear in mind, he's responsible for the hang, in the very first room of the exhibition. So he totally takes advantage of the fact that he's given this responsibility. And I don't know whether the other artists are sort of looking the other way. They're too busy, you know, trying to, I don't know what, secure the press coverage. But Renoir himself thinks, you know who would look great in this first room of the show? Me, cheeky bugger. Yeah, works by me.

• 43:43James Fox?

  So anyway, they are really, really busy. And those days leading up to the opening of the exhibition, on the 15th of April 1874, they're super busy. And eventually, everything is in place. They have dressed the building beautifully. The pictures are hung, the catalogues are out, the press have been invited. And on the 15th of April 1874, the, what we call, first Impressionist exhibition was about to open.

• 44:10Alastair Sooke?

  So finally, at last, it's ready for the public. And I guess the question now is, anybody going to turn up? And if they do, are they going to like what they're seeing? Are they going to ridicule it? Are they going to mock it? Is the show going to be a success or just a massive failure? And that, James, is what we're going to find out in the next episode. But for now, goodbye.

• 44:33James Fox?

  Goodbye.

• 44:40Alastair Sooke?

  If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow Stories of Art wherever you get your podcasts. Maybe even leave a review.