The Salon des Refusés paved the way for future exhibitions of avant-garde art outside the official Salon, including the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Impressionism was a radical shift for the Salon-going audience of the 1870s accustomed to the historical and mythological themes that had dominated painting for centuries. In the words of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ‘What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story.’
It all began with Monet
Monet’s Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Sunrise), from which Impressionism takes its name, was singled out by Louis Leroy in his scathing review of the exhibition for the satirical newspaper La Charivari. He wrote that ‘a wallpaper in its embryonic state is more complete’ than Monet’s seascape.
Indeed the sketch-like, immediate quality of Monet’s painting represents precisely the ingenuity of Impressionism. His depiction of the sunrise reflecting on the water dramatically contrasts with the pastel industrial landscape, with dabs of orange pigment radiating against the glass sea at Le Havre. How he used paint, evident across his preferred subjects — haystacks, the Rouen Cathedral, and waterlilies, for example — can be seen in its nascent form here.
Impressionism changed how painting was viewed
Through dramatic angles and a focus on light and saturated hues, the Impressionists captured the ethereal drama of fleeting moments and brought French painting into the present tense. Trading traditional linear perspective and modelling for loose brushwork and daubs of colour, their approach offered a provocative invitation to encounter the canvas as a surface.
