The Historic Exhibition of 1874

By 1873, the Impressionist circle had regrouped and expanded. New members included Gustave Caillebotte, a wealthy naval engineer turned painter whose financial support would prove crucial; Paul Gauguin, still working as a stockbroker but increasingly drawn to art; and others attracted to the new vision. The continued rejections from the Salon finally prompted action.

On April 15, 1874, the "Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs" opened its first exhibition in the former studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines. The location was symbolic—photography, the new medium that captured instantaneous reality, hosting the painters who sought to do the same with brush and canvas.

The exhibition included thirty artists showing 165 works. Besides the core group of Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, and Morisot, it included more conventional artists invited to provide respectability and fill the walls. Monet showed five paintings and seven pastels, including a work that would inadvertently give the movement its name: "Impression, soleil levant" (Impression, Sunrise).

This painting of the port of Le Havre at dawn, with its loose brushwork and emphasis on atmospheric effect over detail, became a lightning rod for critics. Louis Leroy, writing in the satirical journal Le Charivari, seized on the title for a mocking review: "Impression! Of course. I said to myself, if I am impressed, there must be an impression in there... and what freedom, what ease in the brushwork! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than this seascape!"

The term "Impressionist," intended as an insult, was embraced by the artists. It perfectly captured their intention—not to create detailed representations of reality but to convey the impression of a moment, the sensation of light and atmosphere as experienced by the eye.