Raymond Rudorff, Belle Epoque

Gustave Courbet, A Burial at Ornans (1849-50)

 

The revolution in French art was a gradual one. Two of its pioneers had been Courbet and Manet in the 1860's. They were both rebels and non-conformists who preached an anti-academic approach in art to their followers. Their frank realism and refusal to bow to the standards maintained in the Salon aroused great hostility and provoked public scandals as in the case of Manet's famous Olympia when he refused to respect the conventional, "classical" way of painting a nude.
The example set by Courbet and Manet was followed by the painters  who  became  known as the Impressionists and  who continued the revolution. It was marked by bitter struggles and violent controversies in Paris where,  as the art historian John Rewald has remarked, "all the great battles of art were fought" in the 1880's and 1890's. But even as they were being fought, few . people realised the significance of what was happening outside the cosy world of academic art. Even so, from  the late 1870's onwards, it was possible to see the new tendencies in art in two or three  Paris galleries and  in exhibitions held by the  non­ conformist artists themselves.
As in great political revolutions, one of the main features of the revolution in painting in late 19th-century France was the formation of successive small groups of artists bound  together by commonly held ideas and aims and by the elaboration of various "isms" such as Impressionism, Nee-Impressionism, Pointillism, Synthesism and Symbolism. Although the revolu­tionaries behind these "isms" often varied greatly in their styles, methods and aspirations, a number of characteristics distinguishing them from the academics was common to them all.
The mere existence of such groups and "isms" was a sign that something conspicuously lacking from academic art  had  re­ turned to painting: thought and the urge to discover and experi­ment. In Salon art, it was as hard to discover original ideas behind the works on view as it was to define any different "schools" or tendencies in  painting. Works  were  displayed by painters of historical scenes, battles, domestic life, classically rendered nudes and portraits, but the "dear masters" all had the same funda­mental ideas about art and the same approach to it in practice. Whether they were painting a huge picture representing the fall of ancient Babylon, a Paris street scene or a girl holding a bunch of flowers, their ways of tackling the problems of pictorial rep­resentation were  basically  the  same. It  was significant and revealing in  this  respect that  when journalists reviewed the annual Salon shows in lengthy articles, they mostly contented themselves with describing the subject matter of the paintings.
Another characteristic dividing the revolutionaries from the academics was that the former were not tied to Paris as were the latter. The Impressionists, the painters of the Pont-Aven group, and the great individual geniuses like Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne, did much of their most important work outside the capital. They were not society figures like Meissonier or Gerome, they were not interested in obtaining official titles and posts, and although some of them tried to display in the Salon and all of them wanted to have their works sold by the galleries and art dealers they did not depend on Paris society for their  prestige. For an academic painter, to leave Paris to work in the provinces was unthinkable. The popularly and officially acclaimed masters had become thoroughly Parisianised. It was only in Paris that they could establish their reputations and make all the social contacts so necessary for them to obtain important commissions such as portraits of notabilities and the decoration of public buildings. The Salon  was in Paris and was the centre of the French art world. It was only there that the academics could win the approval of civil servants, collect honours and generally enjoy the social and material awards of their success.
When the new painters did work in Paris or visit it for any time, their favourite place of assembly was usually the cafe. It was both a natural and a convenient place for them to exchange ideas and make plans for the future. The entire cultural history of Third Republic Paris is filled with references to various cafes which became centres for meetings, debates, the drafting of manifestoes, the preaching of "isms", the recruitment of allies and followers and the organisation of exhibitions. Courbet had met Boudin and Monet at the Brasserie des Martyrs during the Second Empire and it was there that he preached his theories and urged young painters to break with the past, follow their instincts and study reality with a new vision. The meetings which led to the formation of the Impressionist group took place in the Cafe Guerbois at the end of the 1860's and the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 had been planned as the result of meetings in the Nouvelle Athenes cafe. Other cafes became headquarters for new groups, and some were even used for exhibitions with the consent of cooperative proprietors. Another feature of the artistic revolution was the independent group exhibition in Paris. As the new painters had broken or ignored the rules and conventions of the established art world they could expect little recognition or encouragement from that quarter. The only way in which they could exhibit the results of their discoveries and experiments was by holding their own exhibitions  jointly and this is precisely what they did. Between 1874 and 1886, eight Impressionist exhibitions were held in Paris. In May 1884, an "anti-Salon", the Salon des Artistes  Independants, was organised by a number of artists which included Seurat, Signac, and Gauguin. The Salon des Independants, as it became known, had no jury system, was open to all who wished to display their works in it, and became an annual feature of Paris's non-conformist art life.
All these exhibitions aroused great hostility among the majority of the critics, the public and the Salon painters. They were seen quite rightly as a challenge to the Salon system and all that It represented. They encouraged a belief that there was a deliberate plot to subvert art and beauty as they were commonly understood and they did much  to intensify the atmosphere of controversy which surrounded each new tendency as it emerged. To the academics and their supporters, the Impressionists and those who followed the path of non-conformism that they had blazed were anarchists, madmen and unscrupulous adventurers who sought to bluff the public. They were seen as enemies of the "purity" of French art.