Salon des Refusés of 1863
Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points
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Salon des Refusés of 1863
- The Salon des Refusés was an exhibition that had a decisive impact on two of the greatest events in the history of art: the birth of Impressionism and the arrival of Modernity.
- In the 19th century (and already since the previous century), artists in Paris who hoped to have a promising career or to consolidate the recognition already obtained, needed to be chosen to show their works at the Paris Salon, the annual art exhibition organized by the French Academy. This exhibition acquired importance, and it was increasingly difficult to be selected. And, as we can imagine, although modernity was slowly approaching, no work that departed from the academic conventions was approved.
- In 1863 too many artists were rejected, and the protest was so strong that it forced Emperor Napoleon III to take a decision: by his decree, the rejected artists could exhibit their works, to be judged by the public and critics, in the salon next to the official one. The rejected artists —who scandalized some and moved others— began to write a new chapter of history in that salon.
- The most controversial painting of all, and of course also the most important, is Luncheon on the Grass by Édouard Manet. The same year he also painted Olympia and exhibited it later. The naked prostitute who looks at the spectator as if he were her client caused a scandal.
- The Luncheon may be considered the first painting of modernity (of course the discussions would be eternal, when there is still no consensus to define when modernity began). But what is certain is that it not only breaks with any pictorial tradition, but that its realism (“it is not a nude but a naked woman”), the treatment of light in nature and the rapid brushstrokes, which give the work a certain aspect of unfinished, dazzled the young Monet, Renoir and Bazille and filled them with enthusiasm. An enthusiasm that would become Impressionism.
Some painters that were in the Salon des Refusés of 1863: Manet, Whistler, Courbet, Cézanne, Pissarro, Fantin-Latour.
Image: Luncheon on the Grass (1863). Manet
Recommended links:
Fundamental Painters of Impressionism.
La Société des Artistes Indépendants.
Characteristic Elements of Impressionist Painting.
Monet’s path to Impressionism.
Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Mont Saint-Victorie, Cézanne.
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