A man can understand what is going on about him only by a knowledge of what has happened in the past—the wider his knowledge of past events, the clearer his understanding of present.
Space does not permit the printing in detail the ridicule that greeted Turner, Millet, Corot, Courbet, but it is important to open the eyes of the reader to the fact that men whose pictures are considered masterpieces today, and command fabulous sums, were met with the same scorn and derision that the new men of today meet.
History repeats itself—we accept as fine what our fathers laughed at; our sons will accept as fine what we laugh at, and so on to the end of time.
You readers and especially you museums, who are paying tens of thousands for pictures by Manet, Monet, Renoir and a host of other innovators, take to heart what follows.
In 1874 the Impressionists held their first exhibition in a room rented from a photographer, 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. They called themselves, Société anonyme, des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs.
There were about thirty exhibitors in all; among them, Pissarro, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin, who might be called the extremists; Degas, Bracquemond de Nittis, Brandon, Boudin, Cals, Gustave Collin, Labouche, Lépine, Rouart, and others were invited to take the edge off the novelties of the first named.[9]
Monet exhibited a picture named “Impression; soleil levant.” In derision Louis Leroy called an article on the exhibition in “Charivari”[10] “Exposition des Impressionists,” and in spite of the protests of the painters themselves the name stuck—just as the name Cubists, derisively applied by Matisse, has stuck.
This exhibition, which marked an epoch in French art, was a failure so far as immediate results went. The ridicule was such that the better known artists, ashamed of being caught in the company of the new men, “took good care not to run the risk a second time.”