The pictures were subjected to all sorts of petty insults, “such as the placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and jibes.”
The next year the Impressionists held no exhibition, but under dire need had a sale at the Hotel Drouot.
Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cézanne, Degas, Guillaumin, de Nittis, and Pissarro were represented. There were some seventy pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of the community. They only received laughable prices. Even the attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid up the prices was not carried out successfully and many of the pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and withdrawn. Including these mistakes and the real sales they realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s “Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for $14,000); “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.
The writer was offered “Avant le bain” in 1894 for $1,200; it has since sold for $25,000. In a recent letter from M. George Durand-Ruel he says:
All the fine works of the Masters of the Modern French School have advanced very much in value. The “Portrait of the Charpentier Family,” which is now in the Metropolitan Museum, was ordered from Renoir for three hundred francs; “La Source,” also by Renoir, was sold in a sale in 1878 for 110 francs. It has been since bought by the Prince de Wagram for 75,000 francs, and would be worth today double the amount. The “Port de Boulogne,” by Manet, was bought from Manet by my father for 800 francs and sold to Faure, who later on sold it to Comte de Camondo for 70,000 francs. It would be worth today about 250,000 francs. “Le Déjeuner dans l’Atelier,” which my father bought from Manet and which we had on exhibition at 389 Fifth Avenue in 1895, asking price at that time $7,000, was sold afterwards to M. Pellerin and bought two years ago for the Munich Museum for $60,000.
Daubigny was one of the few men who appreciated Monet; he bought his pictures and urged others to buy.
When he died in 1878 a sale of his effects was held. Duret says:
I knew the “Canal à Saardam,” which seemed to me one of the most beautiful things Monet had painted; I made up my mind to go to the auction and try to buy it. The sale took place but the picture was not put up. I supposed that the heirs had decided to keep it as a work they understood and appreciated. One Sunday, fifteen days later, happening by chance in L’Hôtel Drouot I went into a room filled with unfinished works, old and grimy canvases, and a mass of stuff—in a word, all the worthless debris of a studio—and there at one side the “Canal à Saardam” of Claude Monet.... I inquired and learned that the room contained the scourings of Daubigny’s studio, sent in for sale anonymously. It was there the heirs had sent the picture of Monet, excluding it from the regular sale because they thought it would bring discredit. It was knocked down to me at the auction for $16. In 1894, when my collection was sold, the picture was bought by M. Durand-Ruel for $1,100. In 1901 it was withdrawn from a sale at the price of $6,000.