First Impressionist Exhibition opens in Paris
- Date
- 15 April 1874
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Paris, France (Western Europe)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 15 April 1874 a group of independent artists opened their first exhibition in the former studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, bypassing the official Salon.
Organised as the 'Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs', the show featured around thirty artists and roughly 175 works by painters including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and Berthe Morisot. A satirical review by critic Louis Leroy, mocking Monet's 'Impression, Sunrise', gave the movement the name 'Impressionism'. Though a commercial failure attracting only a few thousand visitors, the exhibition marked a decisive break with academic conventions: the Impressionists painted modern life and fleeting effects of light with loose, visible brushwork and often worked outdoors. The 1874 show inaugurated a series of independent exhibitions and is widely regarded as the birth of modern art, opening the path toward Post-Impressionism and the avant-garde movements of the 20th century.
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Empires active in 15 April 1874
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Qing Dynasty1636 CE – 1912 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Nietzsche's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'1883–1885
- The Great Exhibition opens at the Crystal Palace1 May - 15 October 1851
- Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams'1900 (completed 1899)
- Rabindranath Tagore wins the Nobel Prize in Literature1913
- Hokusai's 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa'c. 1831
- Walter Gropius Founds the Bauhaus in WeimarApril 1919
Further reading
The wider story
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