The Exhibition That Stepped Outside the Salon

On April 15, 1874, visitors could enter a Paris exhibition that had not been selected by the official Salon’s jury. A group of artists had organized their own presentation in rooms formerly used by the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines. Renting a space was an administrative decision with artistic consequences. It allowed the exhibitors to decide what the public would see without first winning approval from the institution that helped determine reputations and careers.

The group was not a single painter multiplied into many signatures. Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and their fellow exhibitors pursued different subjects and methods. Landscapes belonged beside scenes of modern work and leisure; interests in movement, light and composition took varied forms. Calling all of them Impressionists can make the event seem more unified in retrospect than it was to its participants. Their shared independence did not require them to produce identical pictures.