What happened to artists who dared to challenge established tastes and standards? Many of them found that their work was not accepted for display at the government-sanctioned, annual Paris Salon, the most important art show of the time. Acceptance by the Salon was critical to those hoping to achieve success and sell their work.
As seen in the image below, thousands of artists competed for entry into the is distinguished exhibition, subjecting their work to the scrutiny of a small committee of judges that had the power not only to accept or reject a painting but to rank it as well. If each member of the committee approved a work, it was accepted for display and hung “on the line,” hanging at the ideal viewing height in the gallery. Works receiving fewer positive votes were placed in the less advantageous positions. Indeed, they might be “skyed,” placed so close to the ceiling that viewing them was virtually impossible. The works that were turned down were stamped on the back with a red R—meaning refusé. This humiliating badge of rejection made it more difficult for the artist to sell the painting to a private buyer. All in all, artists typically had about a fifty-fifty chance of being accepted. In 1863, those odds dropped significantly, when only 988 artists were accepted out of three thousand. With artists’ livelihoods depending to such a large degree on Salon acceptance, frustration with the judging hit an all-time high and reached the ears of the emperor.
The 1863 Salon de Refusés
Storeroom of the Palais de l’Industrie before the opening of the 1863 Salon.
After so many artists were rejected from the Salon competition of 1863, Napoleon III stepped in to still the outcry. He ordered a separate exhibition of the rejected works that came to be called the Salon des Refuses. It drew a crowd of seven thousand people on the first day alone. One of the works displayed was Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, today considered one of art history’s most important paintings. The depiction of two filly dressed men with a nude woman in a contemporary setting shocked traditional critics and viewers, especially since the figures were identifiable. Younger critics, however recognized Le dejeuner as a manifesto of artistic freedom granting painters the authority to create according to their own sensibilities rather than blindly follow accepted modes representation.
More on Outside and Out of the Box: A Guide to Impressionism:
→ The Shocking New Art Movement
→ Challenging the Establishment
→ A New Society of Artists
→ A City Under Construction, Artists on the Move
→ The Science of Color
→ Scenes from Daily Life and Movement
→ A Modern Woman
→ New Directions