Impressionism: A Name Born of Mockery

How did the Impressionists, who were savaged at the Salon, earned no money and won no recognition, become as famous as they are today? Rejected by the Salon, a group of unknown painters decided to stop seeking anyone's verdict and instead paint what they wanted to paint and hold an exhibition of their own. The show was billed as the work of nobodies, but the participants were Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Paul Cézanne, the great names of Impressionism. It's hardly an exaggeration to call it an exhibition on a par with the Musée d'Orsay.

The painting Monet hung there was "Impression, Sunrise," in which a red sun burns above a blue sea. He is said to have rushed back to his hometown of Le Havre at sunrise again and again to paint it. Words attributed to Monet about the work explain why he is called the painter of light: "Light was my muse. Every morning the sun rose, and each moment's sunlight was unique. That morning, too, I jumped out of bed to paint that moment. Light changes constantly, so you have to paint at the very instant the sun rises. It was a battle against time. The tiniest shifts in light and the hues that change from moment to moment could not be painted from memory back in the studio. I laid in the rippling water quickly and thinly as a base, then painted the sky, the quay, the waves and countless shaded patches in quick, short strokes. After the masts of the ships and the harbor, glowing with light, I dabbed in the heart of the fiercely burning red sun." Capturing the movement of light with rapid brushwork to freeze the moment of sunrise: that is "Impression, Sunrise."

So how did the exhibition, with that painting and many other Impressionist works on its walls, turn out? It was a complete flop. Critics piled on with remarks like "Is this a painting?" and "It's unfinished." One critic wrote: "'Impression, Sunrise,' how very impressive. Wallpaper is more finished than this painting." It was a jab at the title. He went on to lump the exhibitors together as people who couldn't paint but called their work art, and dismissed them as "Impressionists."

But the painters embraced the label and started using it themselves, because they had no name of their own. Today we take it for granted that Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas and the rest are Impressionists, but at the time there was no suitable term. The name coined to mock Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" has stuck to this day. The exhibition itself, of course, failed: people simply weren't ready for this new kind of painting. Impressionism wasn't validated overnight by some turning point. Recognition came gradually, as the times changed.