The annual Paris Salon was arguably the pre-eminent art show of the 19th
century; but the method of selecting the pictures was always contentious. In the
'Year of Revolution' 1848, all
entries were accepted and the work of over 5,000 artists was shown. This was
considered an excess, a jury was reintroduced, and its composition and decisions
again became a matter for argument. In 1863,
the jury's judgment was felt to be especially harsh: fewer than half of the
5,000 works submitted were accepted. (But compare this to a modern RA Summer
Show, where maybe 10% out of 15,000 entries are hung!)
Following some ferment in the ateliers, no less a personage than the Emperor
Napoleon III went to see the pictures. He considered the rejected
paintings that he was shown to be little worse than those that had been
accepted, and Louis Napoleon therefore decreed that there would be a separate
show for rejected work; he could do this because the Salon was in essence a
State exhibition, organized though the École des Beaux-Arts.
Now the rejected artists had a new complaint: that they would be tainted by
association with the work of incompetents, and around half of the rejected
pictures were withdrawn. But the Salon des Refusés went ahead and
became a novelty that attracted huge public and critical interest, although it
was not repeated in subsequent years.
There was indeed a wide range of work, hung at random, and contemporary
commentators, such as Zola, remarked on a near-hysterical mirth among the crowd.
Among the artists, there were winners and losers: Whistler's 'The white girl',
rejected by the RA as well as the Salon, was admired and sold quickly; but 'Le
dejeuner sur l'herbe' brought down large quantities of opprobrium that dogged
Manet's subsequent career.
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