Paris, April 15, 1874, 8 a.m., in Nadar's former workshop, 35 boulevard des Capucines. Faced with the versatile touch of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Morisot, criticisms are rife, mocking. Some are ironic about these red and blue spots stitched "at random", others mock this "bad joker who had fun dipping his brushes in the color, smearing quite a few meters of canvas and signing them of different names ”. The scandal reached its climax with Louis Leroy: “Impression, impression, I also said to myself... Since I am impressed, there must be some impression in there.”

Although he is a rather mediocre engraver, the critic of Charivari has a sense of formula and derisively coined the word impressionist, thus giving his name to a school without rules or manifestos. Impressionism was born. But who makes up this clan of rebels to whom everyone wishes “good luck”? Ambitious, provocative, fiercely independent... Some are called Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley or Mary Cassatt, were part of the Salon des Refusés and are determined to change the History of art.

One hundred and fifty later, the Musée d'Orsay brings us back to life in the spring of 1874 with a dazzling selection of impressionist works put into perspective with paintings and sculptures praised at the same time by the Official Salon . A meeting of the third type where the scandalous Olympia by Paul Cézanne opposes the classic Narcisse by Paul Dubois, and where the little rats of Edgar Degas' opera face on stage Satyr and this voluptuous languid bacchante of the modern dandy Henri Gervex. Between fields of poppies, café scenes and outdoor sketches, the exhibition invites us to the forefront of a revolutionary movement, thus replaying before our eyes a key episode in the History of art considered to be the kick-off of the avant-gardes.

To go further...
If this exhibition makes you want to spend an evening with the Impressionists, we have the solution for you to attend the evening where everything changed. The Musée d’Orsay goes back in time with this new virtual reality experience in the footsteps of Impressionism. In the cozy atmosphere of the workshop, meet these young painters with uncertain destinies before being transported to the Salon which is held at the Palais de l'Industrie, on the island of la Grenouillère frequented by Renoir, then in Le Havre, in Monet's hotel room, where he painted his famous painting Impression, Soleil Levant. An immersive journey to the heights of a visionary movement!