Towards Impressionist Exhibitions: Changes in The French Art Market around 1860
- Art d'Histoire
- Jan 27
- 4 min read
By the mid-19th century, the Paris Salon was no longer merely an exhibition; it had become a bottleneck that threatened to suffocate French art. While the state maintained a monopoly on prestige, it could no longer handle the sheer volume of artistic production. As Alexis Joseph Pérignon bluntly stated in 1866, while a painting may be a work of art, it is fundamentally a commodity for which a market must be found. The official channels could no longer guarantee this commercial outlet. Consequently, the art market was forced to drift towards a parallel circuit, a complex structure mixing amateurs, artists, and dealers to create collective alternatives to the Salon.
The Lottery of Culture
Long before the Impressionist scandals, attempts had been made to bypass the state monopoly and its policy of widespread rejections. As early as 1789, the architect de Wailly founded the Société des Amis des Arts. The principle was ingenious and relied on the thrill of gambling: the association operated through subscriptions to purchase a certain number of works each year. These pieces were not sold directly but were put up for a lottery and awarded by random draw to the subscribers, often in a room at the Louvre. This system of "subscription-exhibition-lottery" proved so successful that it spread throughout the country. Eventually, almost every provincial town of importance established its own society based on de Wailly's model, creating a fragmented but functioning network of permanent exhibitions.
The Bazaar on the Boulevard
In Paris, the drive for independence took a more structured form in the 1860s. The Société des Arts Unis, established in 1860 on the Rue de Provence, inaugurated a permanent exhibition system defended by Charles Blanc. Blanc argued that the state should be responsible for public commissions and prestigious exhibitions held every five or ten years, while "amateur societies" should handle the daily exhibitions required by current production. This conservative but liberal approach allowed for exhibitions without stylistic bias: one could see works by Couture, Vernet, and Delacroix hanging side by side.
The most significant initiative was undoubtedly the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, founded in the spring of 1862 in association with the dealer Louis Martinet. Located at 26 Boulevard des Italiens, in a gallery built by the Marquis of Hertford, it operated under a jury presided over by Théophile Gautier. Here too, eclecticism was the rule to counter the sectarianism of the Salon. The founding members included Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, and Manet. It was in this venue that the Realist Stone Breakers by Courbet could be exhibited alongside the classical Christ Among the Doctors by Ingres.
"Masters in Their Own Homes"
These changes reflected a deep desire among artists for self-management. The critic René Ménard observed that these independent associations, modeled after those existing in the United States, were far more liberal than the state. By grouping themselves spontaneously through shared tastes, without seeking an official stamp of approval, artists harmed no one’s interests. In contrast, the state, through its restrictions on access and unequal distribution of rewards, necessarily created privileges and grievances. The conclusion was clear: artists had to become masters in their own homes, drawing up their own regulations and submitting their work directly to the public’s judgment.
Other structures, such as the Clubs (Cercles), participated in this emancipation. The Cercle des Mirlitons on Place Vendôme, or the Cercle des Arts on Rue Choiseul, organized memorable exhibitions, such as the one for Théodore Rousseau in 1867. Similarly, the Société des Aquafortistes, bringing together the dealer Alfred Cadart, the printer Delâtre, and fifty-two artists including Manet and Bracquemond, attempted to promote original etching through its journal, Le Courrier Artistique, before going bankrupt in 1867.
The Ancestors of Independence
It would be a mistake to believe that the idea of exhibiting outside the Salon was born ex nihilo with the generation of 1874. Since the end of the 18th century, the dealer Jean-Baptiste Lebrun had been attracting the public to his premises on the Rue du Gros-Chenet. In 1827, Mr. Henri Gaugain (not Paul Gauguin) opened his gallery, the musée Colbert, on Rue Vivienne to exhibit Romantic works rejected by the academic jury. Jacques-Louis David himself had inaugurated the principle of the paid exhibition at the Louvre with his Sabines from 1799 to 1805, followed by Géricault, who toured his Raft of the Medusa in England and Ireland. Finally, retrospective exhibitions, such as those organized by the Baron Taylor Foundation for Ary Scheffer or Flandrin, or the Delacroix exhibition by Martinet in 1864, proved that economic liberalism in art did not wait for the Impressionists to exist.
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