In 1874 a group of young painters defied the official Salon in Paris and organized an exhibition of its own. While this was in itself a break with established customs, the works which these men showed seemed at first glance even more revolutionary. The reaction of visitors and critics was by no means friendly; they accused the artists of painting differently from the accepted methods simply to gain attention. It took years of bitter struggle before the members of the little group were able to convince the public of their sincerity, not to mention their talent. .
This group included Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas, Cézanne, and Berthe Morisot. They were not only of diverse characters and gifts, but also, to a certain extent, of differing conceptions and tendencies. Yet born almost within the same decade, they all went through similar experiences and fought against the same opposition. Thrown together more or less by chance, they accepted their common fate and eventually adopted the designation of "impressionists."" .
When the impressionists organized their first group exhibition, they were no longer awkward beginners; all of them were over thirty and had been working ardently for fifteen years and more. They had studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, gone to the older generation for advice, discussed and absorbed the various currents in the arts of their time. Some even had obtained a certain success at different Salons before the Franco-Prussian War. But they had declined to follow blindly the methods of the acclaimed masters of the day. Instead, they had derived new concepts from the lessons of the past and the present, developing an art entirely their own. This independence had brought them into repeated conflicts with the reactionary jury of the Salon, to the extent that to show their works outside of the official exhibitions seemed to be the only means left them to approach the general public.
