2024 is the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition which opened in Paris on the boulevard des Capucines on 15 April 1874. The Musée d’Orsay is celebrating this anniversary with major exhibition - “Paris 1874 – Inventing Impressionism” (26 March - 14 July 2024) - of 130 works, followed by an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington DC until 19 January 2025. A selection of works shown in the original show will be juxtaposed to works shown at the Paris Salon of the period, emphasizing the visual shock the new paintings provided to the Paris public, but also establishing more nuanced parallels between the Impressionists and the Salon painters.

In part 2 of our examination of this great exhibition we will concentrate on the birth of the Impressionist figure. We will see how painters like Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Gonzales or Cézanne invented the modern figure by removing it from the studio and the historical past and placing it in firmly in the urban and natural settings of their own time.