Author’s note: Although the Impressionists have usually been studied as artists, this essay examines this group as business entrepreneurs who started a société anonyme, thus advertising themselves as a capitalist enterprise. In so doing, the Impressionists established themselves as artists independent of the Academy and the Salons and demanded that their art be considered independently, in its own terms, without sanction of the jury system. The business venture of the Impressionists represented the first full break from the establishment and a full frontal challenge to the Academy, making this the first completely avant-garde gesture.
By Jeanne Willette
It all began in where all tales of the avant-garde begin, in a café. A group of young artists whose names were to become famous—Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Bazille, Pissarro, Degas—gathered around their leader, the bête noir of Salon juries. Édouard Manet in the Café Guerbois in the quartier of the Batignolles. From 1866 to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, this ever-growing gathering of young men began to formulate their ideas about art—how to paint, what to paint, and who to paint. In 1870 one of their number, Henri Fantin-Latour, situated the leaders of the followers of Manet surrounding the older artist in his studio. The aspiring artists of Un atelier aux Batignolles had achieved admission to the Salons and had acquired a modicum of recognition, but after the fall of the Empire and the end of a wasting war, the artists began to reconsider their course. Bazille had not returned from the conflict but the circle had grown. The as yet unnamed artists had outgrown not their admiration for Manet but their dependence upon him. The question was what next? The new Republic demanded new approaches for a new art.
Henri Fantin-Latour. Un atelier aux Batignolles (1870)
Although artists trained at the École des Beaux-Arts tradition continued to adhere to the state-favored history painting: huge canvases, erudite topics and didactic lessons which could be obligingly purchased by the government for distribution to provincial institutions, most of the more independent artists created art with the larger public in mind. The modernization of Paris, or the “Haussmanization of Paris,” resulted in the cleaning out of the center of the city, sweeping aside the old medieval quartiers and replacing them with handsome blocks of apartment buildings that were not so much designed as ratified into existence by city planners and developers with the goal of visual unification, that is, from the obligatory balconies to the mandatory height limits to the window levels to the horizontal lines which needed to be even along the entire block. These rows of buildings, lining the boulevard, hardly works of architecture, were legal edifices, a quest for uniform fabric of urban renewal, faced with a faux classicism. The owners of these apartments—all of which were the same—could make interior distinctions with décor and could make statements of social class or what Pierre Bourdieu called “distinction” through works of art as decoration for those empty walls. The destruction of old Paris, so compellingly documented by Charles Marvlle, took place before the Franco-Prussian War and the building of the new boulevards and blocks was scheduled to be completed by the Exposition Universelle in 1878, after the Franco-Prussian War. The eclectic historical hybrid architectural façades of these buildings deliberately hid the modernization of Haussmann’s renovations and those of his successor Léon Say: the sewers underground, the pipes that brought running water, the wires that carried electricity and, by 1900, the burgeoning Métro system.
While one could hardly evoke Baroque style boulevards or classicist façades as “modern” in Paris, the post-war Impressionist artists had a modern, that is, a business-like outlook on how art should be displayed, exhibited, sold and purchased. Acting as a group, the Impressionists obviously made a calculated decision to eschew the Salons as a bad business model: the odds of success were too long and the chances of failure were too high. Famously, the Salon was not a prime environment for the art, which was stacked hierarchically and arranged to either insult certain artists or to acknowledge the status of other participants. Crammed together without consideration for color, content or size, the paintings could be ignored, not seen or shown to disadvantage. If one were driven by the desire to be accepted to the Salon, such conditions were acceptable; if one desired to be hung “on the line,” then placement was the primary goal. But if one wanted to make a living as a producer of culture, then the Salon was hardly ideal. What the artists needed to do was exhibit free of jury prejudices and government dictates and to display works of art in ways that resembled the faites voir approach in department stores. Le Bon Marché and Printemps were well established in the 1870s, and, after the war, the Salon system was problematic enough to lure aspiring artists to another field of cultural production, the independent art dealers and their galleries. The Impressionists, under Monet, Renoir Sisley and Pissarro, banded together in 1873 as the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, Etc. (“Cooperative and Anonymous Association of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers”) with the apparent intent to mount exhibitions of their art outside of the prevailing system. But the question that is seldom if ever asked in art history is what precisely was a Société Anonyme?
In fact, a Société Anonyme was a very particular sort of corporation in France. Historically, the 1808 Code of Commerce established three kinds of commerce. First, a société en nom collectif, meaning a partnership, and second, a société en commandite which was a limited company, and lastly, a société anonyme, a limited company that was, in fact, according to economic historian François Caron,[i] was a special creation of French law. This kind of business was especially difficult to establish because all the capital had to be fully paid and, until the rules were changed in 1867, a société anonyme was “morally responsible” to its shareholders for its success. The society could issue bearer shares and, most uniquely such a corporation had a “legal personality,” meaning that it was, in contrast to other kinds of businesses, was not dependent upon the fates of the partners and was “immortal.” [ii] The immortality—or anonymity—of this kind of organization was considered quite unethical at that time, but this type of business is the most common form of corporation at that time. To be allowed to become a société anonyme was considered a special privilege and this “privilege” needed to be understood in the light of the continued backwardness of French businesses and French banks, meaning that with this benefit came a certain obligation to attend to the general interest of the public. Previously, this “privilege” had been granted only by the monarchy and, after the Revolution, the state was slow to develop alternative modes of production that took into account the modern form of capitalization. Shareholders in what was called an “SA” usually knew each other personally and were usually few in number and limited geographically, indicating, once again, a certain backwardness of French businesses, incapable or unwilling to develop more modern tools for raising capital.
The date of the institution of the Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, Etc. coincides with the 1873 Salon des Refusés and the fact that, as Monet pointed out, the artists who were shut out needed a place of exhibition. Founded in December of that year, the organization was a joint stock company and certainly the art public would have known the term—private investors who pooled their capital to float a business enterprise that was considered to have certain moral obligations to the general population. Although Natalia Brodskaya claimed that the term société anonyme was “neutral,”[iii] it was anything but. The term was, as has been noted, very specific and, indicating that the Impressionists understood the business-like nature of the venture, the enterprise had to be capitalized, and each participant was obligated to pool ten percent of any earnings on the sales for the benefit of the entire group. Whether or not the Impressionist Société had any legal standing or whether it existed as semiotic indicator of a new move on the art world game is not well delineated in the art historical literature, but due to the 1873 crisis in the stock exchange, the SA faced higher restrictions and higher taxation.[iv] The limited liability company run by the Impressionists was open to anyone—this was a business, not an art club—that could afford a subscription of sixty francs a year.
Degas invited colleagues and friends:[v] Whistler, who declined because he was carving out some success for himself in London; Manet, who wanted to continue his near futile hunt for recognition in the Salon; and Tissot, who still on the run from the French government, simply refused. The result was a polyglot group of artists that included two women who could afford the minimal dues, the famously disaffected Cézanne, the anarchist Pissarro, and Caillebotte, who became the faithful organizer, holding the Impressionists together for a decade. The first exhibition was held, due to the generosity of a former denizen of Bohemia, the photographer, Nadar. Nadar’s studio was located, not in an art neighborhood but in the commercial district of Paris, sending a signal, intentional or not, that the SA event was a monetary venture. As if to emphasize the commercial nature of the exhibition, the fact that the “Impressionist” group of entrepreneurial artists produced objects for a very specific market—new homeowners—is indicated by the small to medium size of the canvases, measured to fit, not on museum walls, but into dining rooms and parlors. Ordinarily attributed to the innovation of portable canvases, the convenient dimensions of the plainly framed works suited the interior spaces of Parisian apartments quite well. In addition, the installation of the paintings in the first exhibition replicated the rooms of a domestic home. Renoir’s brother Edmond, who wrote the catalogue, saw to it that the paintings were hung on the line (eye level) against a deep red jewel toned wall. Surrounded by the rich strong hue, the light and bright colors preferred by the Impressionists would jump off the canvases, lighting the dark rooms of the Victorian era, holding their own visually and providing a lively accent to any cluttered interior. The subject matter was equally saleable: nonpolitical and without scandal and free of offense, suitable for any buyer. And now all their work of each artist could be seen in one setting, grouped together, easily viewed, as something new, something else.
The First Impressionist Exhibition 1874
The attempt on the part of the Impressionists to stay out of the Salons and the establishment of a société anonyme as an organizing principle is one of the two defining characteristics of Impressionism as an avant-garde movement. These artists laid the foundation of a true autonomy of art, free of the rules of the Academy. It would be facile to claim artistic freedom as intent for the Impressionists when all the markers point in the direction of economic freedom. That desire, which was clearly to sell works of art as commodities on the open market that equally clearly needed such objects for interior decorations—landscapes, still lives, and comfortable middle class people at play—did not work out well for the Impressionists. The public, unaccustomed to being allowed to make up its own mind outside of the judgment of the Salon, was not persuaded that anyone would want the “new painting” in a home, no matter how bare the walls. There is no testimony from either the public or the critics that those who attended the Impressionist exhibitions understood either the economic intent suggested either by the name or the business-like setting. Although Walter Benjamin termed this era one of “high capitalism,” this term should be viewed as a trope, not a reality. The commodity market, as exemplified by department stores, which were fueled on novelty and change, was less than two decades old. While the public understood fashion was in a constant state of reinvention, the notion that art could also be reinventing itself was a strange one to the art audience. During the entire avant-garde period, the French were usually unwilling to embrace anything “new” in the arts. Fashion, yes; art, no. However, Impressionist artists took a series of defiant steps that placed them outside of the sphere of the Academy, meaning they were re-defining art—art is no longer what the Salon jury says it is; art is no longer validated by its placement on the Salon walls, art is what the artist says it is. More importantly, the société anonyme had detached art from its definitional/aesthetic dependence upon the judgment of hierarchal authorities. For the first time, art was now truly autonomous of not just of jury decisions but also of public consensus. The artists themselves were now in charge of designating what art was simply by presenting their work in a site of their choosing. With yet another gesture of defiance, the group took advantage of its notoriety and seized the opportunity to further brand themselves as outsiders by adopting the prerogative name, “Impressionists.” In its severance from the Salons, the Impressionists completed the slow steps towards artistic autonomy or a true avant-garde.
Camille Pissarro, Avenue de l’Opéra (1898)
References
[i] François Caron. An Economic History of Modern France (Routlege Revival, 1979/2014)
[ii] Jean Rochet. “The Various Uses of the Law: the société anonyme in France, 1807-1867.” Paper prepared for the Eighth Conference of the European Historical Economics Society (EHES), Geneva, September 3-6, 2009.
[iii] Natalia Brodskaya. Renoir (Parkstone International, 2014)
[iv] Ivan T. Bernard. An Economic History of Nineteenth-Century European Diversity and Industrialization (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
[v] Marilyn Brown. Degas and the Business of Art: A Cotton Office in New Orleans (New York: College Art Association, 1994)
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Jeanne Willette
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