Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism

The Orléanists were a faction of constitutional royalists who supported the claim of the Orléans line to the French throne. Following the July Revolution of 1830, the Orléanists succeeded in installing Louis-Philippe d’Orléans as the French monarch. He hoped to reform the government into an institution similar to that of the British constitutional monarchy. Adolphe Thiers, who took a leading role in the events of the Terrible Year, was an Orléanist, as was Berthe Morisot’s mother, Cornélie. The Orléanists were a more moderate conservative political faction than the Legitimists.

Realism was an artistic and intellectual movement that rejected Romanticism (see below) in favor of naturalistic, non-idealistic depictions of everyday life. Smee describes the painter Gustave Courbet as the leading figure in Realism in France in the 1870s. A typical example of Courbet’s Realism was his work Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet (1854). Smee notes that this painting inspired younger painter Frédéric Bazille to take up “the challenge of showing believable figures in outdoor light (as opposed to effects of light concocted back in the studio” (83). Realism was closely connected with left-wing, republican politics. Smee argues that the Impressionists rejected Realism in part because of these political connotations.

Republicanism is a political ideology that believes in the primacy of the citizenry as the source of the state’s legitimate power as opposed to a monarchy. Typically, republicans believe that elected people should control the government rather than kings. Many Impressionist artists were republicans or had republican sympathies; they did not support Emperor Napoleon III. The republicans, like moderate Léon Gambetta, represented the relatively left-wing political faction in 19th-century France. “Radical” republicans like Henri Blanqui, a socialist, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, an anarchist, inspired and led the Paris Commune. Smee describes how the republicans seized the moment following Napoleon III’s surrender to declare France a republic once again.

Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th-century Europe. Romanticism is a complex set of beliefs centered on an idealization of national and ancient history, the power of nature, the importance of strong emotion, the strength of the individual, and an interest in the supernatural. The leading Romantic figure in France during the Terrible Year was Victor Hugo, a national hero who is known for his sweeping historical epics like Les Misérables (1862). Édouard Manet, as the painter who paved the way for the Impressionist movement, is described by Sebastian Smee as “combin[ing] Realism with Romantic appeal” (25) in his painting The Spanish Singer.

The Paris Commune was a left-wing uprising and government that sought to wrest control from the conservative republican national government of the Third Republic following the War of 1870. From March 18th to May 28th, 1871, the Paris Commune controlled parts of the city. “Commune” in France is literally the administrative term for a town or city territory. The term reflects the revolutionaries’ desire for local control. It also evokes the first French Revolution in 1789, because the revolutionary government of the city of Paris from 1789 to 1795 was called a Commune. Supporters of the Commune are called Communards.

The Salon, or the Paris Salon, was the official national art exhibition in France. It was held almost annually from 1667 to 1890. It was organized by the “government-sponsored Académie des Beaux-Arts” (20) and privileged artists from within that system. Notable works would win awards and some would be purchased by the government. It was key to earning a living as a painter in France for most of the 19th century. Works displayed at the Salon were typically selected by a jury that “skewed conservative.” Smee describes how Impressionist artists struggled with rejections from the Salon because of their controversial subject material, radical painting techniques, and lack of representation within the academic-governmental system. This ultimately led to the Impressionists holding their own exhibitions outside of the Salon, until the Salon jury was liberalized in 1890.