The Parisian museum is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the movement. Degas, Renoir, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, as well as a young woman of great character, Berthe Morisot.
This generation does not form a school, not yet, but it scrupulously cultivates a kind of companionship. The touch is quick, lively – “sloppy”, say their detractors. The paintings are luminous. We could almost feel the texture of the atmosphere, its silkiness. ‘Sloppy,’ says one critic. ‘That’s the word they use.’ ‘Luxury,” says another. “That�’ is the word that comes to them when faced with the motif, and, more than concrete reality, the subjective sensation and its immediacy.” ‘They paint, like so many others in Paris in this convulsive 19th century punctuated by insurrectional outbreaks and technical upheavals. But they paint outside, far from the strict atmosphere of large workshops and the control of masters.