Acquisition · The Salon of 1874, painting by Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle

The painting depicts an appealing genre scene. It immerses us in one of the 1874 Salon’s galleries, which is thronged with visitors: two elegant young women accompanied by a little girl; an older woman consulting the Salon catalogue; three men contemplating the paintings hung close together on the picture rail in front of them.

In 1874, Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle (who trained in the studio presided over by his father, who was also a painter) was already well acquainted with the Salon, to which he regularly sent paintings featuring refined Parisian women, reminiscent of works by Tissot or Stevens. This work, The Salon of 1874, was also intended for the Salon in question, where it was exhibited when the event opened on May 1, 1874 (No. 292).

As the Salon hadn’t yet been held, the painter didn’t transcribe a scene he’d observed, but rather anticipated it; by doing so, he painted an altogether unique work, with no equivalent elsewhere. The paintings depicted on the wall reproduce works that were actually exhibited at the 1874 Salon: a still life by Eugène Petit, landscapes by Jules Jacques Veyrassat, Ernest Guillemer, Camille Corot and Léon Richet, and a portrait by Henriette Browne. The Salon catalogue points this out, and what’s more, states that “the reductions of paintings features on this canvas were painted by the authors of the originals”.

So Cabaillot-Lassalle achieved a real tour de force with this canvas, by including six miniatures created by other painters on it. It’s likely that these colleagues of his, four of whom lived close to the artist, on or near Boulevard de Clichy, each came to his studio to create their little paintings on clearly predetermined spaces on the canvas. Cabaillot-Lassalle then probably added the frames around the miniatures, and finally the figures in the foreground, four of whom overlap the reductions. You can see clear differences of workmanship from one miniature to the next, and all of them differ from Cabaillot-Lassalle’s dry, precise style.

On the 1874 Salon’s picture rails, the work immediately caused a stir: “perhaps the most original painting in the Salon”, the critics exclaimed, “strange”, “most curious”, “unmatched”». The painting intrigued and fascinated, projecting its beholders into a miniature world where they “expect to see themselves in the painting” as another critic remarked. With a dizzying concern for accuracy, the painter even waited until the Salon opened and its catalogue was published before he inscribed the correct exhibition numbers of the paintings depicted on the miniatures’ frames – so taking his game of mise-en-abîme to its logical conclusion.

However, the six paintings depicted side by side here never actually shared the same picture rail at the 1874 Salon: they were on display in different rooms, following alphabetical order of their authors’ names, as was customary at the time. But Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle’s work, a playful, complex “project”, is no less remarkable, both as regards its intentions and implementation.

The Salon of 1874, the only work by Camille-Léopold Cabaillot-Lassalle featuring in the Musée d'Orsay’s collections, is currently on display in the “Paris 1874, Inventing Impressionism” exhibition, which runs from March 26 to July 14, 2024.

• Eugène Petit (1839-1886), Chrysanthemums and Peaches, number1473 in the 1874 Salon catalogue
• Jules Jacques Veyrassat (1828-1893), Cart in the Forest, No. 1781
• Ernest Guillemer (1839-1913), Franchard Valley, Fontainebleau, No. 876
• Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), Evening, No. 459
• Léon Richet (1847-1907), Windmill in Picardy, No. 1558

Henriette Browne (1829-1901), Portrait of M.E.S, No. 274 [M. Surville]