The Birth of impressionism. Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay

In Madrid, San Francisco and Nashville, the Musée d'Orsay is showing a hundred of its masterpieces in an exhibition that tells the story of painting in the early years of Impressionism. Based around Manet, who, after the scandal of his Olympia in 1863 was considered to be the leader of modern painting, it aims to put into context the experimental approaches developed by Bazille, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, Sisley, etc. In the late 1860s, these young painters united around Manet to breathe new life into contemporary art. Having suffered a number of rejections by the Salon, in 1874 they decided to present their works independently. Manet, however, continued to seek recognition from the Salon where artists who were accepted (Fantin-Latour, Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes and Regnault) explored less radical but equally innovative solutions.