where the rejected Parisian painters went in 1863

Oh the scandal! In 1863 Napoleon III instituted a Salon des Refusés where the painters who had been refused a place in the regular annual Salon could hang their work. Taking advantage of this was the young Edouard Manet with his now famous painting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. The critic Théophile Burger wrote, "I fail to see what could have induced a distinguished and intelligent artist to adopt such an absurd composition."

At the date of this exhibition, Claude Monet was a handsome, dark-haired 23-year-old young recruit in the French army training grounds in Algiers...