Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, most of whose works have been consistently rejected by the juries of the official Salon of the French Academy (the state-sponsored annual exhibition), decide to hold their own exhibit.

These founding members of the nascent Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs are joined by Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Eugène Boudin.

The celebrated photographer Nadar, whose former studio building at 35 boulevard des Capucines has become a local landmark and a favorite meeting place of the intelligentsia of Paris, lends them his gallery.

On April 15, 1874, the nine painters offer their work for public viewing.

The exhibition itself reveals three main trends.

The Parisian circle around Monet and Renoir has developed the evanescent and sketchlike style the furthest.

The vision of those working near Pissarro in Pontoise and Auvers is in general more solid, being firmly rooted in country scenes.

A relatively urbane, genre-like trend is detectable in Degas's picture of Paul Valpinçon and his family at the races called Carriage at the Races (1870-1873; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and Morisot's The Cradle (1873; Louvre, Paris).

Cézanne, modeling himself on Pissarro, sublimates the turbulent emotions of his earlier work in pictures that are studied directly and closely from nature. (He will follow the method for the rest of his life.)

Although some critics appreciate the new painting, most subject the artists to ridicule.