On 15 April 1874, a group of independent artists, frustrated with the rigid standards of the official Salon, opened their own exhibition in the Paris studio of photographer Nadar.
Among the exhibitors were Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.
The show marked the birth of the Impressionist movement, a revolutionary approach to painting that emphasised light, movement and everyday life.
Though initially mocked—Monet's Impression, Sunrise inspired the term “Impressionist” derisively—the exhibition would come to represent a defining moment in modern art.
