“On April 15, 1874,” the National Gallery of Art’s press release informs us, “an exhibition by the ‘Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, etc.’ opened at the Parisian studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines. […] The first exhibition of these Société Anonyme artists included works by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, [and others], later known as Impressionists. This now-legendary event is often considered the birth of Modernist painting and remains a key moment in the history of Western art.” The exhibition catalogue states that now “to mark the 150th anniversary of the Société Anonyme exhibition, the Musee d’Orsay and the National Gallery of Art in Washington are revisiting this Impressionist moment” in this new, or rather reconstructed, exhibition.

Auguste Renoir’s oil painting “The Theatre Box” (1874) depicts a woman in a theatre box wearing opera gloves seated next to a well-dressed gentleman holding opera glasses. The woman appears distraught yet filled by the wonder of the theatrical piece. We find ourselves in a similar position of awe as we view this exhibition almost as theatre gazers, looking at a wonderful period of art straddling 1874 as well as the lives, costumes, and behavior of people long gone but who continue to “perform” before us on the “stage” of art.

Several of these works, indeed, involve the stage. Edgar Degas’ “The Ballet Rehearsal” (1874) displays a stage filled with ballerinas rehearsing for their stage performance. The ballet dancers are wearing colorless tutus, and a man sits in contrast on a chair dressed in all black critiquing their technique and warmups. Degas uses monochromatic colors for this scene, and the whole looks almost as if it is an underpainting which is the artist’s “rehearsal” for preparing the artwork before adding color.

We move from ballet dancers to the street performers outside in a fascinating 1874 work entitled “The Street Performers” by Gustave Doré. Doré is usually associated more with Romanticism, not Impressionism, but here we find him offering a somewhat disturbing, gritty glimpse into a more somber side of society. The painter himself, like those depicted in the painting, had a career as an acrobat and won acclaim in this field that seems so far removed from the gentle art of painting. Doré thus paints from a uniquely personal perspective the tragic scene of a couple surrounded by tarot cards pointing ominously towards their dead child. The father sits blank-faced in the upper middle right, with skin almost as pale and lifeless as his dead son. To his left sits the mother, holding her dead son, who is bloodied after a fatal fall. Perhaps most interesting of the occupants of the bench is the owl, whose eyes are black and beady; its disinterested gaze suggests a possible vanity in the choices of the parents, or is it a desire of protectiveness forced nonetheless by circumstances to have their child perform in a dangerous profession?

In “Paris: 1874,” not just stage artists, theatre audience members, and street performers are on display, but also the art of painting itself takes center stage. Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle’s “The Salon of 1874” is an oil painting depicting the intelligentsia gazing into the golden-framed artworks in a gallery but taking in the art in different ways. The two ladies look engaged in an active discussion pertaining to the salon’s exhibition, gesticulating with hands. The little girl in blue is holding a book as well and looking up to the tall woman standing, as if what the girl has read has not been informative enough and she is eager to acquire new knowledge and fresh interpretations.

There is a quiet art observer off to the left reading her notes after viewing the gallery, two women to the far right with their backs turned towards us who seem wrapped up in their own world, and a presumed artist who is in awe. He is looking back into scenes of the past, for the top half of the image contains a variety of painting scenes far more traditional than 1874 Impressionism and include a horse pulling a carriage through the darkly-lit forest and a traditional windmill.

We conclude this brief look at some of the 125 artworks in this fascinating exhibition with the female subject of Jules Breton’s “The Cliff” (1874), her face turned away from us as she gazes out at the sea, presumably to other worlds and possibilities. Such an experience of new discoveries awaits the visitor of “Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment,” an exhibition which runs through January 19, 2025, at National Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C.