Making an impression

 

A sign inside a Montmartre real estate agency reads, "The street artists are the new Impressionists."

***

In the late 1800s the Salon des Refusés or "Salon of rejects" would exhibit works that had been considered unacceptable to the standards of the then prestigious Paris Salon, which had specific guidelines as to what constituted "art." But thanks to Louis Leroy, an art critic who dismissed certain paintings as unfinished and nothing more than "impressions," in 1874, this group of rebels proudly calling themselves The Impressionists were able to successfully exhibit outside the traditional Salons, which eventually went the way of the horse and buggy. - BPJ