ABSTRACT
History has proven prophets wrong, but the story reminds the reader that the contemporaries of Manet, Degas, Monet, and Cezanne saw their world of art in a way quite different from the present view. The official occasions on which the artists met their public were the periodic Salons, vast exhibitions of recent work, screened by academic juries, at which hundreds of artists competed for notice and for sales. It reflects the terrifying, almost industrial productivity of the academic establishment, reacting to the stimuli of government support and mass demand. The early juries were composed of amateurs and public officials as well as artists, which had the beneficial effect of neutralizing the professional jealousies and vengeances of academic jurors. It is true that some Salon painters, in the last decades of the century, gave spice to their work by small, planned audacities-a bit of slapdash here, a little burst of temperament there.
