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Monet exhibited a picture named “Impression; soleil levant.” In derision Louis Leroy called an article on the exhibition in “Charivari”[10] “Exposition des Impressionists,” and in spite of the protests of the painters themselves the name stuck—just as the name Cubists, derisively applied by Matisse, has stuck.

This exhibition, which marked an epoch in French art, was a failure so far as immediate results went. The ridicule was such that the better known artists, ashamed of being caught in the company of the new men, “took good care not to run the risk a second time.”

The pictures were subjected to all sorts of petty insults, “such as the placing of small coins upon the frames in derision, and jokes and jibes.”

The next year the Impressionists held no exhibition, but under dire need had a sale at the Hotel Drouot.

Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cals, Cézanne, Degas, Guillaumin, de Nittis, and Pissarro were represented. There were some seventy pictures. The pictures were disliked and for some unknown reason the artists were considered as hardened members of the community. They only received laughable prices. Even the attempt to carry out the auction-room trick of having friends bid up the prices was not carried out successfully and many of the pictures were bid in by the penniless friends in this way, and withdrawn. Including these mistakes and the real sales they realized not much more than $2,000. In this sale of 1875, Renoir’s “Avant le bain” brought $28; “La Source,” $22 (afterwards sold for $14,000); “Une vue du Pont neuf” brought all of $60; Claude Monet’s twenty pictures averaged from $40 to $60 each.