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Cézanne was the one among them who both now and for a long time afterwards excited the most detestation. It is not too much to say that he was regarded almost as something monstrous and inhuman.

After the close of the exhibition a sale was had at the Hotel Drouot.

“Forty-five canvases of Caillebotte, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir realized only $1,522—an average of less than $34 each. The sale took place in the presence of an amused and contemptuous public, who received the pictures, as they were put up at auction, with groans. They amused themselves with passing several of them round from hand to hand, turned upside down.”

Sixteen Renoirs brought $400. The next year “le Pont de Chateau” sold for $8, “Jeune fille dans un Jardin” for $6, and “La Femme au Chat” for $16.

Sisley sold eleven for 1,387 francs, or $25 each. These prices meant disaster and the painter was in great distress. In 1878 he wrote Theodore Duret a pathetic letter asking if Duret could not find some friend who would have enough confidence in his, Sisley’s, future to pay $100 per month for six months and receive in return thirty pictures.