There were virtually no dealers
interested in their paintings. When the art
critics mentioned the Impressionists—
and there was a small army of art critics
in Paris in the 1860s—it was usually to
belittle them. Manet and his friends sat
in the dark-paneled Café Guerbois with
its marble-topped tables and flimsy
metal chairs and drank and ate and
argued about politics and literature and
art and most specifically about their
careers—because the Impressionists all
wrestled with one crucial question:
What should they do about the Salon?
Art played an enormous role in the
cultural life of France in the nineteenth
century. Painting was regulated by a
government department called the
darren dugan
(Darren Dugan)
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