May, as many as a million people would
throng the exhibition, jostling for
position in front of the biggest and best-
known artists’ works and jeering at the
works they did not like. The best
paintings were given medals. The
winners were celebrated and saw the
value of their paintings soar. The losers
limped home and went back to work.
“There are in Paris scarcely fifteen
art-lovers capable of liking a painting
without Salon approval,” Renoir once
said. “There are 80,000 who won’t buy
so much as a nose from a painter who is
not hung at the Salon.” The Salon made
Renoir so anxious that one year he went
down to the Palais during jury
darren dugan
(Darren Dugan)
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