David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

League school. It was the place where
reputations were made. And what made
it special was how selective it was.
There were roughly three thousand
painters of “national reputation” in
France in the 1860s, and each submitted
two or three of his best works to the
Salon, which meant the jury was picking
from a small mountain of canvases.
Rejection was the norm. Getting in was
a feat. “The Salon is the real field of
battle,” Manet said. “It’s there that one
must take one’s measure.” Of all the
Impressionists, he was the one most
convinced of the value of the Salon. The
art critic Théodore Duret, another of the
Guerbois circle, agreed. “You have still