It is 1874 in Paris, and the early years of the Third Republic. Baron Haussmann has remodelled the city, creating the grands boulevards, and the national Opera House is almost finished. The French capital is emerging from the trauma of the siege of Paris that marked defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, the subsequent collapse of the Second Empire and the bloodshed of the Paris Commune insurrection.
Against this backdrop of modernisation, industrialisation and commerce, a group of largely unknown and struggling French artists decide it is time to make an impression.
