Les XX

The group was founded by 11 artists who were unhappy with the conservative policies of both the official academic Salon and the internal bureaucracy of L'Essor, under a governing committee of twenty members.

Instead Octave Maus (a lawyer who was also an art critic and journalist) acted as the secretary of Les XX, while other duties, including the organization of the annual exhibitions, were dispatched by a rotating committee of three members.

Leading exponents of the Symbolist movement who gave lectures include Stéphane Mallarmé, Théodore de Wyzewa and Paul Verlaine.

[1] Together with Maus, the influential jurist Edmond Picard and the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren provided the driving force behind an associated periodical, L'Art Moderne, which was started in 1881.

[6] Apart from the members of Les XX, there were exhibitions by Adriaan Jozef Heymans, Jan Stobbaerts, Auguste Rodin, James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Max Liebermann.

[10] Exhibits of Pierre-Auguste Renoir,[4] Odilon Redon[15] and Claude Monet, including Le pont d'Argenteuil and La Manneporte à Étretat.

[11] Exhibits of Albert Dubois-Pillet,[18] Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri-Edmond Cross, James Abbott McNeill Whistler,[2] Paul Signac and Odilon Redon.

[10] At the first concert, the music was composed by César Franck, Pierre de Bréville, Ernest Chausson, Gabriel Fauré and Julien Tiersot.

[19] Three concerts were given, with the first centered on Belgian composers like Auguste Dupont, Léon Soubre, Joseph Jacob, Paul Gilson and Gustave Huberti.

[3] Stéphane Mallarmé gave a lecture on Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; Edmond Picard discusses Maurice Maeterlinck, Emile Verhaeren and Charles Van Lerberghe.

[18] First exhibitions of decorative art, including posters and book illustrations by Walter Crane, Alfred William Finch's first attempts at ceramics,[21] and three vases and a statue by Paul Gauguin.

The first concert presented the first version of Paul Gilson's La Mer, Guillaume Lekeu's Andromède and music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov, and Franz Servais.

[3] More design was exhibited, including a table by Alfred William Finch, embroidery by Henry Van de Velde, and objects by Alexandre Charpentier.

[3] The third and final concert featured the première of Guillaume Lekeu's Violin Sonata,[16] with also performances of compositions by Charles Smulders, Paul Gilson, Dorsan van Reysschoot and Alexis de Castillon.