Société Libre des Beaux-Arts

Based in Brussels, the society was active until 1876, by which time the aesthetic values it espoused had infiltrated the official Salon.

It promoted the "free and individual interpretation of nature" characteristic of Realist art, along with avant-garde concepts such as "struggle, change, freedom, progress, originality and tolerance.

[6]The goals of the Free Society were influenced by aesthetic ideals set forth by Gustave Courbet and the Barbizon artists and by the poet Charles Baudelaire.

Two early champions, however, were the critics Camille Lemonnier, a member, who urged that they should "be of their own time," and Théo Hannon (1851-1916), who saw them as rebels against artificiality.

[13] The society expressed an internationalist desire by inviting Courbet, Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet to join as honorary members.

The Members of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts by Edmond Lambrichs : from left to right, sitting are Huberti, Boudin, Degroux, Van Camp, Bouré, Verwée, C. Meunier, Dubois (holding copies of L'Art libre and L'Art Universel ); standing, Lambrichs, Artan, Rops, Raeymaeckers, J.B. Meunier, Smits, Baron, De la Charlerie
The Heights of Beez (1861) by Louis Dubois; landscape painters were prominent among the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts
Portrait of a Young Woman with a Magpie by society member Eugène Smits