In an atmosphere of change as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris and waged war, the Académie des beaux-arts dominated the French art scene in the middle of the 19th century. Art at the time was considered a conservative enterprise whose innovations fell within the Académie's defined borders. The Académie set the standards for French painting. In addition to dictating the content of paintings (historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued), the Académie commanded which techniques artists used. They valued somber, conservative colours. Refined images, mirroring reality when closely examined, were esteemed. The Académie encouraged artists to eliminate all traces of brush strokes — essentially isolating art from the artist's personality, emotions, and working techniques. The Académie held an annual art show — Salon de Paris, and artists whose work displayed in the show won prizes and garnered commissions to create more art. Only art selected by the Académie jury was exhibited in the show. The standards of the juries about suitable art for the salon reflected the values of the Académie. The young artists painted in a lighter and brighter style than most of the generation before them, extending the realism style of Gustave Courbet, Winslow Homer and the Barbizon school. They submitted their art to the Salon, and the juries rejected the pieces. A core group of them, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, studied under Charles Gleyre. The three of them became friends and often painted together. In 1863, the jury rejected The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) by Édouard Manet primarily because it depicted a nude woman with two clothed men on a picnic. According to the jury, nudes were acceptable in historical and allegorical paintings, but to show them in common settings was forbidden. Manet felt humiliated by the sharply worded rejection of the jury, which set off a firestorm among many French artists. Although Manet did not consider himself an impressionist, he led discussions at Café Guerbois where the impressionists gathered, and influenced the explorations of the artistic group. After seeing the rejected works in 1863, Emperor Napoleon III decreed that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused) was organized. For years art critics rebuked the Salon des Refusés, and in 1874 the impressionists (though not yet known by the name) organized their own exhibition. After seeing the show, critic Louis Leroy (an engraver, painter, and successful playwright), wrote a scathing review in the Le Charivari newspaper. Targeting a painting by a then obscure artist he titled his article, The Exhibition of the Impressionists. Leroy declared that Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) by Claude Monet was at most a sketch and could hardly be termed a finished work. Leroy wrote, in the form of a dialog between viewers, Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape. The term "impressionists" gained favor with the artists, not as a term of derision, but as a badge of honor. The techniques and standards within the movement varied, but the spirit of rebellion and independence bound the movement together.