An excerpt from Renoir by Guy Jennings:
The development of Impressionism was temporarily halted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. The group became scattered. Bazille was killed fighting at Beaune la Roland; Monet, Pissarro and Sisley sought refuge in England - the latter was of British descent, and his family had become bankrupt as a result of the war - and Renoir himself joined the Cuirassiers. He saw no action, being posted to the remote spot of Pau in the Basses-Pyrenees, but he had little time for painting On being discharged he returned to Paris, and was one of the few painters to remain there during the troubled period or the Commune.

With his friend and benefactor Bazille now gone, Renoir found life far from easy, but in 1873 a turning point came when the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel began to buy his work, enabling him to rent his first studio, at 35 rue St Georges. He continued to send paintings to the Salon, among them his Diana, classical in subject matter and concept but rather more modem in handling. This, like most of his entries, was rejected, and his friends Monet and Pissarro were also in general unsuccessful. Both Monet and Renoir did, in fact, have paintings accepted in 1865 and 1866, but simply being hung in the Salon did not necessarily guarantee success - an unknown artist could find his work placed in a dim corner or so high up on a wall as to render it to all intents and purposes invisible.

The difficulty of gaining acceptance at the Salon, then literally the only showplace for an aspiring artist, led to the idea of staging an independent exhibition where the public could see and judge the young artists' work for themselves. Renoir became treasurer of the new-formed group and served on the hanging committee. The first Impressionist Exhibition was held in 1874, with six paintings by Renoir included. Predictably, the show was a financial disaster, and aroused both hostility and derision from the critics, but of the few works that did sell, several were by Renoir.