The group takes its name from the Parisian district of the same name (in the north-west of the city) where many of the artists had their studios and where they habitually met, particularly at Café Guerbois.

A work by Henri Fantin-Latour immortalizes the historic group in 1870, a work preserved at the Musée d'Orsay depicting the painter Manet at his easel surrounded by other artists and intellectuals, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Émile Zola, Claude Monet, and Zacharie Astruc.