During the Nineteenth Century the French Academy of Art Was a Major Financial Sponsor

The Oath of the Horatii (1785)
Louvre, Paris. A wonderful
example of academic-mode
mythological painting by
Jacques-Louis David, the
dandy political painter of the
French Revolution.

The Valpincon Bather (1808)
Louvre, Paris.
By J.A.D.Ingres, the doyen of
the French Academy, famous
for his painstaking slowness
and polish.

Summary

The French University of Fine Arts (Academie des Beaux-Arts) is the premier establishment of fine art in France. The brainchild of painter, designer and art theorist Charles Le Brun (1619-90), the University was founded in 1648 as the Majestic Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture). Information technology was abolished temporarily during the French Revolution before being renamed the Academy of Painting and Sculpture (Academie de Peinture et de Sculpture). In 1816, it was amalgamated with two other arts bodies, the University of Music (founded in 1669) and the Academy of Architecture (founded in 1671), to form the Academie des Beaux-Arts. The master aim of the Academy was to teach painting and sculpture to promising students, and to offer a place of exhibition for those artists accepted as members (academicians). In both areas, the Academy rapidly achieved a monopoly, provoking - as we shall see - meaning controversy in the process. Instruction was organized through its fine art school - the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Paris - whose aesthetics and practices were based on the antique canons formulated in Classical Antiquity, as revised during the era of Renaissance art (1400-1530). All students, for example, were required to perfect their drawing skills before advancing to figure drawing and eventually oil painting. The Academy was too responsible for the French Academy in Rome (founded in 1666), and the scholarship known as the Prix de Rome. At the same time, from 1667 the Academy held an almanac exhibition for its members - the but permitted public art exhibition in France - known as the "Salon", after its location in the salon carre (square room) at the Louvre. Although the French Academy was the virtually influential of all European arts institutions, other important academies included: the Academy of Art, Florence (Accademia dell'Arte del Disegno), established in the early 1560s by the Medici family; the University of Art, Rome (Accademia di San Luca), founded in the 1580s under the sponsorship of the Pope; and the Purple Academy of Arts (RA) in London, under the patronage of King George III. These and other academies across Europe propagated what became known equally "Academic Fine art" - an idiom associated with Neoclassical painting and sculpture from aboriginal Greece. Unfortunately, the French University speedily achieved a monopoly in all areas of visual art, which allowed it to coerce artists into adopting a rigid prepare of aesthetic rules. Not until the advent of Impressionism - which established itself despite opposition from the University - along with the founding of culling exhibitions, such every bit the Salon des Independants (founded 1884) and the Salon d'Automne, Paris (founded 1903). Today, the pendulum has if anything swung too far in the other direction. Academies like the Academie des Beaux-Arts have a much more open view and embrace the virtually experimental forms of postmodernist art, also as hypermodern teaching methods.

Early History

Although founded in 1648, the Academy remained powerless due to opposition from the crafts Guilds until 1661 when it came under the wing of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, main adviser to Louis XIV. Colbert recognized the political advantage of being able to impose creative standards and glorify the King, and so gave the Academy exclusive control of both the teaching and public exhibiting of art. In 1663 he appointed the talented and dynamic Charles Le Brun every bit the University's first Director. Under this new authorities, the Academy rapidly caused well-nigh consummate command over artists in French republic.

To begin with, only artists who were elected members of the Academy (ie. academicians) were eligible for official arts jobs. For instance, the positions of all court-appointed painters and sculptors, designers and architects, besides every bit all inspectors and chiefs of regal factories - like the Gobelins Tapestry works - and arts professors were reserved exclusively for academicians. How did an artist enter the ranks of the Academy? By getting a committee of academicians to "accept" his submitted work of fine art.

Furthermore, in social club to bring his skills to the attending of potential customers, an artist had to exhibit his works in public. But since the only permitted public fine art prove was the Salon, he could simply exhibit if his submission was "accepted" past the Salon jury (also made up of academicians).

Put simply, the Academy exercised full control over all aspects of French painting and sculpture. And those artists whose work it disapproved of, institute it extremely hard to make a living.

Bookish Art

As function of its regulation of French painting, the French Academy imposed what was known equally the hierarchy of genres, in which the five unlike painting genres were ranked according to their edification value. This hierarchy was appear in 1669 by Andre Felibien, Secretary to the French Academy, and ranked paintings as follows: (1) History Painting; (two) Portrait art; (three) Genre Painting; (4) Mural Art; (5) Still Life Painting. This system was used by the academies as the basis for application scholarships and prizes, and for allocating spaces in the Salon. Information technology likewise had a major affect on the financial value of a work. Although the introduction of these aesthetic rules had theoretical merit, their rigid interpretation undermined the whole procedure.

Likewise as regulating genres and themes, the University introduced numerous conventions on (eg.) how a painting should be painted: including overall style (the University prefered representational art in the neoclassical idiom); recommended colour schemes; how much brushwork should remain visible; how a movie should be finished off; and many others.

Conservative Teaching Methods

The French Academy's school - the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris - was renowned for its conservative and unchanging approach to art educational activity. Students began with drawing, first from prints of Greek sculpture or famous paintings by Old Masters similar Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Raphael (1483-1520); then from plaster casts or originals of antique statuary; finally from this they progressed to figure drawing from alive male nudes (known as 'drawing from life'). At the end of each stage their drawings were carefully assessed before they were allowed to advance any futher. Only subsequently completing several years of drawing, too every bit geometry and human anatomy, were students allowed to paint: that is, to utilise colour. In fact, there was no painting at all on the curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts until 1863: to learn how to pigment students had to bring together the workshop of an academician.

The Salon Controversy

For some 150 years (1740-1890), the Salon was the nearly prestigious annual/biannual art exhibition in the world. As many as 50,000 visitors might attend the Salon on a unmarried Sunday, and a total of 500,000 might visit the exhibition during its 8-week run. For much of the time the Salon was used by the Academy every bit a manner of forcing artists to adjust to its own increasingly rigid and outdated set of aesthetics, a practice which met with more than and more opposition. An early victim of the University's strictures was the popular artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), who in 1769 was accepted into the Academy not equally a "history painter" but as a mere "painter of genre." This, despite the view of Denis Diderot, chief editor of the Encyclopedie, that Greuze represented the "highest platonic" of French painting of the mean solar day.

The second half of the 19th century witnessed much greater controversy, as an increasing number of highly regarded paintings were refused access to the Salon, not because of their lack of quality, but because they did not adjust to the rigid rules of the Academy. At the same time, large numbers of mediocre "academic-style" works were accustomed.

In 1855, for case, the realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) submitted to the Salon his masterpiece - The Artist'due south Studio (A Real Allegory) (1855, Musee d'Orsay). The huge realist painting featured portraits, still-life pictures, and landscapes, illuminated by the presence of i of the most striking female nudes in French painting. But the Salon Jury turned it down. In 1863, an even greater uproar occurred amid artists and art critics when the Salon Jury rejected more three,000 submitted works, including Lunch sur L'Herbe (1863) by Edouard Manet, and paintings by Paul Cezanne, the American Whistler and Camille Pissarro. This led the French Emperor Napoleon III to announce that painters whose works had been rejected by the official Salon could exhibit them simultaneously at the Salon des Refuses (an exhibition of rejects) at a nearby venue. This controversy profoundly undermined the reputation of the Salon.

Note: Eminent academicians included: J.A.D. Ingres (1780–1867), Jean-Antoine Gros (1771-1835), Ernest Meissonier (1815-91), Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904), Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98) and William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905).

Notation: Arguably the creative person with the most interesting relationship with the French Academy was J.A.D. Ingres. Read nearly it in these manufactures analyzing his greatest works: The Valpincon Bather (1808), La One thousand Odalisque (1814), Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832), and Portrait of Madame Moitessier (1844-65).

Famous painters (in add-on to those already cited) whose works were rejected by the Academy include: Camille Corot (1796-1875), Johan Jongkind (1819-1891), Alexandre Cabanel (1823-89), Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Georges Seurat (1859-1891), to proper noun but a few.

In 1881, the Academy gave up control of the Salon, which was taken over past the Society of French Artists (Societe des Artistes Francais). This was followed by the founding of two other major annual art exhibitions in Paris - the Salon des Independants (established 1884) and the Salon d'Automne, Paris (1903). Since and so, a number of new Salons accept emerged, such as the Salon de Mai, Salon de la Jeune Peinture and the Salon des Realities Nouvelles.

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/french-academy.htm

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