 Honoré Daumier satirized the bourgeoises scandalized by the Salon's Venuses, 1864 The Paris Salon (French: Salon de Paris) was an institution in French official art patronage, founded in Paris, France in 1673 to exhibit art works, particularly paintings. The Paris Salon was originally an officially-sanctioned semi-public exhibition of recent works by members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, starting in 1673 and soon moving from the Salon Carré of the Palace of the Louvre, which gave it its name. The Salon was intended to focus on those who were graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, which was created by Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, in 1648. Thereafter it had a formative influence on French high culture: exhibition at the Salon de Paris became essential for any artist to achieve success in France for at least the next 200 years. Exhibition there marked a sign of Royal favor.
The name remained, even when other quarters were found and the exhibitions' irregular intervals became biennial. A jury system of selection was introduced in 1748. In 1737, the exhibitions became public and were held, at first, annually, and then biannually in odd number years. They would start on the feast day of St. Louis - August 25th and run for some weeks. Once made regular and public, their status was "never seriously in doubt" (Crow, 1987).
The Salon exhibited paintings floor to ceiling and on every available inch of space. The sheer jostling of artwork became the subject of many other paintings, including Pietro Antonio Martini's Salon of 1785. Printed catalogues of the Salons are primary documents for art historians. Critical descriptions of the exhibitions published in the gazettes marked the beginnings of the modern occupation of art critic.
In the 19th century this idea of a public Salon was extended to an annual government-sponsored juried exhibition of new painting and sculpture, held by invitation in large commercial halls, to which the ticket-bearing public was invited. The vernissage ("varnishing") of opening night was a grand social occasion, and a crush that gave subjects for newspaper caricaturists like Honoré Daumier. Charles Baudelaire and others wrote reviews of the annual salons, whose officially sanctioned art, increasingly conservative and "academic", refused entry to the Impressionists who organized their own counter-salon, the Salon des Refusés opening May 17, 1863, a date that marks the official birth of the Avant garde. Later "Refusés" salons were held in 1874, 1875 and 1886. In 1881 the government withdrew official sponsorship from the annual Salon, and a group of artists organised the Société des artistes français to take responsibility for the show.
In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time saw as a bureaucratic and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin, organized the Salon d'Automne.
See also
References
- Marquet de Vasselot, J.J. Répertoire des catalogues du musée du Louvre, 1793- 1917
- Crow, Thomas Painters and Public Life in 18th Century Paris, Yale University Press 1987
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