French Art Salons and Academies - Salons As Exhibitions

Salons As Exhibitions

From the 17th to the 20th century, the Académie de peinture et sculpture organized official art exhibitions called salons. To show at a salon, a young artist needed to be received by the Académie by first submitting an artwork to the jury; only Académie artists could be shown in the salons. Salons were started under Louis XIV and continued from 1667-1704. After a hiatus, the salons started up again in 1725. Under Louis XV, the most prestigious Salon took place in Paris (the Salon de Paris) in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, but there were also salons in the cities of Bordeaux, Lille and Toulouse.

In 1881, the government withdrew official sponsorship from the annual Salon, and a group of artists organized the Société des artistes français to take responsibility for the show.

In the 19th century, the salon system frequently incited criticism from artists for the bland or academic quality of the artwork, while radical artists (like Edouard Manet or Gustave Courbet) would not be received or would be greatly censored by the "respectable" public. The salon system thus forced radical and modern artists to seek alternative or unofficial exhibition sites. This is especially true for Impressionists and Fauvism.