The Salon: Proving Ground

Harrison C. White and Cynthia A. White, Canvases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp.27-32.

As you read this description of the Salon, think about the difficulties a young artist at the time would have had in successfully deviating from the officially approved classical styles of the period.

The  central event in the French painting world of the nineteenth century was the Paris Salon [i.e. the official exhibition of painting and sculpture]. Significant historical changes  in its structure brought out different, conflicting purposes and meanings. What was it?  An  exhibition of and for a professional group? A show put on by a benevolent state? Or an enormous picture shop? No one was quite sure. Everyone had his opinion and expectation. The result was a great mismatch in cultural and social meanings. This is an important theme in investigating the Salon as an instrument of control.

Important (though rather  backhanded) evidence that a social control exists comes from observation of what  happens when the rules are changed. . . . [In 1791 during the French Revolution any French artist was free to exhibit in the Salon] The jury reappeared in 1798, a result of protests by artists and officials alike. By the beginning of the First Empire, it became a an established feature of the Salon. In the 1806 Salon the number of paintings exhibited was back down to 573 by 293 painters, and the total number of works was down to 704.

The jury's main function within the confines  of eighteenth-century Academy exhibitions had  been as a watchdog on morality. Now the jury was to judge merit. Later this ostensible task became obscured as the jury struggled to cope with and keep down the number of works to be exhibited.

There is no nineteenth-century example of  a completely open Salon, previously announced as such.  It is a  fair  guess  that the response to one would  have been astounding. In  1848, 5362 works had already been submitted when  the  revolutionary government announced that the Salon  would  be "free," that  is, all  the works on hand would  be hung. . . .

The membership of the  jury, which  ranged in size from 8 to 15, was determined by varying methods. Until 1848 the  Academy had the majority, electing its own members to the jury while  the state had a minority share of appointed government officials. From  1849 on, the  jury was partly state appointed, partly elected by all artists who had exhibited in prior years or, as a variant in some years, those who had  been "medaled" at previous Salons. The proportions varied with  changes in political winds. It is notable that those jurors elected by the artists were, almost without exception, either Academy members or men of conservative leanings. The same names appeared on the jury again and again.

By the middle of the Second  Empire the Salon was being held in the Palais  d'Industrie the  enormous exhibition hall built by Napoleon III in imitation of Victoria's Crystal Palace.  Contemporary photographs, journalistic and literary accounts, and  lithographs  provide a vivid  picture of  the  mid-nineteenth-century Salon.  Tiers and tiers of   paintings  reached to the ceiling. Crowded halls, noise,  and confusion were the  hallmarks. Public (paid)  attendance often reached 10,000 per day. The jury for painting had, as we have seen, a thankless task: to view as many as 5000 paintings and agree upon  acceptances and rejections in a limited  period of  time.  The "hanging committee" were no less harassed; it was their  job to direct the placement of works, arrange catalogue numbers, and  listen to endless  pleas, in  person and by letter, from painters who felt that their unfavorable placement was an insult.

Constant changes in Salon rules reflect the storms of protest that harassed the different governments. It was evident that the Salon was a highly unsatisfactory institution to most artists, and yet pictures kept coming in by the carload every  year.  The painter could not live with  it -- but neither could he do without it under the existing system.

A Salon medal, press publicity, the faint hope of a state  commission were the lures that set painters furiously to work around January of each year to finish their Salon offerings in time for the late March or early April deadline. Once a medal of a certain class had been won  (specifications and number of  medals varied  over the years) a painter was "hors concours": automatically accepted for the Salon.  In 1864, for instance, 367 out  of 3478 works  exhibited were hors  concours. Cash  prizes accompanying medals were fairly substantial; for example, in 1853, 250 francs were given with third, 500 francs with  second, and 1500 francs with first-class medals, plus 4000 francs with the single Medal of Honor instituted in that year. But single paintings by favored masters commanded much more on the market, so that probably few thought of the medals for the money attached.

Two contradictory but avowed purposes were contained in the institution of the Salon. It was intended as the main  instrument for review, reward, and  control of painters seeking official recognition. In this  professional  aspect it continued the obstacle  course of contests familiar to students. At the same  time the Salon was a vast show put on in an  age of expositions for the  public at home and elites  abroad. On the one hand, the judgments of the official elite were considered sacred to the welfare of the profession and the upholding of its standards. On the other hand, there was a strong faith in the judgments of the public. The building of reputation and the sale of works were linked to this faith, in the painter's view of the Salon.