Paris Salon

The Salon de Paris, as it is known in French, began in 1725 and was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890, it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world. Since 1881, it has been organised by the Société des Artistes Français. In 1673, the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (a division of the Académie des Beaux-Arts), held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré. The Salon's original focus was the display of the work of recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, which was created by Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, in 1648. Exhibitions at the Salon de Paris were essential for any artist to achieve success in France for at least the next 200 years, and to be exhibited in the Salon marked a sign of royal favour.

In 1725, the Salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, which became known as the Salon or Salon de Paris. In 1737, the exhibitions became public and were held, at first, annually, and then biannually in odd-numbered years. They would start on the feast day of St. Louis (August 25) and run for some weeks. In 1748, a jury was introduced, and its members were recognised artists.

The Salon exhibited paintings, floor-to-ceiling, covering every available inch of space. The 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 beginning of the modern profession of 'art critic'. The French Revolution opened the exhibition to foreign artists. In the 19th century, the idea of a public Salon extended to an annual government-sponsored jury-assessed exhibition of new painting and sculpture, held in large commercial halls, to which the ticket-bearing public was invited. The vernissage (varnishing) on opening night was a grand social occasion, and the resulting crush gave subject matter to newspaper caricaturists like Honoré Daumier, Charles Baudelaire, Denis Diderot, and others wrote reviews of the Salons. The 1848 revolution liberalised the Salon and the number of refused works was greatly reduced. In 1849, medals were introduced.

Early splinter groups
The increasingly conservative and academic juries were not receptive to the Impressionist painters, whose works were usually rejected, or poorly hung if accepted. In 1863, the Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of the submitted paintings. An uproar resulted, particularly from regular exhibitors who had been rejected. To prove that the Salons were democratic, Napoleon III instituted the Salon des Refusés, containing all the works that the Salon had rejected that year. It opened on May 17, 1863, arguably marking the birth of the avant-garde. The Impressionists held their own independent exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880, 1881, 1882 and 1886. Edouard Manet never exhibited in the Impressionist exhibitions but continued to exhibit in the official Salon.

In 1881, the French 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 December 1890, the leader of the Société des Artistes Français, William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), propagated the idea that the Salon should be an exhibition of young, yet not recognised artists. Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), Auguste Rodin and others rejected this proposal and withdrew from the Salon. They created the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and its own exhibition, soon (since 1891) renamed the Salon as well, officially Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux–Arts, in short, Salon du Champs de Mars. In 1903, in response to what many artists at the time felt was a bureaucratic and conservative organisation, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin organised the Salon d'Automne.

In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne (Autumn Salon) was organised by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon. The exhibition almost immediately became the showpiece of modernism in 20th-century painting and sculpture. During the Salon's early years, established artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir threw their support behind the new exhibition, and even Auguste Rodin displayed several drawings. Since its inception, the greats and future greats of the art world, such as Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso have been shown here. After World War I, the Salon d'Automne was dominated by the works of the Montparnasse painters such as Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani and Georges Braque. Sculpture saw the likes of Constantin Brancusi, Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau, and Ossip Zadkine emerge as new forces. In addition to painting and sculpture, there appeared creations in the field of decorative arts, such as the glassworks of René Lalique as well as architectural designs by Le Corbusier. Still an exhibition of world importance, the Salon d'Automne (follow the link for more details) is now in its second century.