This article is based on the online database “Les jurys du Salon (1791-1880),” hosted by Huma-Num.
1Before the rise of the art market in the early twentieth century (Moulin 1989; White & White 1965), and with it the emergence of various intermediaries attesting to the quality of circulating artworks (Lizé, Naudier & Roueff 2011; Lizé, Naudier & Sofio 2014), the Salon de peinture et de sculpture was the main arena for building artistic careers and reputations. In nineteenth century France, the Salon had virtually no competition—neither nationally nor across Europe: while regional exhibitions typically drew around 400 exhibitors1 and London’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition featured about 600 exhibitors between 1791 and 1880 (Hallett et al. 2018), the Salon welcomed over 1,000 each year. The Salon was also the favoured topic of art critics, and its reviews became staples of nineteenth century press coverage, including in publications that otherwise paid little attention to the fine arts (Gispert, Kembellec & Méneux 2018; McWilliam 1991a, 1991b; Parsons & Ward 1986). Most of the French state’s art acquisitions also occurred at the Salon, based on reports from administrators recommending specific works for purchase (Chaudonneret 1999: 133–139; Vaisse 1995).
2Held annually or biennially between 1791 and 1880, the Salon endured for nearly a century and remained central to the artistic field, largely thanks to the widely acknowledged quality of the exhibition. This was ensured early on by the implementation of a dual jury system, composed of peers and experts who acted as precursors to modern intermediaries; through their judgment, they conferred value on the works and artists selected for exhibition. Despite the jury’s omnipresence in nineteenth century art history, it has often been reduced to the role of antagonist, which has long hindered in-depth study of its composition and members. Even in broader social histories of the fine arts system (Genet-Delacroix 1992), its administration (Chaudonneret 1999; Genet-Delacroix 1996; Vaisse 1995), and its key figures-such as Charles Blanc (1813–1873) (Barbillon 2009; Gaudron 1948; Gilson 1948; Hourt-Pour 1997; Réau 1948), Charles-Philippe de Chennevières (1820–1899) (Mayo Roos 1989), and Émilien de Nieuwerkerke (1811–1892) (Goldschmidt 1997; Maison 2000)—the Salon jury has remained a blind spot in historiography. Although this partial historiography often relies on the numerous and early controversies that punctuated the jury’s history (Griffiths 2013; Herbert 2002) to justify the hostile portrait it paints, it nevertheless obscures the question of its longevity and of the relative consensus surrounding its existence—especially over the course of the long nineteenth century, when the artistic field was undergoing major transformations (Bourdieu 2017 [2013]; White & White 1965). How did the jury therefore manage to retain its legitimacy throughout the century in spite of all this?
3This article argues that it did so precisely by absorbing and integrating these changes—both aesthetic (the challenge to genre hierarchies, the rise of artistic modernities) and structural (the growing number of professional artists, the increasing authority and professionalism of the market and critics, the weakening of the Académie des beaux-arts and its doctrine). This adaptability took shape in two main directions: to uphold the dual jury system—necessary in the face of the growing number of aspiring artists throughout the nineteenth century—the fine arts administration adopted numerous reforms over the course of the century. These changes favoured, on the one hand, increasingly democratic peer evaluation, and on the other, the concrete inclusion of new authorities in the artistic field: the market and art criticism.
The Salon Jury Members (1791–1880): Sources for a Prosopography
- 2 AN, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, F/21/519 to542, Exhibitions [Expositions] (An III–1886).
- 3 AN, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, 20150431/1 to 124.
- 4 Notably, the following databases: “Salons, 1673-1914” of the Musée d’Orsay and the INHA, maintained (...)
This article relies on a database documenting the 167 members of the successive juries for the “Painting” section of the Salon from 1791 (the first official Salon) to 1880 (the last). This database was compilled using archival material from the Salon, held in the F/21 collections of the French National Archives (AN)2 and in the former “X-Salons” collection of the National Museums Archives.3 Each identified juror was then the subject of further research using databases,4 biographical dictionaries (Auvray & Bellier de La Chavignerie 1882–1885; Battista 2019; Siret 1883), and repertories (Beyer, Savoy & Tegethoff 2019). The information gathered makes it possible to situate each juror within the artistic field by noting their generation, profession, awards received, and artistic output, where applicable.
The database is publicly available online at the on Huma-Num.
4Since 1673, the Expositions de peinture et de sculpture—more commonly known as the “Salons” because they were held in the Salon Carré of the Louvre—had been organized regularly by and for members of the Académie des beaux-arts. Only officially admitted and approved academicians, along with their students, were allowed to exhibit. There was no need for a jury at these early Salons, since the works on display had already undergone an institutional selection process via admission to the Académie itself. The process was extremely selective: under the Ancien Régime, an average of just 61 artists exhibited at each Salon,5 despite the fact that more than a thousand artists were known to be active during this period (Tauziède-Espariat 2021: 27).
5The abolition of the royal academies during the French Revolution brought about a radical reorganization of the Salon. From then on, it was the State—specifically its fine arts administration—that was responsible for organizing the event. Crucially, it was decided that the Salon would now be open to all artists, regardless of gender or nationality, and regardless of whether they were members of the Académie des beaux-arts. On 8 September 1791, the first open and free Salon was held. This long-awaited reform, decreed by the National Assembly on 21 August, was a resounding success: 615 artists exhibited 794 works listed in the catalogue.6 Similar numbers were seen in the following Salons, marking the beginning of a steady and sustained increase in participation throughout the nineteenth century.
6The explosion in the number of exhibitors—especially in the latter half of the century—made the establishment of juries not just necessary but widely demanded, both by the artistic community and by critics and the public. These juries were tasked with distinguishing high-quality work from mediocrity in two key ways: first, by selecting the works worthy of being exhibited, and second, by determining which ones deserved awards.
- 7 Jérôme Mavidal et Émile Laurent, Archives parlementaires de 1789 à 1860 : recueil complet des débat (...)
7The first jury to be established was one for awarding prizes, created shortly after the 1791 Salon opened. It was established by decree of the National Assembly on 17 September 1791, which called for the creation of encouragement prizes.7 These awards aimed to support artists who had lost their primary clientele—namely the aristocracy, the Church, and Ancien Régime financiers (Monnier 1995: 28). Valued between 2,000 and 7,000 French livres, the prizes were awarded to artists to produce works that were, notably, designated as “paintings belonging to the Nation” in the official catalogue—making them as much commissions as honours.
- 8 Report by Léon Dufourny, 21 prairial an III (9 June 1795), AN, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, F/17/1057, fo (...)
- 9 Letter from the Minister of the Interior to the administration of the Central Museum of the Arts, 1 (...)
- 10 Prizes and medals awarded at the Salon can thus be considered the first reward mechanisms establish (...)
8A similar prize jury was convened in subsequent years, notably for the Concours de l’An II (Oslander 1989; Van de Sandt 1988). This competition, which became the main focus of the fine arts administration and led to the temporary suspension of Salon prizes between 1792 and 1799, awarded 108 prizes8 for 150 submitted projects. These were divided into three tiers: first prizes functioned as actual commissions, requiring the work to be completed; second prizes involved the purchase of the artist’s work; and third prizes consisted of simple monetary rewards. Salon prize juries reappeared in 1799 with the reintroduction of encouragement prizes, now awarded for works “already exhibited.”9 This system remained in place until 1804, when Vivant Denon (1747–1825) established an official medal system10 (Dupuy, Le Masne de Chermont & Williamson 1999: 1258, AN 21), with awards decided and distributed directly by the administration, specifically the director of the national museums (Dupin de Beyssat 2022: 72–79).
Figure 1
Jean-Joseph Heim, Charles X Presenting Awards to Artists Exhibiting at the 1824 Salon in the Louvre, 15 January 1825, 1827. Oil on canvas, 173 x 209 cm.
Source: Louvre Museum. Public domain.
- 11 Report from Philippe-Auguste Jeanron to Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, 29 February 1848, AN, Pierrefitte-s (...)
- 12 Statutes and regulations of the “New Society of Artists,” 25 March 1848, AN, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, (...)
- 13 Letter from Charles Blanc to Philippe-Auguste Jeanron, 30 May 1848 and letter from Célestin Nanteui (...)
- 14 Regulation drafted by the Commission of Fine Arts and approved by the Minister of the Interior, 2 A (...)
9It was not until 1848 that a prize jury was reestablished on a lasting basis. The democratic ambitions sparked by the 1848 Revolution extended to the artistic field, prompting the abolition of the admission jury. In its place, the new republican administration appointed a commission—deliberately avoiding the term “jury”—to determine both the placement of works and the awarding of prizes.11 However, this commission did not take on the second task. Instead, a society of artists12, presided over by Célestin Nanteuil (1813–1873) and quickly recognized by the administration, took over the awarding of medals.13 Although initially unofficial and artist-led in 1848, the prize jury was formally institutionalized the following year. The 1849 Salon regulations clearly outlined both its responsibilities and how it was to be formed.14
10Now officially recognized and fully integrated into the administrative structure, the prize juries were merged with the admission juries beginning in 1852, and continued in this combined form until the final official Salon in 1880. From that point forward, they were responsible for awarding medals—whose number and categories varied throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century—not to individual artists or works, but to submissions judged as cohesive ensembles.
11The jury of admission was introduced at the 1798 Salon. It was established in response to calls from many figures in the artistic field—from exhibiting artists to critics—who lamented the decline in the quality of exhibitions following their opening to all artists, regardless of gender, nationality, status, or, as some argued, talent. In 1796, several members of the Académie des beaux-arts refused to participate in the Salon, arguing that the general mediocrity of the submissions diminished the value of their own work. That same year, Amaury-Duval (1760–1838), writing under the pseudonym “Polyscope,” published an opinion piece in La Décade philosophique calling for the creation of a jury:
But what a number of mediocre, weak works-barely worthy of display on the quays. The reply is: “We felt obliged to accept everything submitted”—so much the worse. I demand prior censorship. I refuse to let our school be disgraced in the eyes of foreigners. A jury should henceforth decide which works deserve a place in the Salon—and that jury should be appointed by the artists themselves who intend to exhibit.15
12Such calls were widely supported in the artistic community and reflected a broader concern for restoring the prestige of the French school amid growing European competition. These concerns were quickly taken up by the fine arts administration. In 1798, Pierre Bénézech (1749–1802), the Minister of the Interior—under whose jurisdiction the arts fell—decreed the establishment of a jury of admission, which first convened for that year’s Salon. Its task was “to choose from among the submitted works those that are worthy of exhibition,” and its role became standard practice from 1800 onward (Lemaire 2004: 75).
13Meeting several weeks before each exhibition, the jury reviewed all submissions, section by section, to select all or part of the works submitted by artists. The admission jury remained in place for every Salon through 1880. Its existence was never seriously threatened during that time. Even the decision announced on 29 February 1848, to admit “all works submitted […] without exception”16 to that year’s Salon did not mark an interruption. On the contrary, the admission jury was immediately reinstated the following year, a testament to its widely recognized necessity in the artistic community.
14Throughout the nineteenth century, this dual jury played a crucial role in maintaining the quality of the Salon and, in doing so, reinforced its widely acknowledged importance for the careers and reputations of artists. While the existence of the jury itself was rarely questioned, the way it was composed—and the legitimacy that followed from it—was a frequent source of criticism. Artists, along with amateurs and critics, regularly voiced their grievances and demands, particularly in the press, regarding the functioning of this dual jury. Far from being ignored by the administration, these concerns were often taken seriously and led, between 1791 and 1880, to frequent changes in the rules governing jury appointments.
- 17 At that point, previously earned awards effectively serve as a form of electoral qualification.
15Over the course of the century, three different methods of jury appointments were used alternately—and sometimes concurrently: election by artists; appointment by the administration; or automatic inclusion by virtue of being an academician (see Table 1). When jurors were elected—during the revolutionary period, again from 1848 to 1853, and once more from 1864—the rules governing voting rights varied. The system shifted from universal suffrage in the first half of the period—where all exhibitors could vote, including women and foreign artists—to a “census” suffrage,17 in which only awarded artists could participate, though the definition of who qualified changed from year to year.
16Jurors could also be appointed by the fine arts administration. This was the case for the entire admission jury up until the July Monarchy. In the second half of the century, this method was used for only part of the jury, in varying proportions, consistently reflecting the administration’s desire to maintain control over the appointment process.
17Finally, under the Restoration and again between 1857 and 1863—albeit in a minority of cases during the period in question—members of the first four classes of the Académie des Beaux-Arts were automatically included in the jury. In these instances, no sectional juries were formed; instead, all academicians judged the submitted works collectively.
- 18 The procedures for the composition of the admission and award juries at the Salon (1791–1880) have (...)
Table 1. Criteria for Jury Composition for Admissions and Awards at Salons (1791–1880)18
| Salons |
Method of Appointing the Admission Jury |
Method of Appointing the Awards Jury |
Voters |
| 1791 |
|
Members of the Institute and Elected Officials |
Exhibiting Artists |
| 1793 |
For the Year II competition: Elected by the artists |
Artists not competing |
|
1795
1796
|
| 1798 |
Appointed by the administration |
| 1799 |
|
N/A |
|
|
1800
1801
1802
|
Fully elected |
Elected by the artists |
Artists participating in the competition
(i.e., those not yet awarded)
|
|
1804
1806
1808
1810
1812
1814
1817
1819
1822
1824
1827
|
|
|
1831
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
|
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts |
| 1848 |
|
Fully elected |
Exhibitors |
|
1849
1850
|
Fully elected |
½ elected by artists, ½ appointed by the administration |
| 1852 |
½ elected by artists, ½ appointed by the administration |
Artists already accepted
(except in 1848)
|
| 1853 |
|
1857
1859
1861
1863
|
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts |
|
|
1864
1865
1866
|
¾ elected by the artists, ¼ appointed by the administration |
Awarded artists
(Légion d’honneur, Académie member, or médailles)
|
|
1867
1868
1869
|
⅔ elected by the artists, ⅓ appointed by the administration |
|
Artists already accepted or awarded
(Légion d’honneur, Académie des beaux-arts, médailles and Prix de Rome)
|
| 1870 |
Fully elected |
|
1872
1873
|
¾ elected by the arts
¼ appointed by the administration
|
French awarded artists (médailles and Prix de Rome) |
|
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
|
Awarded artists
(Légion d’honneur, Académie des beaux-arts, médailles and Prix de Rome)
|
| 1879 |
Awarded artists (idem) or already accepted three times |
| 1880 |
Credits: Claire Dupin de Beyssat.
- 19 Proof if any were needed, certain members of the administration, such as Chennevières, who joined a (...)
18The chronology of how Salon juries were composed shows that, although regime changes could indeed alter the “rules of the game” in the artistic field—as happened in 1831 or 1848—these shifts should not be overestimated. More often than not, the adoption of new measures followed an internal logic of the artistic field itself, which we will examine more closely later. A key factor, both cause and consequence of this internal logic, was the remarkable stability of the fine arts administration’s staff, beyond changes in its directors.19 As a result, certain methods of jury composition persisted through major political regime shifts—despite differing, even conflicting, traditions and agendas, as seen in 1815 or 1872. Conversely, some measures that significantly altered jury composition were introduced during politically uneventful moments, such as in 1857 or 1864. These shifting regulations reveal how the fine arts administration continually sought to adapt to changes in the artistic field throughout the nineteenth century—particularly by favouring peer evaluation over top-down, authoritarian decisions.
- 20 The ‘Painting’ section, along with the ‘Drawings, etc.’ section from 1864 onward, in fact represent (...)
19Indeed, the administration consistently aimed to present a system that was less “aristocratic” and increasingly democratic. This intent was evident not only in formal regulations—where election became, in the end, the most frequently adopted method of selection—but also, and more strikingly, in the actual profiles of the 167 individuals who successively served on the admission and award juries for the Painting section of the Salon between 1791 and 1880. This section, due to the diversity of works and artists it encompassed and its popularity with the public, was particularly sensitive to changes in the artistic landscape.20
- 21 Charles Blanc, “Salon de 1868,” Le Temps, 12 May 1868. On this topic, see Mainardi (1989).
20The structure of these successive juries—which ranged from six to twenty-five members depending on the Salon, and included both artists and other professionals—already reflects a persistent tension throughout the nineteenth century between a pursuit of prestige and a desire for democratic representation within the Salon. This tension echoes Charles Blanc’s distinction between an exhibition of “paintings to be seen” and a marketplace of “paintings to be sold.”21 Yet a closer analysis of the jurors’ backgrounds, Salon after Salon, most clearly reveals the gradual decline of an aristocratic, peer-based model of evaluation, embodied by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in favour of a democratic model of representation, where jurors were expected to reflect the full range of practices, backgrounds and career paths of the painters exhibiting at the Salon in the nineteenth century.
21A close study of the successive Salon jury members reveals the gradual—though not strictly linear—erosion of the authority of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, driven by a growing disconnect between its members and the broader artistic community (Figure 2). By its very nature a normative institution, the Académie retained unofficial oversight of the École des Beaux-Arts up to 1863, served as advisor to the fine arts administration and public authorities, and even published a dictionary intended to clarify its doctrine. From this position, it would logically seem entitled to judge the works submitted to the Salon.
Figure 2
Académie des Beaux-Arts Members Representation among the Painter-Jurors at the Salon (1791–1880).
Credits: Claire Dupin de Beyssat
22Yet this prerogative was denied as early as 1791, when the State abolished the royal academies, took control of the Salon, and opened it to all artists, introducing a non-academic jury. The rejection of academic authority persisted even after the founding in 1816 of a new Académie de Peinture et Sculpture [Academy of Painting and Sculpture], which inherited both the functions and structure of the old Royal Academy. It wasn’t until 1831, under a regime that delegated nearly all decisions in artistic matters to the Académie and was deeply hostile to democratic initiatives, that the Académie regained influence over Salon admission juries. Under the July Monarchy, the Académie’s authority was restored and even expanded: it oversaw both the institutions of training (through unofficial control of the École des Beaux-Arts) and exhibition (by deciding who could exhibit at the Salon) (Chaudonneret 1999: 64). It also advised on awards, shaping decisions made by the director of the national museums.
23However, in 1848, the Académie lost its seat on the Salon jury once again, when the newly republican fine arts administration abolished the admission jury and established an elected award jury. This shift reflected growing dissatisfaction among artists with the Académie, increasingly seen as a rigid, biased institution hostile to innovation and incapable of recognizing its value. Indeed, when given the choice, artists did not elect academicians: in 1848, only 7 of the 25 elected jurors (32.0%) were Académie members. This trend continued between 1849 and 1853, when members of the Académie occupied, on average, just 41.4% of jury seats. The universal suffrage election system allowed artists to significantly renew the jury, voting in mostly non-academic painters, thereby asserting their desire to diversify jury membership and break from the Académie’s artistic orthodoxy.
24Surprisingly, in 1857—despite this broadly accepted system of election—the administration reversed course and reinstated the Académie’s exclusive control over the Salon jury.22 This major reform, especially given the relatively liberal measures enacted since 1848, was likely driven by the ambitions and influence of Émilien de Nieuwerkerke (Mainardi 1987: 115). A sculptor from a royalist Dutch family, Nieuwerkerke had exhibited regularly at the Salon since 1842. A trip to Italy in 1845 brought him into contact with Mathilde Bonaparte, a cousin of the future Napoleon III and an artist herself. Their romantic relationship and his artistic credentials likely facilitated his appointment in December 1849 as Director General of Museums, and his 1853 promotion to Superintendent of Fine Arts for the Emperor’s household. That same year, he became a free member23 of the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Chave & Leniaud 2015: 454–458).
25On 22 November 1856, as both a free member of the Académie and a high-ranking official close to imperial power, Nieuwerkerke presented the reform that returned control of the Salon jury to the Académie:
Count de Nieuwerkerke requested the floor for a presentation. The Emperor has charged him with informing the Académie that the first four sections, along with the section of free members, will make up the jury for the upcoming Salon at the Palais de l’Industrie, opening 25 March. Mr. de Nieuwerkerke also reported that all necessary measures have been taken to prepare the venue and ensure the smooth running of the exhibition. The President thanked the Director General of the Imperial Museums for this announcement and asked him to express the Académie’s gratitude to the Emperor for this sign of trust. The Emperor can count on the Académie’s dedication. (Naud & Leniaud 2017: 326)
- 24 Anonymous, Description of Works…, 1857, op. cit., LXIII.
26These words of thanks were more than mere formality. Given that many members of the Académie were more or less hostile to the young Second Empire (Bonnet 2006: 153), Napoleon III’s decision was likely aimed at securing the support of an institution that, though controversial, remained influential (Mainardi 1987: 115). From this point forward, the administration delegated full authority over the composition of both admission and award juries to the Académie, which quickly ruled on these matters. For the 1857 Salon, it was decided that all sections of the Académie would deliberate together, without distinction between mediums. This marked a significant shift: artists no longer had a say in who judged them, and could be evaluated by a sculptor or architect rather than a fellow painter.24 Moreover, Académie members were exempt from jury scrutiny—a privilege extended only to medal-winning artists, a gesture recognizing the authority of previous juries and awards.
27This convergence of interests, however, proves short-lived. By 1863, several developments signalled the administration’s growing distrust of the Académie. First, in response to the uproar over the jury’s excessive severity—reportedly rejecting more than half of submissions—Napoleon III ordered the creation of a Salon des Refusés [Salon of the Refused]. This move seriously undermined the Académie’s credibility by allowing the public to evaluate the decisions it had made (Boime 1969; Cahn 2016; Lacambre 1981; Lobstein 2004; Picon 1978; Wildenstein 1965; Wilson-Bareau 2007). Second, the Académie lost its unofficial control over the École des Beaux-Arts; faculty appointments, once reserved for Académie members, would now be made directly by the administration (Bonnet 2006). In 1864, the administration went further, decreeing that Salon juries would no longer automatically include Académie members but would instead be elected by artists who had previously received official honours (medals, awards, or the Legion of Honour).25 This was both a response to artist demands and a reflection of escalating tensions between the Académie and the fine arts administration, particularly Nieuwerkerke (Bonnet 2006: 157–169; Granger 2005: 159; Lemaire 2004: 158).
28Given the chance to choose their judges again, artists delivered a stinging rebuke to the Académie by electing only two of its members—Alexandre Cabanel and Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury—among the seven jurors. This rejection was not short-lived: between 1864 and 1880, academicians held, on average, only a quarter of jury seats. Their continued, albeit limited, presence showed that although the Académie as an institution had clearly lost its authority, academic ideology persisted, at least for a time.
29One final sign of the Académie’s diminishing authority was the declining presence of artists with academic credentials—particularly former winners of the Prix de Rome—among Salon jurors (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Presence of Prix de Rome laureates among the painter members of the Salon jury (1791-1880).
Credit: Claire Dupin de Beyssat.
30The Prix de Rome is indeed the academic award par excellence, both because it is distributed by the Académie and, above all, because it allows its recipients to stay in Rome and train alongside the masters who serve as references for academic doctrine (primarily Michelangelo and Raphael). Yet, gradually, the Prix de Rome laureates are less and less regarded by their peers as qualified to judge them: while they held an average of 47.4% of jury seats before 1848 and 42.9% during the academic interlude (1857–1863), their proportion dropped to just 25.6% between 1848 and 1853, and even fell to an average of only 6.4% after 1864. At the Salons of 1868, 1872, and 1880, there wasn’t a single former Prix de Rome winner among the elected jury members. This decline in academic authority is therefore reflected in the diminished legitimacy granted to artists whom the Académie had encouraged and trained according to its own precepts—making the Académie appear obsolete or, at the very least, ill-suited to evaluate contemporary artistic production.
31In the administration’s adoption of new methods for selecting the jury, one can discern a growing demand for representativeness: in order to be considered legitimate, juries must resemble the artistic field as a whole. This representativeness emerges in two main ways: first, through better recognition of emerging styles; and second, through greater inclusion of so-called “minor” pictorial genres—two of the principal aesthetic transformations of the nineteenth century.
32One of the key challenges in jury composition is to take new schools and stylistic movements into account, by ensuring artists from those movements are included. This need for inclusivity implies a regular renewal of jury members, which explains the increasing preference for appointment systems with higher turnover—that is, a greater proportion of jurors who did not serve on the previous jury (Figure 4). The academic regimes in force from 1831 to 1847 and from 1857 to 1863 allowed for only very limited jury turnover: about 5% on average. Since members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts are appointed for life, this low turnover naturally resulted in generational inertia and an overall aging of the jurors, whose average age was not only high (61 years) but continually rising over time, lowered only by the death of an academician and their replacement. Conversely, during the periods when jury members were appointed and/or elected, turnover was significantly higher, contributing to generational renewal and some rejuvenation: on average, jury members were 54 years old and 24% of the jury changed from one Salon to the next.
Figure 4
Turnover and renewal of the Salon jury members (1791–1880).
Credits: Claire Dupin de Beyssat.
33Significantly, each change in the jury selection system resulted in a sharp turnover: when, in 1864, exhibitors were once again allowed to vote for the jury, only two of the ten elected jurors had served previously—further confirming the rejection of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, whose members only sat on the jury when appointed by right and rarely when chosen by the administration or their peers. Regular jury turnover thus appeared to be a deliberate goal of the fine arts administration: at the 1875 Salon, it was decided that three-quarters of the jury would be selected by lot from a list of 114 names, themselves determined by artists’ votes.26 In a report published in the Journal officiel on 16 December 1874, Chennevières justified this new selection method as necessary “to broaden the circle of judges and facilitate their renewal through a process that absolved us of any arbitrary responsibility,” and to prevent the fatigue resulting from the repeated election of the same jurors, as well as the risks of partisanship and unfairness from an unchanging jury.27 Well-founded as it was, the experiment was not repeated in subsequent Salons, since it conflicted with the principle of representative elected juries.
34The appeal of jury renewal lay in its ability to bring in “new blood” and better represent the artistic community. Generational renewal of jurors thus went hand in hand with stylistic renewal. However, not all selection systems integrated artistic innovations at the same pace. The so-called “Romantic” generation (Allard 2005; Allard & Chaudonneret 2010), born around 1790, only joined the jury when Horace Vernet (1789–1863) became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1826, and did not become firmly established until the 1850s, with figures like Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797–1890), Léon Cogniet (1794–1880), and especially Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). Nearly three decades had to pass before Romanticism, which emerged in the 1820s, was truly represented on the Salon jury. In contrast, elections enabled quicker inclusion of new stylistic trends. Between 1848 and 1853, artists elected Barbizon School painters such as Camille Corot (1796–1875), Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867), Louis-François Français (1814–1897), and Constantin Troyon (1810–1865) to the jury, while Realism was represented starting in 1864 with the election of Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), Jules Breton (1827–1906), and Théodore Ribot (1823–1891). By adopting selection methods that favoured member turnover, the jury was clearly better able to respond to the emergence of new schools and movements.
- 28 Historical paintings accounted for 4.4% of the works exhibited at the Salon between 1860 and 1880 ( (...)
35The administration also adopted jury composition methods that better reflected the distribution of pictorial genres in contemporary artistic production. In truth, for most of the nineteenth century, the Salon jury was poorly representative of the contemporary art scene in this regard. Regardless of the selection regime, history painters—those producing works with historical, mythological, religious, or allegorical subjects—continued to dominate the jury, even though their work held only a marginal place on the Salon walls28 (figure 5). This trend was especially pronounced under academic selection systems: juries were then composed almost exclusively of history painters, except for Raymond Brascassat (1804–1867), a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 1846, who practiced historical landscape painting. This imbalance lessened somewhat when juries were selected by election. Still, even when they had the chance to choose jurors from among artists working in the same genre, Salon exhibitors tended to elect history painters: they remained a majority on the juries from 1848 to 1853 (an average of 7 out of 11) and in juries before 1864 (an average of 7 out of 13).
Figure 5
Genres practiced by painter members of the Salon jury (1791–1880).
Credits: Claire Dupin de Beyssat.
36The dominance of history painters can be explained by the lingering influence of academic doctrine on the artistic scene, despite the Académie des Beaux-Arts’ actual decline in authority. According to academic doctrine, history painting sits at the top of the genre hierarchy, established by Félibien in 1667,29 because it supposedly requires the most complete combination of technical and theoretical skills. Producing a history painting requires, first, mastery of all lower genres: creating a narrative and readable composition with multiple characters (genre painting), accurately representing the human figure (portrait), painting backgrounds (landscape), and even rendering objects (still life). Second, it demands familiarity with a broad repertoire of religious, historical, and literary episodes, along with the iconographic codes governing them. Consequently, by a logic of “he who can do more can do less,” history painters were considered the most qualified to judge the quality of works in all other genres—the reverse not being true.
37Nonetheless, in the final quarter of the period, the jury began to include painters whose practices more accurately reflected the contemporary artistic community. Increasingly, history painters selected as jurors exhibited the hybrid and diverse tendencies that history painting developed in the nineteenth century (Serié 2014): such was the case of Émile Lévy (1826–1890), a juror at the 1875 Salon, who exhibited side by side a Vercingetorix Surrendering to Caesar and a Field Mass at the 1863 Salon; of Jean-Jacques Henner (1829–1905), regularly elected from 1873 onward, known for his nudes increasingly detached from mythological or historical pretexts (Figure 6); of Alexandre Protais (1825–1890), a 1875 jury member whose military scenes resembled genre painting more than grand battle pieces; or of Pierre Charles Comte (1823–1895), a prolific representative of historical genre painting, frequently elected between 1867 and 1873.
Figure 6
Jean-Jacques Henner, The Magdalen, 1878. Oil on canvas, 143 x 86 cm.
Source: Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris. Domaine public.
38To these figures were added painters who practiced exclusively genre painting or landscape. Of the 97 painters who served on the jury between 1791 and 1880, 17 were landscape painters, 16 were genre painters, and 2 were portraitists. Among these artists from so-called “minor” genres, landscape painters were the first to join the jury: as early as 1817, Antoine Laurent Castellan (1772–1838) was appointed a juror by the fine arts administration. He was joined under the July Monarchy by Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld (1758–1846), then by Brascassat, but it was especially with the advent of democratic selection systems that landscape painters gained broader jury representation: between 1864 and 1880, they held 18.3% of the seats. Genre painters joined the jury in 1848, with the appointments of Adrien Dauzats (1804–1868), Alexandre Decamps (1803–1860), and Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891) (Figure 7).
Figure 7
Ernest Meissonier, The Card Players, 1863. Oil on canvas, 35.2 x 26.7 cm
Source: Metropolitan Museum, Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900. Domaine public.
39Again, it was within elected juries—between 1848 and 1853 and between 1864 and 1880—that these artists gained the most seats, representing an average of 21.8% of jurors. Portraiture also became increasingly represented, with the progressive election of renowned portraitists such as Édouard Dubufe (1819–1883), regularly elected between 1866 and 1878, who exhibited almost exclusively portraits and received multiple awards for them, and Carolus-Duran (1837–1917), who joined the jury in 1875. Still-life painters were not left out, either: as early as 1870, Antoine Vollon (1833–1900) was regularly elected to the jury. Gradually, and thanks to the adoption of election as the selection method, painters from so-called “minor” genres occupied more and more seats on the jury, making it increasingly representative of the contemporary art scene.
40This desire for representativeness was explicitly acknowledged by the fine arts administration. Starting in 1879, a quota was imposed requiring that among the 15 painters elected to the jury, “the painting section must include five members representing landscape, animal, flower, still-life painting, etc.”30 This measure clearly aimed to guarantee better genre representation within the elected jury. It also amounted to an admission of failure, as the very imposition of a quota revealed that without it, painters from these genres tended to be excluded. In this respect, elected juries still fell short of representing genres in proportion to their actual presence on the Salon walls-and, by extension, within the contemporary artistic community. Nevertheless, they did reflect the growing recognition, and even consecration, of minor genres and their practitioners, and thus an explicit will, by century’s end, to register the structural changes that had shaped the artistic field since the mid-century.
41While throughout the nineteenth century the administration tended to favour peer evaluation in the makeup of Salon juries, it nonetheless also included evaluations by individuals who were not professional artists. These “experts” occupied, on average, a third of the jury seats between 1791 and 1880, regardless of how the jury was composed: when the jury was primarily elected, the administration would appoint a few experts; and when the Académie des Beaux-Arts composed the jury by right, académiciens libres were also present. Whether selected by the administration or by the Académie, these individuals reflect the growing influence of new institutions for artistic recognition—namely the art market, represented by collectors and connoisseurs, and art criticism, embodied by salonniers. This demonstrates once again how the fine arts administration strove to keep pace with the structural transformations of the artistic field (see Figure 8).
Figure 8
Professional backgrounds of Salon jury members (1791–1880).
Credits: Claire Dupin de Beyssat.
- 31 Cited from the “Sycomore” database.
42Initially, the non-artist jurors were mostly members of the fine arts administration itself—museum directors such as Vivant Denon, Auguste de Forbin (1777–1841), Alphonse de Cailleux (1788–1876), and Nieuwerkerke; curators like Frédéric Reiset (1815–1891) and Pierre-Paul Léonce Both de Tauzia (1823–1888); fine arts inspectors such as Félix Cottrau (1799–1852) and Alfred Arago (1815–1892); or even figures like Marcille Eudoxe (1814–1890), director of the museum and drawing schools in Orléans. Alongside these administrators were politicians with personal or professional ties to the fine arts, including Ferdinand de Lasteyrie (1810–1879), “representative of the people” and member of various heritage commissions; Frédéric-Christophe d’Houdetot (1778–1859), who trained in Jacques-Louis David’s studio and served both as a peer of France under the July Monarchy and later as a deputy; Count Gaspard de Chabrol (1773–1843) and Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau (1781–1869), both prefects of the Seine; Marquis Amédée de Pastoret (1791–1857), member of the General Council of the Seine and later a senator;31 and Count Joseph-Balthazard Siméon (1781–1846), peer of France, free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts from 1846, and member of the Société nationale des antiquaires de France. Their appointments can be explained by the considerable effort involved in organizing the annual Salon, seen as a form of soft power designed to place France—and Paris in particular—at the heart of the European and even global art scene. The goal was to appoint experts capable of guaranteeing the exhibition’s quality and understanding its political, diplomatic, and economic stakes.
43Some experts appointed by the administration or serving as académiciens libres were also recognized art enthusiasts, such as Baron Justin Taylor (1789–1879), co-author of Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France;32 Lancelot Théodore Turpin de Crissé (1782–1859), a major collector; Édouard André (1833–1894), a noted collector and future husband of the award-winning portraitist Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912); and Marquis André Maison (1797–1869), whose estate sale revealed a vast collection.33 Their appointments reflected their already significant roles in the artistic life of their time, as they commissioned or acquired artworks either as private patrons or on behalf of the state. Naming them as jurors merely confirmed their effective influence within the artistic field. Through their activities as collectors and connoisseurs, they embodied new modes of art consumption and the growing strength of the market as a system of artistic recognition—one capable of directing decisions toward new forms of artistic production, even when such work failed to meet traditional academic or official standards.34
44Finally, over the course of the period studied, a new type of figure gained increasing prominence on the jury: the art critic. The first to join was Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849), appointed from 1817 to 1824—not so much for his role as a critic, but for his position as permanent secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which he held thanks to his work as an architect and art theorist. Art critics only gained real legitimacy as experts starting with the Second Empire. Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was appointed by the administration to serve on the jury in 1864 as a “man of letters.” While his close ties to the imperial regime partly explain the appointment (Girard 2011), it was also due to his record as an art critic—he had been writing Salon reviews since 1837 and became the official salonnier for the Moniteur universel, the regime’s official press outlet, in 1854 (Dupin de Beyssat 2019). In the 1866 Salon, he was joined by Paul de Saint-Victor (1827–1881), a prominent critic writing for La Presse, and in 1868 by Charles Blanc, editor-in-chief of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (Barbillon 2009; Gaudron 1948; Gilson 1948; Hourt-Pour 1997; Réau 1948), both still officially designated as “men of letters.”
- 35 Anonymous, Description of the works…, 1879, op. cit.: CVIII.
45In the 1870s, the administration appointed critics explicitly as “art critics”35 to the jury: Louis-Claude Viardot (1800–1883), a regular contributor to Le Siècle and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and a well-known collector (Beaulieu 1984; Picot 2004); Edmond About (1828–1885), at one time an art critic for Le Petit Journal and a contributor to numerous publications; Charles Clément (1821–1887), former curator of the Musée Napoléon III and art columnist for the Journal des débats (Lüthy 1983); and Émile Cardon (1824–1899), a journalist who contributed to La Presse, Le Figaro, and Le Soleil, serving as “additional jurors.” All of them were influential critics with both staying power and wide influence, typically writing for high-profile or mass-circulation papers. Their inclusion in the jury served to confirm and formalize the role they were already playing individually as arbiters of artistic value through their Salon reviews (Bouillon 1983; Bouillon & Méneux 2010; McWilliam 1991c).
46More broadly, their inclusion marked recognition of criticism as a professionalized activity that helped shape artists’ careers and reputations during the nineteenth century. The increasingly frequent appointment of art critics to the jury thus cemented new ways of evaluating and consuming art, with critics becoming an indispensable intermediary, as Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) succinctly put it in an anecdote related by Maxime Du Camp (1822–1894):
- 36 Maxime Du Camp, Souvenirs littéraires, Paris, Aubier, 1882.
If the review of our paintings is favourable, we sell well; if it's harsh, we sell less well: that’s why we care about printed criticism.36
47Throughout the nineteenth century, the Salon jury demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to changes in the artistic field, regularly adopting new methods of composition. It managed to address three key developments—presented here separately but actually working in concert. Indeed, the erosion of academic authority can only be grasped in relation to the emergence of new aesthetics and practices that render its doctrine obsolete; at the same time, the very space created by this decline enables new actors—in this instance, art critics—to progressively establish themselves as legitimate agents in constituting a rival, and ultimately superior, system of recognition.
48The jury’s adaptability was not linear: its history is marked by bursts of progress, slowdowns, and setbacks. Yet a study of the regulations issued by the fine arts administration and the profiles of successive jurors still reveals a clear trend toward a more democratic Salon—one the jury increasingly sought to reflect in the diversity of practices, backgrounds, and outputs it recognized. This adaptability and flexibility were not contradicted by the Salon’s official termination in 1880 (Mainardi 1994; Vaisse 1995: 94–116). On the contrary: the state’s decision to entrust artists with the full management and organization of the annual exhibitions was a logical continuation of its efforts to implement peer governance. That decision, taken unilaterally by the new Salon administrator Edmond Turquet (1836–1914) after the 1880 edition, came on the heels of several attempts—ironically led by the administration itself—to encourage self-management in the artistic field. The most developed of these was the attempt in 1874 by Chennevières to create a “National Academy of French Artists,” ultimately abandoned due to a lack of artist support.
49This failure highlights a paradox: while artists clearly demanded and welcomed peer evaluation, they were reluctant to take full responsibility for managing their own professional spaces. In that sense, the movement toward an increasingly democratic and representative jury may explain the Salon’s longevity—but also its demise. The administration’s growing difficulty in accommodating the often conflicting interests of artists led it to relinquish control of the annual exhibitions entirely from 1881 onward.
50The disappearance of this monopolistic and liberal institution led to the fragmentation of the artistic field into groups defined by specific interests and/or aesthetic positions. This shift was visible in the proliferation of separate exhibitions, which in turn diminished the Salon’s normative power. From that point on, the market became the sole shared space where artistic value was determined. This marked the completion of the transition—initiated in the early nineteenth century—from the so-called “academic” system, where the Académie des Beaux-Arts served as the main authority and other bodies followed its lead, to the “market-critic” system that took hold in the early twentieth century, with the art market and art criticism jointly becoming the two principal arbiters of artistic recognition (Dupin de Beyssat 2022; Galenson & Jensen 2007; Joyeux-Prunel 2015: 49–146; Saint-Raymond 2019; White & White 1965).