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Lecture Notes MON 19th FEB

Masterlist

BUY ME A COFFEE

The Academy and the Public Sphere 1648-1830

Further Reading: Johann Joachim Wicklemann (1717 - 1768) from Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture

Antonie Cotpel (1661-1722) on the grand manner, from 'On the Aesthetic of the Painter'

Andre Felibien (1619-1695) Preface to Seven Conferences

Charles Le Burn (1619-1690) 'First Confrence'

More and Other

The first Academies start in Italy and then begin to spread throughout Europe. However, in this lecture we mainly focus on Paris and London. The Louvre palace, where the royal academy started, was where artists established there thought themselves as elites due to being part of the court, near the ruling and partly due to monetary reasons. (Remember: French Revolution 1793)

Now the other place was the RA, or Royal Academy in London was established to promote art and design (not to be confused with the Art and Design/Craft Movement of 1880-1920). Which focused on displaying and teaching painting and sculpture, only sometimes exhibiting drawing. If your work was exhibited, it was seen as being awarded the highest status and praise.

Jean-Baptiste Martin, A meeting of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture at the Louvre Palace, 1712-1721, Musée de Louvre

Although the academies had strict teaching rules and students had to follow. Which meant that art during this time and created by these artists had a regulated style.

While the French salons/academies had no entry fee when they exhibited the work (bi yearly), the British did have a fee of one shilling to view the exhibit (yearly), despite trying to advertise and claiming any person was welcome. When asked and confronted about the fee, they claimed it was to keep out “improper persons” (the poor).

A selection of Art Academies:

The Academia di San Luca, Rome, 1593

The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, 1648

The Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1696

The Royal Danish Academy of Portraiture, Sculpture, and Architecture, Copenhagen, 1754

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 1688/1701/1725

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, 1752

Imperial Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, 1757

The Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, 1764

Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Stockholm, 1766

Royal Academy of Art, London 1768

The Academy of San Carlos, Mexico, 1783

Royal Arts Academy in Düsseldorf, (1777) 1819

Academia Imperial das Belas Artes, Brazil 1822 (based on an earlier institution)

Martin Ferdinand Quadal, Life drawing room at the Vienna academy, 1787

United in Guilds, mechanical and practical artists wanted to be recognised as artists from a scoio, utility aspect. Painting and sculpture were valued in liberal and intellectual arts.

At the beginning of the 17th century, most painters were part of the Maîtrise de Saint-Luc, a guild founded in 1391, which controlled the market and sanctioned the method of training artists by apprenticeship.

A group of artists, including the young Charles Le Brun, sought to the escape the Masters and placed themselves directly under the protection of the young King Louis XIV, who was capable of removing them from the constraints of the guild. The Academy was established in 1648.

In 1655 letters patent granted the new company the right to call itself the The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) and decreed that only its members could be painters or sculptors to the king or queen. The Academy moved to the Louvre, where the Galerie d'Apollon hosted the reception pieces (chef-d’oeuvre), works that had to be performed before being approved and then elected an Academician. It oversaw—and held a monopoly over—the arts in France until 1793. The institution trained artists.

Perspective view of the hall of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture at the Louvre in Paris: [print].

Sir William Chambers, Somerset House, Now the Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery

In 1768, architect Sir William Chambers petitioned George III on behalf of 36 artists seeking permission to ‘establish a society for promoting the Arts of Design’. They also proposed an annual exhibition and a School of Design. The King agreed and the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy Schools, and what you know today as the Summer Exhibition were established. The Royal Academicians were first based in Pall Mall, renting a gallery 30 feet long.

In 1775, Sir William Chambers won the commission to design the new Somerset House as the official residence. The Exhibition Room was 32 feet high and situated at the top of a steep winding staircase, it was described by contemporary literary critic Joseph Baretti as ‘undoubtedly at the date, the finest gallery for displaying pictures so far built’.

In the 1830s, the Academy moved to Trafalgar Square to share premises with the newly founded National Gallery, moving again in 1867 to Burlington House.

Summer Exhibition have been held every year since 1769.

Attributed to George Shepherd, The Hall at the Royal Academy, Somerset House, 1 May 1810

Before the establishment of Academies and their own openings to the public, there is no or very little actual documented art exhibitions and if there were any they were not documented. Or permanent.

These exhibitions and academies open art to the public, and gain a wider audience, mostly of the Bourgeois, who also usually commissioned the artists of the academy. Or the state did and the church – which was most common. But now individuals could now own art, which commodified art and created private ownership. This also was spurred on by art being more mobile, being painted on canvases which were easier to transport (in some cases).

The idea that came from this was: “art should be affordable”.

Another thing that came from exhibitions and wider audiences was that art became democratised, leaving it open for criticism and interpretation. Although the interpretation aspect wouldn’t be explored till around the 19th century, on wards really.

Teaching at the Academy

The Academy laid down strict rules for admission and based most of its teaching on the practice of drawing from the antique and the living model to support its teaching method and its artistic doctrine. Great importance was also given to the teaching of history, literature, geometry, perspective and anatomy.

In controlling education, the Academy regulated the style of art.

Professors of the Academy held courses in life drawing and lectures where students were taught the principles and techniques of the art. The students then looked for a master among the members of the academy, to learn the trade in their workshop. Only drawing was taught in the Academy and artists learned painting in the studios of the master, often working on his (rarely her) work.

(Left) Antoine Coysevox, Bust portrait of Charles Le Brun, Marble (Right) Charles Le Brun, The Family of Darius before Alexander, c.1660, 164 x 260 cm

Charles Le Brun became director in 1663 and was appointed chancellor for life. The Academy was administered by a director chosen from among its members, often the King’s favoured artist.

The sketch and finish

Le Brun introduced the sketch (esquisse) to French artistic practice, where it became central to the painter’s training in both official and private academies.

The esquisse was typically a small-scale, rapidly executed work intended to preserve an artist’s première pensée, or initial conception, of a subject. It elaborated composition and colouring, avoiding detail in favour of loose forms and fluid brushstrokes.

These studies were not for exhibition, and exhibited works were expected to be highly finished, often with glassy surfaces and the elimination of brushwork.

During the later eighteenth century some began to see merit in the sketch itself, but it was in the nineteenth century with Romanticism that an ‘aesthetics of the sketch’ really developed. In the 1830s sketch came to be identified with originality and genius.

Pierre Charles Jombert, Punishment of the Arrogant Niobe by Diana and Apollo, 1772, Oil paint on canvas, mounted on board, 35.7 x 28.1 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York

The notion of aesthetic begins developing at the time, since the academies had a monopoly on aesthetic, they chose what they liked and didn’t. Their control on who was displayed in exhibits, could ensure an artist’s success. Rejection from and by the Salons was seen as the highest insult to an artist (and their aesthetic).

In the early nineteenth century the Academy instigated landscape sketch (études) competitions.

(Left) Pierre Henri de Valenciennes, The Banks of the Rance, Brittany, possibly 1785. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 21.3 x 49.2 cm. (Right) Théodore Caruelle d'Aligny, Landscape with a Cave, mid-1820s, Oil on canvas, 62.2 x 45.7cm

Here the importance of studying nature directly was emphasised through the practice of making plein air études, or small studies painted outdoors. Études generally did not serve as compositional models for particular paintings. Rather, these studies of different kinds of terrain and effects of light would be idealized or embellished by classically trained painters in landscapes produced entirely in the studio. From the time of Romanticism on, the sketch aesthetic became more-and-more central, but this was anathema to academic artists.

Exhibiting

In 1667 that the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture held the first semi-public show to display the works of its students considered worthy of royal commissions, laying a foundation the “group exhibition”. It was held in the Palais Brion in the Palais-Royal.

In 1725 the Salon moved to the Louvre and in 1737 exhibitions were opened to the public.

From 1748 group of Academicians formed a jury determining which works would be exhibited and where they were to be positioned. In 1673 the first catalogue (livret) was published. It was unillustrated until 1880. Exhibiting at the Salon was a condition of success.

Nicolas Langlois, Exhibition of works of painting and sculpture in the Louvre gallery in 1699. Detail of an almanac for the year 1700 – Etching and burin.

(Left) Giuseppe Castiglione, View of the Grand Salon Carré in the Louvre, Oil on Canvas, 1861 (Right) Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Brun, View of the Salon Carré at the Louvre, c.1880, Oil on Canvas

Key information:

France: The Louvre Palace, and other locations otherwise referred to as the Salon(s). The bigger the picture was the higher it was hung. The better and more favoured the artist the higher it was hung. Paintings of historical events were favoured and hung at the very top, all other lower in a specific order descending.

London: Portraits were positioned higher, gallery walls were still crowded all the same with frame to frame hanging, with no caption. Although you could purchase a booklet with all information and extra definitions. While there appeared less hierarchy in the London exhibitions, it still persisted just in a different form. Favoured artists got to choose where their paintings were hung. Even going as far as to developed an insult for paintings being hung so high: “the painting was skied”.

Hierarchy of genres

Inherited from Antiquity and codified in 1668 by André Félibien, secretary of the Academy, the hierarchy of genres ranked the different genres of painting assigning higher and lower significance.

At the top was history painting, called “le grand genre’: often large paintings, with mythological, religious, or historical subjects. Their function was to instruct and educate the viewer. Its purpose was moral instruction.

Portraiture, depicting important figures from the past as well as the present.

Genre scenes, the less ‘noble’ subjects: representations, generally small in size, of scenes of daily life attached to ordinary people.

The so-called ‘observational’ genres of landscape painting, animal painting and still life.

Other genres were added, such as the gallant celebrations, in honour of Antoine Watteau, which did not, however, call into question the hierarchy.

These academies were called chaotic by critics, and kaleidoscopic.

Examples of outliers:

(Left) Paulus Potter, The Bull, 1647 - 3.4 metres wide. An unusually monumental animal painting that challenges the hierarchy of genres by its size (Right) Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Marriage Contract (The Village Bride), 1761, oil on canvas, 92cm x 117cm. Musée du Louvre

These paintings also challenged the hierarchy of the Salon: it shows a scene that anyone could recognise.

This hierarchy was underpinned by the Ideal and the Liberal Arts.

Giogioni, Frieze in the main hall (detail), Fresco, Casa Marta, Castelfranco Veneto, c. 1510

From the Renaissance onwards artists conducted a campaign to be recognized as gentlemen, rather than workers or craftsmen. This centred on a distinction between the Liberal and the Mechanical arts.

The Liberal Arts were divided into the trivium - Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric - and the quadrivium - Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music.

These involved imagination and intellect and were suitable activities for gentlemen.

In contrast, the Mechanical Arts were said to involve mere repetitive copying. These were activities conducted by workers and were often called ‘servile’ or ‘slavish’. They were deemed ‘mindless’ and demeaning to gentlemen.

Since the academies were open to not gentlemen, it was still believed they upheld class divisions. Examples of an artist from a lower background who rose through the ranks: J. M. W. Turner.

Ideal

Academic art, therefore, emphasised imagination and idealization and opposed copying things as they were. Abstract and mental properties were most valued. For instance, drawing was thought more important than colouring, which was often seen as superficial and feminine (cosmetics). Rather than copy a single figure ideal beauty was to be composed from the ‘best’ elements of multiple figures.

The nude was deemed more suitable, because modern dress was seen as ugly and ephemeral. Some thought the male nude more ideal.

In some senses this is a neo-Platonism, where ideal form exists in the mind of a divinity and things in the world are merely inferior copies of that ideal.

A second-century Roman marble copy of a Greek statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, crouching naked at her bath.

(Left) Artist Copying a Bust in the Royal academy at Somerset House, c.1780, Watercolour (Right) Academies and art schools had large collections of plaster casts made from antique sculpture.

The lower genres were thought to be too close to mechanical copying, whereas history painting involved imagination, intellectual learning and work with the ideal figure. This is complex because Academic artists and theorists rejected originality for adherence to principles and precedents.

Some important studies:

David and His School

J-L David, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, 1789

David was a member of the Jacobin Club and friend of Robespierre. He signed the death warrant for the King. With the fall of the Jacobins he was imprisoned and his life endangered. His paintings were very open to interpretation so upper and lower classes to understand and infer meaning from them, he also had political messages in his paintings. Although quite ambiguous, it engaged in emotions also over morality like usual historical paintings.

David’s austere student Wicar suggested that landscape painters should be executed.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels

Painting around this time was developing Spectacle, as a primary focus to engage people’s emotions, and a shared emotional aspect rather than just class. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture was suppressed by the Convention at the request of David (August 1793) and it was in 1796 that the School of Fine Arts was founded. In 1816, The Bourbon Monarchy restored the title ‘Academy’.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Hogarth came to be seen as the founder of the British School.

Beer Street and Gin Lane, engraving, 1751

The Public Sphere

Habermas: ‘The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour.'

At the Margins

Johan Joseph Zoffany, The Academicians Of The Royal Academy 1771-72, Oil On Canvas, 101.1 X 147.5 cm

Within this painting there are two paintings on the right most side, two busts of women. These are the two female founders who were not actually allowed in the Academy. However, that’s not to say that women weren’t painting and hosting their own private events, even if they couldn’t be critics and artists academically, so they easily fell into obscurity.

Republican Madame Roland

Feminist historians have suggested that the Salons hosted by women were an essential part of this culture of debate.

In 18th century France, salons were organised gatherings hosted in private homes, usually by prominent women. Individuals who attended often discussed literature or shared their views and opinions on topics from science to politics. The different Salons belonged to artistic and political factions.

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Lebrun, Self-portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782

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