In the 19th Century, the Salon was an annual public exhibition of works (sculpture, paintings, drawings, etchings, etc.) by contemporary artists, which was much talked about and was the showcase for the art of the moment. Originally founded by Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV - and therefore reserved for members of the Royal Academy of painting - this state-controlled institution operated as an official system of recognition, empowered to accept or reject works.
Already admitted into the Salon under the Second Empire, Jean-Paul Laurens selected very classical themes from antiquity ("The Death of Caton d'Utique"1863 or "The Death of Tiberius" 1864) or religious themes (Vox in deserto 1868), to respond to prevailing tastes and to establish his reputation.
In 1872, during the first Salon under the new republic, he was spotted for his more original works (Pope Formosa and Stephen VII and The death of the Duke of Enghien) generating enthusiasm among the critics and the public. His real consecration came later when he was awarded the "Médaille d'honneur" for "The Austrian commander before the corpse of Marceau (1877 Tokyo museum of Western art).
In the 1880s, organising the Salon became the responsibility of the artists themselves. Founder member of the Society of French artists in 1882, Laurens participated in the organisation of the Salons where he frequently exhibited his works. Even his very last paintings were exhibited there ("The Miners" 1904 and "The Disaster" 1905), which still gained the public's approval. But this unique institution was henceforth contested and its legitimacy challenged. The Society of independent artists was founded in 1884 moulding itself on the former examples of the Salon des Refusés (1863) and the Impressionists' private exhibition in 1874 in the studio of Nadar, who had forged a breach in the monolithic state institution.
For a long time, the Salon seemed to embody the division between historiography and the modernity of art with, on the one hand, the official, academic "pompier" art and on the other, the new experimental artists who were building a separate future outside the Salon. In reality however, the distinctions in art were more blurred and less binary as the century wore on.
|
