A Brief History of the Paris Salon, 1795–1890
Tuesday, August 19, 10am – 4pm
François-Joseph Heim. Charles X Distributing Awards to Artists (detail), 1827. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Public Domain.
$170; members $153
(one-day workshop)
About the Workshop
Through most of the 19th century, an annual exhibition called the Paris “Salon” was the place for living artists to showcase their work. Attended by tens of thousands of visitors every year, the Salon was an enormously important event controlled by the French Academy, a national institution that trained painters and sculptors and dictated French artistic taste for more than a century.
Most years, the Salon rejected thousands of paintings, leaving their makers with few options for getting their works seen. Painters who were selected often found their canvases poorly placed, in jumbled hangings sometimes called “beaux-arts” style. Sculptors had it especially bad. If their works were shown in the same rooms as the paintings, they were considered decoration; if they were exhibited in a separate section, they were ignored completely. This one-day workshop revisits the rules, competitions, and rejections of the Paris Salon—and the famous backlash against it led by the Parisian avant-garde.
The class is online-only. More about online classes.
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Barnes classes will:
- Sharpen your observational and critical thinking skills.
- Improve your ability to communicate about art.
- Deepen your appreciation for cultures and histories outside your own.
Instructor
Caterina Y. Pierre
Pierre is a professor of art history at the City University of New York at Kingsborough Community College and a visiting associate professor at the Pratt Institute, New York. She has taught about art and crime at CUNY Kingsborough, Pratt, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She is currently preparing books on cemetery sculpture as political art in the late 19th century and on Ernest Durig, a forger of the sculptor Auguste Rodin.
Recent Barnes Class Testimonials
“Naina Saligram is the professor everyone hopes to have. She is knowledgeable and open to listening to her students.” The Classical Tradition in Modern Art with Naina Saligram
“Joe Tokumasu Field was a wonderful instructor—very patient, caring, and skilled at interacting with students’ questions and comments.” The Japanese American Century with Joseph Tokumasu Field
“Kaelin got us involved in the conversation in a way that made it engaging and fun. I learned so much and didn’t feel like I was just being lectured at the whole time. The class was well paced and covered the basics without oversimplification.” The Language of Painting with Kaelin Jewell
“I love these close-looking classes; [it’s great] to see the details of each painting and to have an instructor lead our eyes in how best to look at a work of art.” Close-Looking Immersion: Glackens’s The Raft with William Perthes
“The instructor was amazing! She was extremely knowledgeable, friendly, funny, and open to questions. She brought in outside resources and made herself available via email for questions between classes. I would take anything she teaches.” The Impressionists: Friends and Family with Caterina Pierre
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