The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a learned society as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. It was created in 1816 in Paris through merging respective academies for painting, sculpture, music, and architecture, which were all founded during the 17th century. The Académie acted as authority to preserve traditional French painting standards including content and style. In the 18th century, religious and historical themes historical subjects, as well as portraits were valued in contrast to landscape paintings and still life. According to the Académie’s standards, paintings had to be realistic in style, carefully finished with precise brush strokes hiding the artist’s technical handling, and restrained in colour application.
The Académie annually held the Salon de ParisThe Salon was an annual, juried art show in Paris by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. From the middle of the 18th century till the end of the 19th century, it was the greatest art event in the Western hemisphere. With the French revolution, the exhibition was opened to foreign artists, and in the 19th century, the Salon extended to an More, a juried art show, where artists could display selected artwork that met the standards of the institution. They could win prizes, garner commissions, and enhance their prestige.
Starting in the middle of the 19th century, the Salon routinely rejected works submitted by forerunners of modernist art movements, including Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, and Armand Guillaumin.
Having seen a number of rejected works, Emperor Napoleon III 1863 decreed that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves. The “Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Refused) was founded, with public reactions ranging from ridicule to admiration. However, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to a new tendency in art. These developments paved the way towards the founding of the impressionist and other modernist movements.