The Salon was an annual, juried art show in Paris by the Académie des Beaux-ArtsThe 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 More. 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 annual government-sponsored juried exhibition of new paintings and sculpture, inviting the public to participate.
With the beginning of the Impressionist painting style, many paintings were rejected by the Salon, leading both to splinter groups like the “Salon of the Rejected” and accelerating the development of modernist art movements.