doodlesalon00THE GREAT ART SALONS
For generations, a jury decided which paintings the public saw.
The Royal Academies of Paris and London were the most significant art societies of 19th-century Europe. Their annual shows could make a career, and in 1863 one jury's rejections started a revolution.
Find your place on the wall01Principles
02THE SHORT ANSWER
The Paris Salon and London's Royal Academy
shaped public taste for more than a century.
THE JURY
At the official Paris Salon, a jury of artists from the Académie des Beaux-Arts selected the works and awarded medals. It was the quickest way for a painter to become known.
The rejectedTHE HANG
At the 18th-century Royal Academy, pictures were hung from dado to cornice, edge to edge and tipped towards the viewer. Where yours went mattered.
Find your placeOPEN TO ALL
London's Summer Exhibition has run every year since 1769 and is the world's oldest open submission exhibition: anyone can send work to be considered.
From studio to wall03THE OLD HANG
Pick a kind of entry to see where it would have ended up. The bar shows how prominent the spot was.
Based on the Royal Academy's account of the 18th-century Summer Exhibition hang, and the Metropolitan Museum's essay on Manet and the Salon of 1863.
04TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
One number from Paris in 1874,
one from London's open show today.
450,000
Visitors to the official Salon
The first Impressionist exhibition drew 3,500 visitors. The Salon, which opened two weeks later, drew about 450,000.
PARIS, 1874 · THE MET
250+ years
Age of the Summer Exhibition
Held every year since 1769. In previous years nearly two thirds of the exhibits were by artists who were not Academicians.
LONDON · ROYAL ACADEMY
The Royal Academies of France and England were founded in 1648 and 1768 respectively, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
05FROM STUDIO TO WALL
The Royal Academy describes a few traditions that still shape its open show at Burlington House.
It is an open submission show, so anyone can enter work to be considered alongside Academicians.
Royal Academicians on a rotating committee select and hang the works, with the final selection made during an eight-day hang.
The committee meets for the last time. Beyond this point no changes can be made.
Traditionally the last chance for artists to touch up their work, now a celebration with a procession down Piccadilly led by a steel band.
06THE REJECTED
The Salon jury rejected most of the submissions by artists such as Monet in the late 1860s. In 1874 a group including Monet, Degas and Pissarro held their own show in the photographer Nadar's former studios in Paris.
A critic, Louis Leroy, mocked Monet's Impression, Sunrise as a mere sketch, and the movement got its name. The group put on eight exhibitions between 1874 and 1886, and Pissarro was the only artist in all eight.
07Questions
The official art exhibition in Paris, held every two years and later every year. A jury of artists from the Académie des Beaux-Arts selected the works and awarded medals, and the Met calls it the most expedient way for an artist to become known.
In 1863 more than half of the submissions to the Salon were rejected. To calm public outcry, Napoleon III ordered a show of rejected works. Manet exhibited three paintings there, including Déjeuner sur l'herbe.
From Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise, shown in 1874. The critic Louis Leroy accused it of being a sketch or impression rather than a finished painting.
At the 18th-century Royal Academy, works by lesser-known artists were skied, hung high above the line. The line itself, eight feet from the ground, was kept for celebrated artists' big pictures.
Yes. The Royal Academy calls it the world's oldest open submission exhibition, held every year since 1769. Works are selected and hung by Royal Academicians.
08Sources
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