Academic Art

Training was a ladder. Students copied prints of classical sculpture, then drew from plaster casts, and only then were allowed to draw a live model; painting itself was not taught at the École des Beaux-Arts until after 1863. The top prize, the Prix de Rome, sent its winner to study at the Villa Medici, and in the final round ten finalists were shut in studios for 72 days.

Subjects had a pecking order too. History painting, meaning scenes from myth, religion, literature and the classical past, ranked highest, with portraits, everyday scenes, landscapes and still lifes below it. As middle-class buyers gained influence through the century, those humbler genres multiplied.

The Paris Salon was where it all met the public. As many as 500,000 people might see a show, with thousands of paintings hung from just below eye level to the ceiling; artists lobbied for a place “on the line” at eye level and complained if they were “skyed”.

Academic taste ruled the Salon juries for much of the 19th century, while Realists and Impressionists attacked the “false surface” of their slick, idealised finish. Bouguereau's peasant girls and religious scenes sold to collectors in Europe and America. Look for the old symbols he kept: in The Broken Pitcher, the cracked jug beside the girl stands for lost innocence. Since the Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986, showing this work on more equal terms with the Impressionists, academic art has had a second hearing.