The Importance Of The Salon

After the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment and neoclassicism in the West, which dominated the aesthetics and the classical canons begin the nineteenth century, it will be very turbulent, both historical facts and artistic styles. So will be happening romantic and realistic styles, each with its shapes and models and inspired by a society in continuous shift away from hegemonic forms so far to become a more mundane art. The ruling classes were replaced by the bourgeoisie and by a new generation of intellectuals and artists who dreamed of a new world.

Styles that these artists were setting were tendency to rebel against the established order. Romanticism, the main source of future impressionism and realism, where normal people were

The Salon was an annual exhibition of art made in France. The artists who won awards at the Salon, were almost always getting important monetary income to create artworks for the state. For any artist, it was important to exhibit at the Salon because it was one of the few ways that artists had to get recognition for your artwork and be able to make a living painting. To get an idea of the importance of Salon, we have to know that each year about 5,000 paintings of nearly 2,000 artists were presented. The number of visitors to the Salon (many of them foreigners) exceeded

Some of the painters were Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet y Charles-François Daubigny. Otros miembros fueron Jules Dupré, Narcisso Virgilio Díaz de la Peña, Albert Charpin etc. Little by little the paints of those artist envolved since a romantic stile to the impressionist movement. The painters of the Barbizon School were also a history of the French Impressionist movement. Thirty years before the first Impressionist exhibition, Camille Corot, circumstantial member of the Barbizon school sometimes described as the father of impressionism, interpreted the changes of light on a number of subjects painted at different times of day. Eugène Louis Boudin a pre-Impressionist painter, who was master of Monet, taught his disciples to express a feeling of spontaneity in his works, while the realist Gustave Courbet taught the Impressionists find inspiration in everyday