Art Museum Journal

Becoming an Artist: The Academy in 19th-century France

Bouguereau, William Adolphe (French, 1825-1905). The Water Girl (Young Girl Going to the Spring). Oil on canvas. 161 x 72 cm (63 1/8 x 28 7/8 in.). Dahesh Museum of Art.

By STAN PARCHIN
December 8, 2009
 
The Dahesh Museum of Art and Syracuse University continue their collaboration with the special exhibition Becoming an Artist: The Academy in 19th-century France (February 26-April 28, 2010). The presentation of 28 paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the museum at the Palitz Gallery, Lubin House in Manhattan examines the rigorous system of art education in 19th-century France and the famous and lesser-known artists it produced. Its influence on aspiring American artists and institutions such as New York's National Academy of Design and Art Students League is explored.
 
Subjects include: the technical and intellectual training of the Academie Française 's École des Beaux-Arts that made Paris the artistic capital of the 19th Century; the school's broad-based curriculum of drawing, painting, sculpture, engraving, architecture, history, aesthetics and theory; its hierarchy of preferred subject matter from genre to history painting; the unexpected variety of works produced by its exacting system; and the competition for the sought-after Prix de Rome.
 
Among the artists' represented are William Adolphe Bourguereau, Paul Delaroche, Henri Fantin-Latour and Jean-Léon Gérôme. 

 

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