Why Courbet Opposed the Abolition of the Salon Jury in 1848
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 4 min read
The Salon, an essential institution for the career of any painter or sculptor, held a de facto monopoly—if not on exhibition itself, then certainly on prestige—in the mid-19th century.
To exhibit there, one had to be judged worthy by a selection jury, except during the First Republic and the Second Republic of 1848.
The abolition of this jury, a supreme democratic act, should have delighted a man like Gustave Courbet. Yet, this was not the case. Why?
1791: The Abolition of Privileges and the Birth of the "Free Salon"
Since 1673, the Salon had defined itself as an exclusive exhibition space. Initially strictly reserved for members of the royal academic institution, it established an admission jury in 1748—a restricted committee tasked with evaluating works by secret ballot to exclude those deemed unworthy of public display.
In 1789, this selection appeared anti-revolutionary, too reminiscent of the Ancien Régime. The jury was likened to a tool of censorship, and the Academy to a protector of privileges.
Democratization occurred in August 1791, when the deputy Bertrand Barère presented and pushed through a petition coming from the artists themselves. The National Assembly validated it, ushering in an unprecedented era where the right to exhibit was strictly assimilated into freedom of expression, a new fundamental right.
The report specified that the only conceivable limit to the right to exhibit fell to a commission responsible for ensuring respect for morals and public order, which translated into exceptional leniency: a commissioner's journal shows that only two small sculptures were rejected during the 1791 edition.
1795-1800: Visual Inflation and the Jury’s Counter-Revolution
The immediate consequence of this freedom was an exponential increase in submissions, leading to unprecedented overcrowding. While the 1789 edition had only about three hundred canvases, the following years saw this figure triple, finally exceeding three thousand works by the middle of the decade.
This democratic hanging quickly drew sharp criticism regarding the general mediocrity of the displayed works, coupled with visual saturation.
Observers of the time, including Amaury Duval, openly called for the return of a jury system which, furthermore, would serve to preserve the reputation of the French school. Another argument put forward was that indulgence gave false hope to individuals devoid of talent, making mediocrity presumptuous and ever more numerous. The machine was racing in the wrong direction!
The Directory government oscillated between opening to everyone and closing to the mediocre.
Should there be a return to the old systems where rejected works were shown at the Place Dauphine, as under the Ancien Régime?
A jury was re-established in 1798 to restrict submissions, then abolished the following year under pressure from partisans of total freedom, before being definitively re-established in 1800.
This strict regulation stabilised the numbers at around one to two thousand exhibited works until the end of the July Monarchy.
1848: The Case of Courbet and the Republican Paradox
The dynamic surged again, in an identical fashion, with the advent of the Second Republic.
In March 1848, the political leader Ledru-Rollin decided to once again abolish all selection, in a desire for continuity with the ideals of the first Revolution.
Except history repeated itself: the number of canvases jumped suddenly from two thousand three hundred to over five thousand; the confusion was absolute and caricatured by the artist Gustave Doré—a broom alongside a great wave and a few nudes; the cacophony was total.
Gustave Courbet, a left-wing Republican who would be called a "socialist painter" and, later, an active member of the Commune, recalled that the Republic was not favorable to the arts.
He knew that the absence of a filter—that is, a jury—canceled any opportunity to be noticed by critics or the public for someone who would have otherwise met the jury's standards.
His position was strategic and practical, not political: drowned in a mass of paintings of varying quality and poorly positioned within a chaotic hanging, his pieces would be invisible and sales rare.
Having been awarded prizes and appreciated in the meantime, he would eventually decide to organise his own exhibition space on the margins of the official institution in 1855, 1867, and 1868.
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