An Elegant Salon of European Paintings at St. John's Mitchell Gallery

Sunday, 31 August 2008 21:32

ANNAPOLIS, MD - A new exhibition on view at the Mitchell Gallery at St. John’s College is infused with the spirit of 17th- and 18th-century Europe , a time when Salons most opulent literary, artistic, and philosophical gatherings, were held and artists pursued the rich and rigorous traditions of academic art. “The Elegant Salon: European Academic Paintings from the Syracuse University Collection” will be on view through October 10th . The opening reception will be held on September 21th.

The Paris Salon, which began in 1725, was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France and until about 1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the world. The works on view in “The Elegant Salon” are infused with the spirit of those times: profound inspiration, personal travels, Salon exhibition histories, academic training, and the knowledge of works previously created by the great masters.

This exhibition at the Mitchell Gallery includes 19th-century academic painters who worked in neoclassical or realist styles with historic themes and oriental elements; they also employed rich textures and colors in clothing, drapery, interiors, and landscapes. They display a highly polished style and use mythological or historical subjects as subtle moral undercurrents. For instance, there is the anti-clerical humor of Jehan-Georges Vibert’s “The Lesson In Deportment,” a composition depicting a Cardinal, a peasant by birth, receiving a lesson in proper etiquette from a Paris Opera dance master. Vibert was a leading genre painter of his day and his works were later amassed by May Louise Maytag, daughter of the founder of the Maytag Corporation. John Jacob Astor IV, who lost his life on the “Titanic,” and William Vanderbilt, a railroad mogul, also collected Vibert’s works.

The original owners of this collection, George and Annie Walter Arents, were drawn to the academic tradition with its opulent narrative style, as were many other American collectors at the turn of the century. Mrs. Arents and her husband George, a founder of the American Tobacco Company, acquired these works over a period of time while living in Manhattan .

Although the phrase “academic art” is primarily associated with the French Academy , there were other prestigious academies in Europe, including the Academy of Unified Arts in Vienna , the Academy of Art in Munich , and the School of Fine Arts in Florence , where many artists formally trained. The French Académie des Beaux-Arts, founded in 1648, monitored the production of French art until the late1800s. An artist’s survival often depended on his or her acceptance in the annual Salons, large public exhibitions that were open only to Academy members and held for many years in the Louvre.

Many of the artists, including Jean-Jacques Henner and William Bouguereau, in “The “Elegant Salon” exhibition were recipients or candidates of the Prix-de-Rome. This exhibition also presents works from artists such as Jean-Leon Gérôme, Conrad Kiesel, an artist often linked with the Pre-Raphaelites, and the luminous palette of Rudolph Ernst and other romantic European artists.