This thesis provides the first detailed study of the jury of the Paris Fine Art Salon under the July Monarchy and Second Republic. In 1831, Louis-Philippe delegated the role of jury to the members of the first four sections of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. This thesis analyses the diverse composition of the July Monarchy jury and offers the first account of its procedures and decisions based on a rigorous examination of archival sources. It also examines the nature and extent of the growing opposition to the jury, its eventual abolition in 1848 and the decisions taken in forming a new jury under the Second Republic. In so doing it reveals the failure of the king and his arts administration to respond to the aspirations and expectations of the artistic community under the post-revolution constitutional monarchy. It also shows how the jury’s diverse membership sparked conflict, notably between a conservative group of architects and certain more open-minded members of the painting section, as it sought to adjust its academic values and expectations in response to the artistic developments of the period. My examination of the opposition to the jury among artists and art journalists during this period brings to light the key issues surrounding admission to the Salon at the time. Finally, the analysis of the Second Republic reveals the ways in which this opposition was temporarily satisfied by reforms to the jury, examining the significance of changes not only to its composition, but also to its procedures. At each stage the thesis challenges the simplistic misrepresentations of the Salon jury’s procedures and decisions prevalent during the July Monarchy itself and subsequently in the history of the emergence of modern art in France during the nineteenth century.

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803-1863) set out on his only trip to Greece and Turkey in 1828 to return to France and produce visual images of the Orient at a time when no major European artist had traveled to the Near East and at a time when the Orient had yet to be experienced, understood, and interpreted. Decamps’ highly original and personal interpretation of the Orient in painting has been studied by present-day scholars exclusively within the context of Romantic Orientalist genre painting. Studying criticism written on his work throughout the 19th century and working closely with his paintings, certain issues in his Orientalist paintings question the longstanding categorization of his work as solely Romantic Orientalist genre paintings. The fact that the artist never returned to the Orient; the fact that he invested his Orientalist landscapes with a Rembrandesque rather than Oriental light; his constant inclusion of contrasting opposites in the ostensibly subdued compositions he produced; the striking differences between his Oriental visual expressions and those of his Romantic contemporaries; and his own sentiment of being a failed artist, reveal alternative, less settled, readings of his work. Studying Decamps’ Orientalist oeuvre in its social and political contexts and taking into account the artist’s personal ambitions demonstrates the lasting resonance of this work, of the artist’s highly original working methods, and of his innovative technique. This study provides an assessment of Decamps’ Oriental work; it also delineates its relevance and influence in movements beyond Romanticism and into trends that developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2008-12-11 20:43:05.08