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.

The rise of landscape painting as a dominant genre in nineteenth century France was closely tied to the ongoing debate between Art and Nature. This conflict permeates the writings of poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire. While Baudelaire scholarship has maintained the idea of the poet as a strict anti-naturalist and proponent of the artificial, this paper offers a revision of Baudelaire's relation to nature through a close reading across his critical and poetic texts. The Paris Salon reviews of 1845, 1846 and 1859, as well as Baudelaire's Journaux Intimes , Paradis Artificiels and two poems that deal directly with the subject of landscape, are examined. The aim of this essay is to provoke new insights into the poet's complex attitudes toward nature and the art of landscape painting in France during the middle years of the nineteenth century. / Art History