Collection at Versailles. The Salons were not, however, the only occasions on which the public could
view works by its contemporary artists. The works produced by those aspiring to the Rome prize, for
example, were available to view, if briefly and just once a year, and a competition for the Académie’s
history painters in 1727 sought the views of the (educated) public as well as generating important sales to
the royal court.
Due to pressure from the radical artistic faction the Commune des arts, and a National Assembly edict, the
1791 Salon and others held in the 1790s were open to any artists who wished to exhibit: critics
complained that the standard had dropped (Wrigley, 1993, 67, 141–142). While an entrance fee had been
charged in preRevolutionary Salons, those of the 1790s were free and this led to claims that the “high”
domain of art was descending again to the level of popular spectacle, even though Revolutionary
authorities promoted the exhibitions as an expression of the new patriotism. Issues of hierarchy remained
controversial. For most of the century the Salon livrets listed works according to their rank in the
hierarchy of genres – history paintings first and to the Academic rank of the artists who had produced
them. The 1791 Salon challenged the status quo by placing less emphasis on these hierarchies and more
on public taste. Twelve commissioners were appointed from among artists and amateurs as judges; entries
were divided into three “qualities” or grades, with members of the public consulted as to whether works
should be upgraded or downgraded. In 1789 and 1791 the art dealer JeanBaptistePierre Le Brun
(1748–1813) held expositions de la jeunesse (“young artist exhibitions”) also intended to be less
exclusive than the Salons.
The exposure of works of art in France to a broader public was in part a consequence of the perception
that the nation was beginning to lag behind some of its neighbors in the creation of public museums,
including in 1753 the British Museum, the first national public museum in the world, which was set up to
display “world” culture (Crow, 1985, 9). Other museums or collections had been opened to the public in
Grand Tour venues such as Rome, Florence and Venice, and in other locations including Potsdam (1764)
and Haarlem (1784). In sixteenthcentury Rome, papal collections of antiquities, at the time regarded as
distinctively “pagan” artifacts rather than “art,” had been made available to the public at the
Conservators’ Palace (Palazzo dei Conservatori) on the Capitol, the public Capitoline Museum opening
in 1734. Papal collections grew significantly throughout the eighteenth century, although they were later
plundered in the Napoleonic era. Fine art objects, for example, the famous sculptures Laocoön, Antinous
and the Apollo Belvedere could be viewed relatively easily by arrangement;for example, at the Belvedere
Sculpture Courtyard at the Vatican (Clark, 1966–1967, 141–142; Coltman, 2006, 123). The Borghese
Collections were also open to Grand Tourists in Rome (Paul, 2008). The Public Sculpture Gallery
(Statuario Pubblico) in Venice was open in the eighteenth century to the public at large. The Uffizi in
Florence was among other institutions that welcomed Grand Tour visitors and, throughout the eighteenth
century, many public Italian museums and galleries (including those at the Capitol) were redeveloped or
opened in order to meet demand. The Academy of San Luca (Rome) also occasionally opened its doors to
the public in order to allow them to see its permanent collection. Germany followed the example of Italy
and France in the later eighteenth century, by beginning to open more art to public access.
There were motives internal to France for the expansion of public opportunities to view art there. These
included prior to the Revolution the desire to add to the glory of the French monarchy and the need to
advertise its commissions, an expanding critical art press and rising levels of public literacy and interest
in the arts. Although, in Britain, the art establishment tended to operate more independently of the
monarchy, the other factors mentioned here did apply and a similar range of causes affected the growing
public accessibility of art in most European countries.
The situation in Britain provided a similar mix of formal Royal Academy exhibitions (the first being held