Public consensus on matters of taste remained a fragile, and perhaps unattainable, ideal. This was
particularly the case in France, where the social order fractured so dramatically prior to and during the
events of the Revolution. Richard Wrigley (1998, 130–153) has illustrated this difficulty through
analysing the changing uses in France of the term bourgeois. Used principally to distinguish the members
of this class from those of the aristocracy, this term implied prior to the Revolution either a rank of
society bound by a restrictive desire to be “normal,” or a threat to the existing, aristocratic or “old”
social order. As wealthier members of the bourgeoisie absorbed some of the cultural tastes and material
wealth of the aristocracy, the boundaries between these ranks blurred, although modes of dress in public
venues often continued to distinguish between the two. There was some resentment from those whose
social superiority was threatened by an ascendant section of society whose preferences were often
derided as ignorant and lacking in any true nobility; their tastes in art felt to be overinfluenced by
dazzling use of color, the sensual and the decorative, and insufficiently by a classical canon. The events of
the Revolution temporarily eclipsed the issue, as the term bourgeois itself was less commonly used and
gave way to patriotic terms such as “citizen” (citoyen). Those still labeled explicitly as members of the
bourgeoisie were often persons of suspicion and there were calls for its members to join with the
“people” as part of a united third estate. Meanwhile, those who had thought of themselves before the
Revolution as bourgeois became resentful of their lack of power, especially as their “vulgar” tastes and
methods of acquiring wealth continued to come under fire in the late 1790s, when they were suspected of
supporting the demise of grand history painting at the Salons. With such antagonisms rife, and a wealthy
middle class pulled between the competing claims of people and nobles, any notion of a unified, national
“public” for art remained an ideal rather than a reality (Crow, 1985, 17–20, 178–258).
In Britain at this time social and political divisions – for example, between Whigs and Tories, Catholics
and Protestants, Church of England and dissenters – also created differences in taste (Brewer, 1997,
xxviii). The Revolution in France provoked there distinctions in the tastes of royalists and antiroyalists,
not only in the choice of satirical targets in print culture but also in the extent to which the theme of
“liberty” was foregrounded in history paintings. While exhibition crowds included a broadening social
range, an increasing emphasis on individualism and private life also served to undermine any possible
consensus in taste.
Divergences in taste were inevitable in an age when social hierarchies were modified or softened rather
than abolished. In Britain, the 1688 “Glorious Revolution” had proclaimed the potential for all freeborn
subjects to lead improving lives. However, both the government and public services remained dominated,
throughout the eighteenth century, by the hereditary nobility (Craske, 2000, 14–15). In the art world, the
patronage of wealthy aristocrats remained important, alongside the growing power of market forces and
the “leveling” principles of conduct drawn from a respect for civic humanism and public spirit. Reynolds
expressed the need for Academy artists to prioritize the tastes of an elite public over those of an
undiscriminating, less educated crowd (Solkin, 1993, 178, 273; Fenton, 2006, 92–93; Brewer, 1997, 96).
Justifying the introduction of a oneshilling entrance charge for exhibitions of the Society of Artists,
Samuel Johnson stated:
...everyone knows that all cannot be judges or purchasers of works of art.
(Society of Artists of Great Britain, A Catalogue of the Pictures, Sculptures, Models, Drawings and Prints, etc., London, 1762, iv–
v, cited in Matheson, 2001, 40)The dilettanti (connoisseurs and those who “dabbled” in art) and members of the upper echelons of
fashionable society attended Reynolds’ lectures. Visual representations of the 1781 RA exhibition show a
considerable number from such backgrounds in the crowds. Goya was wary of the ignorant multitude,
taking against those with insufficient aesthetic awareness to appreciate his early Cathedral paintings.