Women at Royal Academy exhibitions were often marginalized as viewers of art, even though they were
becoming more frequent buyers: they were regarded as a civilizing influence while also being suspected
of trivializing the exhibition experience with gossip and flirtation (Solkin, 2001, 6). The increasing
number of learned books and articles on matters of taste also served to exclude the poor from full
participation in “high” culture.
The distinction between the uneducated masses and a “proper” audience for art was also important in
France. Du Bos, who placed great emphasis on public responses to art as a means of appreciating and
validating it as art, nevertheless expressed a desire for the art public to be well educated (Wrigley, 1998,
109–111):
I do not include the low people among the public who are capable of pronouncing on paintings and
poems, or to decide what degree of excellence they possess. The word “public” includes here only
those who have acquired a certain illumination, either by reading or commerce with the world.
(From Réflexions Critiques, 1719; cited in Craske, 1997, 13)Later in the century, the social and cultural commentator LouisSébastien Mercier (1740–1814)
emphasized the active role of Salon audiences in the 1780s in judging and shaping the kind of art
exhibited, and mounted an attack on “snobbish fatuousness” (Crow, 1985, 101). In his Picture of Paris
(Tableau de Paris, 1782–1788), he asked nevertheless “...Does the public exist? What is the public?
Where is it?” (cited in Wrigley, 1993, 105; my translation), thus undermining any suggestion of social
unity. He generally believed that eventually the public, despite its diverse factions, would arrive at a true
judgment of art. The role of the lower orders in this process was, however, restricted: while they might be
able to comment on the general effect of a work and its naturalism, and even counter the pernicious effects
of overflattering reviews or of art made for dazzling, opulent interiors, this was not the same as offering
a more discriminating judgment (Wrigley, 1993, 106–107; Berger, 1999, 145–148). Even during the
Revolution, with the occurrence of the “open Salon” and the shift toward more popular genres, there were
fears that mass hedonism would destroy the elevated status of art (Wrigley, 1993, 113). Cochin and
Coypel distrusted the judgments of the mob, which they saw as an unstable, dangerous force (Crow, 1985,
10–14). This was a matter of sensibility (feeling and intuition) as well as education or intellect. “New
money” was not always welcome in the “community” of taste. Another critic commented:
Many people have lamented that the most beautiful monuments of antiquity were the prey of
barbarians. Without going back to such times past, are we not seeing similar things in our day, when
these superb edifices, which should be the residences of princes, become those of financiers? It seems
to be a misfortune bound to the richest productions of art, to fall into the hands of people who
appreciate less their value than that of the gold used to acquire them.
(LouisGuillaume Baillet de SaintJulien (1726–1795), Letter on Painting, Sculpture and Architecture to M*** ( Lettre sur la
peinture, la sculpture et l’architecture à M***, 1748) cited in and translated by Ebeling, 2007, 77)Such attitudes reinforce the view that the “public” was above all a set of representations, constructed
from particular ideological or institutional standpoints. The Académie royale had a vested interest in
conceiving of a cultivated, elite public to validate its highest aspirations even though it realized the actual
public was fractured and at times dissonant.
Painting for an Imperial Public
Eighteenthcentury European culture combined an impulse toward a cosmopolitan, universalizing taste,
evident for example in its recourse to classical models, with an increasing awareness of national