French Revolution, in 1790, when David and other dissident artists, who had formed a group known as
the Commune des arts, rebelled because of perceived prejudices against those practicing the “minor”
genres: they were generally barred from taking up the higher offices of the institution, which remained
exclusive to history painters. As a result of such pressures the minor genres featured more prominently
than in the past in Salon exhibitions held in 1791 and 1793 (Conisbee, 1981, 193, 199–200). The crisis
led to the closure in 1793 of the Académie, which nonetheless reopened in 1795 as part of the National
Institute of Sciences and Arts (Institut National des Sciences et des Arts) and was reinstated as a separate
Arts institution in 1816 as the School of Fine Arts (École des BeauxArts). By the time the Salon or
Academy’s exhibition of 1799 occurred, exhibited works were displayed in numerical order rather than
being grouped by genre, demonstrating the great shift that had taken place in French eighteenthcentury
attitudes to generic hierarchies.
For some artists, specialization in one genre was impractical. This was particularly true of landscape
artists, who found it difficult, certainly until the 1760s, to generate enough business from their own
specialism. Oudry, renowned for most of his career for still lifes, hunting scenes and exotic animal
portraits, was accepted initially into the Académie royale as a history painter, a fact that influenced his
careerlong emphasis on careful preparatory drawings (Bailey, 2007, 1–3; Giviskos, 2007, 75–89).
Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) was, however, exceptional in the degree to which he continued,
well into the century, to paint a range of subjects, from portraits to landscapes, scenes from contemporary
life and mythological subjects. In practice some degree of specialization remained necessary, especially
from the 1760s, from which time the landscape genre acquired greater respect in its own right and public
demand for it increased.
The descriptive terms for generic categories with which we are now so familiar (history painting,
portraiture, genre painting, landscape and still life) were not used so extensively or exclusively in the
eighteenth century. Hence the history genre might be referred to in the eighteenth century as the “high
style” or the “grand genre” (Wrigley, 1993, 292–293), and still life painters might be distinguished more
precisely as “flower painters” or as “painters of flowers and fruit.” Commercial imperatives and social
fashions could also cut across traditional or crude hierarchies; for example, in Bath, where the need to
create likenesses quickly for tourists could undermine the generally higher status of portraiture (Pointon,
1993, 2–3). The precise status of a portrait might also be determined by the way in which it was painted;
for example, whether in a decorative or grand classical manner (Myrone, 2008, 201). For much of the
century portraits continued to dominate many academy exhibitions, where they were great crowdpullers,
thus undermining the officially higher status of history paintings. Félibien’s theoretical hierarchy was
challenged increasingly by a pragmatic pluralism. In practice, academies protected and supported a wide
range of artists, styles and genres throughout the century (SchoneveldVan Stoltz, 1989, 224), and those
who operated outside academies enjoyed even greater freedoms when choosing the subject matter of their
art.