Figure 1.5 Roderick Chalmers: The Incorporation of Wrights and Masons in Front of the Palace of
Holyrood House, oil on canvas, 104.4 × 182.1 cm, 1720. Trade Incorporation of Wrights and Masons of
Edinburgh.
Source: Trade Incorporation of Wrights and Masons of Edinburgh.In 1762 the Dictionary of the French Academy (Nouveau Dictionnaire de l’Académie) pointed out in its
formal definition of the term “artist,” which had previously been used to refer also to scientists, that
genius, as well as the manual skill associated more closely with crafts and the decorative arts, were both
essential qualifications. It asserted that the term “artist” should be used of “he who works in an art in
which genius and a skilled hand must coexist” (my translation) (Académie française, 1762, I, 107).
Furthermore, its definition of “genius” (génie) referred to qualities of “Talent, inclination, or natural
disposition for something estimable and belonging to the mind” (my translation). It went on to associate
this term with “doing something of one’s own invention” (my translation) (Académie française, 1762, I,
814), thus differentiating “art” from more repetitive or functional forms of visual culture. Meanwhile, the
term “artisan” was still defined as “A worker in a mechanical art” and was associated with the term
métier (“trade” or “craft”) as well as with the running of a shop (Académie française, 1762, I, 107). In
Britain, Reynolds reinforced such prejudices through the statement in his 1770 Discourse: “However the
mechanic and ornamental arts may sacrifice to fashion, she [fashion] must be entirely excluded from the
Art of Painting” (cited in Saumarez Smith, 2012, 160). Such distinctions continued to cause tensions.
French coiffeurs were among those who sought to call themselves “artists,” both for reasons of status and
in order to be free of the trade restrictions imposed by the guilds. They wanted to distance themselves
from more “mechanical” tradesmen (such as barbers) by stressing their “genius”; and aspiring (ultimately
without success) to run academies (Falaky, 2013). It is perhaps ironic that by the end of the eighteenth
century the Académie royale in Paris itself came to be regarded as a bastion of the closet favoritism,
protectionism and the rulebound work of “trade” previously associated with the guilds, thus inspiring