Censorship and Anonymity in
Eighteenth-Century French Art Criticism
RICHARD WRIGLEY
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preoccupations and priorities which shaped the writing
of Salon criticism.
It could be said that art criticism in this period evolved
as a delayed reaction to the institution of regular public
exhibitions in 1737. It took some ten years for the
production of criticism to escalate beyond a handful of
what were litde more than polite ample rendus, and it was
only from the mid-1740s that die Academy had to take
account of any substantial body of criticism. Indeed,
criticism from outside the confines of its members and
co-opted non-artists was a novel phenomenon for this
royally privileged corporate body. At the outset, the
academicians had, as they saw it, candidly displayed
dieir works and expected respectful admiration from the
ranks of die connoisseurs;2 they were correspondingly
disconcerted when they encountered less deferential
dissatisfaction. That this came from a lay audience
which was incapable of assessing the technical substance
of works of art, and concentrated instead — with varying
degrees of sophistication - on the choice and rendition of
subject matter, frequently making pedantic observations
on points of detail, proved infuriating to artists. Their
protectors were more concerned by the demeaning
public spectacle that was created when the Salon, often
apostrophised as the 'Temple of the Arts', was invaded
by the improprieties of criticism.
Literary anonymity originated for both social and political reasons. On the one hand, the allusive literature of
coteries encouraged the disguise of authorship - at least
as far as the title page was concerned; the anonymity or
pseudo-anonymity of the author was analogous to the
coded identification of characters in novels only accessible to the initiate.2* On the odier hand, in a different
sphere of writing, it was a direct result of the rigorous
policy of censorship which had originally been imposed
to stifle the expression of religious and political dissent at
the time of the Reformation.3 The measures that were
then made available to help enforce the control of
publishing were draconian - the death penalty was in
theory applicable. The continuing existence of such
severe measures reflected the rigour with which public
morals were watched over, and Church and State upheld
as unimpeachable pillars of authority. In practice in the
eighteenth century, punitive action amounted to the
confiscation of the offending item and of the printing
equipment, and the imprisonment or fining of the author
- if apprehended — and of the publisher and bookseller
(who were, of course, usually the same person). Such
sentences were handed out when the two bodies of
Church and State or their representatives were attacked
or slighted.
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It is a fact which has hardly been remarked upon, that
the great majority of art criticism produced in France
during the eighteenth century was, with a handful of
exceptions, anonymous. As a result of contemporary
comments and bibliographical detective work a certain
proportion of attributions can be made, although it has
to be admitted that the paucity of evidence renders many
of these provisional; it is far easier to cast doubts on the
reliability of an attribution than to come up with a more
plausible alternative. However, as I hope to show in this
brief survey, whilst such purely bibliographical and
biographical problems are in many respects a frustrating
obstacle to the study of this body of writing - and they
have not yet been systematically addressed in a sufficiently rigorous way1 — a consideration of the general
phenomenon of anonymity raises fundamental questions
about the status of art criticism in the eighteenth
century: who wrote it, and for what reasons? how was it
received by the Salon-going public and by the Academy
and its members? and how did these reactions and the
adoption of anonymity influence the form that criticism
took? In being anonymous art criticism is, of course,
unexceptional in the context of French writing in the
eighteenth century. It is the aim of this article to examine
the particular circumstances surrounding the anonymity
of this body of writing, some of the consequences this
had, and to focus on one of the most important factors in
this - the threat and enforcement of censorship.
The criticism under review is predominantly that
written about the Salons, that is, those exhibitions held
regularly in Paris in the Palais du Louvre by the
Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture from 1737,
which are by far the most prominent public manifestation of contemporary art during the period. The role of
the Academy as an institution and the activities of some
of its members will necessarily require particular attention. We will have to take into account the evolution and
diversity of criticism and changes in the policy of
censorship through these five decades, and attempt to
relate specific incidents to broader changes in attitudes
to the Salon, itself hardly a static phenomenon. Almost
all the criticism we are dealing with was published in the
form of pamphlets — ranging from a dozen to over a
hundred pages in length — or as reviews in periodicals.
There should be no need to argue that this body of
writing, although it contains few identifiable names and
even fewer well-known ones, constitutes an expression of
contemporary attitudes to the visual arts no less valuable
than contributions from the pens of figures already
recognised in other fields of eighteenth-century French
culture, towards whom attention tends to gravitate when
art criticism is discussed. In a sense, its perfunctory
nature revealingly throws into relief the predominant
Of approximately 150 Salon pamphlets produced up
to 1789, only a handful carried the mark of full official
approval: 'avec approbation et permission', and the
censor's imprimatur. Many of these pamphlets were given
fake or fictional places of publication consistent with
having been granted 'permission tacite' and were in all
likelihood printed in Paris. As the exhibition only lasted
one month, Salon pamphlets needed to be rapidly
produced and distributed for public consumption; submission for approval might delay publication disastrously, and on occasion the authorities took full advantage of this to diminish the impact of criticism.
The exhibition itself was subject to comparable
imposition of censorship. Even before it opened, works
intended for the Salon could face exclusion as a result of
official disapproval. As is well known, politically provocative works were kept out of the 1789 Salon.6 In 1777,
the entry in the livret for Caffieri's project for a tomb to
General Richard de Montgomery, who had been killed at
Quebec in 1775 fighting British troops, was censored to
omit anything that might offend the British government.7
Works could be removed from the exhibition in response
to influential objections. In 1 785, the disapproval of the
cure of St Germain l'Auxerrois (the church that stands
opposite the East facade of the Louvre), caused the
removal - in fact to the artist's studio - of Pajou's Psyche
abandonne'c for being overly voluptuous.8 That equally
erotic paintings by Lagrenee le jeune were left undisturbed suggests that sculpture was found more tangibly
provocative and therefore corrupting. Similarly,
Baudouin's Le Confessionel, a scene of light flirtation,
18
offended the archbishop because of its inappropriate
setting, and was taken down from the 1763 Salon.9
The criteria according to which censorship of art
criticism was applied followed from the general concerns
of surveillance: the protection of religion, morals and the
state - in this case the institution of the Academy.
Reaction to direct and undisguised criticism of the
Academy was vigorous. The Dialogues sur la Peinture
(1773), a pamphlet bitterly sarcastic about the Academy,
and its jealous protection of a virtual monopoly over the
painting profession, its incompetent professors, propagating a ridiculous artificial manner of painting, and
above all about the Premier Peintre, Pierre, who was the
butt of violent derision, was suppressed as soon as it
appeared.10 Similarly, at the instigation of the Comte
d'Angiviller, then Directeur des Batiments and the
minister responsible for the Academy, a passage
denigrating the Academy from Le Miracle de nos jours
(1779), which had been submitted for approval, had to
be cut out. In this case, the subjects of certain history
paintings had been ridiculed, and Angiviller was not
prepared to stand for this undermining of his policy of
encouraging the genre: academic painting was ultimately
an emanation of the throne and not to be taken lightly."
The other subject which provoked censorship and
elicited very strong reaction from individual artists was
the casting of insulting aspersions on their character or
personal morals. The Finance Minister Calonne had the
Avis important d'une femme (1785) confiscated because it
included the insinuation that Madame Vigee-Lebrun
was his mistress — for her a personal insult, for him a
political attack.12 A verse in a 1783 review (the Supplement
to Marlborough au Sallon), asserted that Vincent and
Madame Labille-Guiard had been lovers (not improbable, since Labille-Guiard had obtained a legal separation from her husband in 1779, and was a pupil of
Vincent's; they were to marry in 1800). Labille-Guiard
sought the help of her friend, the poet and playwright
J. F. Ducis, who wrote to the Comtesse d'Angiviller in
the hope of persuading her husband to order police
action to suppress the pamphlet. As he wrote, 'il n'est
pas ici question de critiques d'ouvrages; ces couplets
attaquent les moeurs de ces artistes et sont vrayment
diffamatoires' (it is not a question of criticism of paintings; these couplets attack the morals of artists, and are
seriously diffamatory).13
The case of Labille-Guiard is revealing also of the
kinds of critical precautions taken to preserve anonymity. Labille-Guiard requested that police investigations
to discover the identity of the author, which had got as
far as interrogating the printer, be discontinued, for she
feared that greater hurt might result if it was revealed, as
she evidently considered possible, that it had been
someone known to her. Nonetheless, she expressed her
indignation that such verses had been passed by a
censor, and the pamphlet granted a 'permission tacite'
for publication. In the event, the printer who had had the
pamphlet distributed explained that the author was
unknown to him, for the manuscript had been delivered
by an intermediary, who had also done the same the year
of the previous Salon.
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In order to control the flow and content of what was
published, all books had to pass through the hands of a
censor responsible for bestowing state approval for
printing and distribution. This approval took a variety of
forms, which were adapted to the fact that, in practice, it
was impossible to survey and control all of the vast
volume of publications produced. Thus, a publication
might not be considered fit to receive the formal imprint
of approval by a royal censor but nevertheless be given a
'permission tacite' and freely published with the caveat
that a foreign place of publication be substituted for
Paris so as to conceal effectively the state's connivance in
its appearance. Those writings which were considered
most outspokenly critical or subversive of authority and
religion deliberately bypassed such official channels and
were printed abroad or eke produced clandestinely in
France, and it was these publications that were the main
target of the state's repressive legislation. Most of the
works expressing what were then castigated as the
subversive ideas of the philosophies were published
clandestinely, and, as Robert Darnton has drawn to our
attention, in this proscribed fate they joined company
with a vast body of scandalous and scurrilous ephemera.4
However, small pamphlets were not usually subject to
the full system of control, and were dealt with by the
Lieutenant de Police, to whom a manuscript was supposed to be submitted prior to publication. He might, in
the case of Salon criticism, submit this in turn to the
Directeur des Batiments for guidance as to its
acceptability.5
However, as this instance demonstrates, what the
academicians expected in the way of censorship — even in
the matter of their personal reputations, regardless of
wounding remarks about their works - and what they
sometimes had to put up with in criticism were surprisingly inconsistent. As the M'emoires secrets observed of the
Lettre sur ['exposition des oumages (1769), the pamphlet 'fera
If Pierre had been able to get to the bottom of the
Journal de Paris's writings on art a few years earlier, he
would have received a nasty surprise, for up until
perhaps 1782, their arts correspondent was none other
than Antoine Renou, the assistant secretary of the
Academy, who wrote for the Journal from its inception in
1777. Renou himself was to admit this in 1787 when he
was accused of having written the journal's Salon review
of that year; he explained that he had relinquished this
activity precisely because he had been encouraged to
take an anti-academic line." That someone in his
position was prepared to contribute regular art criticism
to the first Parisian daily newspaper on an anonymous
basis, for motives that, in the absence of any further
evidence, seem to have been largely didactic, is indicative of the extraordinary duplicity that involvement in
such an activity encouraged. Another example of this is
the case of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, who produced
several pamphlets on the Salon - in the main refuting
criticism, but also articulating candid and judiciously
critical judgements - unknown even to someone as wellinformed as the connoisseur and collector Mariette.18
These examples in the sphere of art criticism are not,
however, exceptional within the context of more general
reactions to the excessive demands of censorship. The
concealment of the proofs of the banned Encyclope'die by
Malesherbes, the overseer of the application of censorship and the control of publishing, is perhaps the most
celebrated instance of divergence between an individual's public role and personal actions.19
In line with this less than watertight application of
censorship is the fact that when criticism caused offence
and anonymity was penetrated, the action that was taken
seems to have involved a considerable degree of
arbitrariness, but the threat of serious punishment
nonetheless encouraged the safety of incognito. When the
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 6:2 1983
pamphlet Ah! Ah! Encore une Critique du Sallon in 1779, he
was able to defuse this transgression and the outrage of
the academicians by producing a friend who was not an
academic pupil and was prepared to swear that he, and
not Radet, had been responsible for the review. To the
frustrated wrath of Pierre and the academicians before
whom he had been summoned with a view to reprimanding him, Radet and his friend succeeded in getting away
scot free20 — the scope of purely academic jurisdiction and
retribution was clearly limited to their own confraternity.
However, in the case of Gorsas's somewhat sneering and
deliberately provocative review of the Salon in 1785,
Promenades de Crites au Sallon - of which Le Vacher de
Chamois wrote in his Costumes et Annales des Grands
Theatres that 'il n'y a pas ici une sottise qui n'alt son but,
pas une impertinence qui ne soit motive' (there is not a
joke that does not have a target, not a single impertinence that is not carefully considered)21 — the offended
artists took matters into their own hands in order to
ensure efficacious retribution and had the author beaten
up. Gorsas may not have expected such a violent
reaction to his pamphlet, and his anonymity seems only
to have been partial for he used what was in effect his
pen-name, Crites, but his rough treatment had the
reverse consequence from what was presumably
intended, for he published a supplement to his pamphlet
on the Salon, and returned to Salon criticism the
following exhibition.
In 1769 the painter Casanova succeeded in having a
severe penalty exacted as a result of being able to pull
some unusually powerful strings. Having taken offence at
the way his work had been reviewed by Freron's .Annie
litteraire — disputing what amounted to a suggestion of
plagiarism — he not only went to the relatively unusual
length of writing to the Mercure, rebuffing the criticisms
made but persuaded the Chevalier d'Arcq to pressurise
the Comte de Florentin, a Minister of State, to have the
editor and probable author Freron — who had in fact
been advised by Cochin - imprisoned for a day.22 This is
consistent with the fairly simple rule that the more
powerful the offended party, the swifter the penalty. In
1785 the Journal de Paris was suspended for three weeks
for as little as having imprudently published some
slightly improper verses implicating a German princess
who was not even in Paris at the time, but sufficiently
offended to demand that the periodical pay for this
insult.23
Did the Academy have a consistent policy in relation
to the censorship of criticism, or was their response more
in the way of ad hoc retaliation? As the Directeur des
Batiments who, in the 1740s, first had to cope with the
problem of unwanted Salon criticism, Le Normand de
Toumehem simply resolved to ignore 'd'aussy impertinents auteurs' (such impertinent authors), dismayed
that Academicians should be disturbed by 'des sottises
pareilles' (such stupidities) — though this was at a time
when irreverent vaudevilles, parodies and bizarrely
conceived pamphlets had yet to contribute to the genre.24
A satire of 1748 on the Academy's elitist organisation
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d'autant plus de peine a racademie que le gouvemement
jusqui'ici tres attentif a empccher tout ce qui pourroit
offenser l'amour propre de ces messieurs, paroit avoir
approuve cette brochure qui se vend publiquement et
avec permission' (will cause all the more pain to the
Academy, since the government, up until now very
attentive to prevent the spread of anything that could
offend the self-regard of the academicians, has evidently
approved this brochure, which is on sale publicly and
with 'permission').15 Similarly, in 1785, Pierre was
aghast that the. Journal de Paris, a newspaper that, as he
ruefully pointed out, was authorised by the government,
had been allowed to publish what he considered a 'cruel
attack' on Peyron (this amounted at worst to a suggestion of plagiarism).16 Pierre was in fact less concerned
here with the application of censorship than with the
identification of those responsible for this 'attack', and
the stamping out of any renegade academic opinion.
sometime litterateur and pupil of the Academy, J. B.
Radet, was in fact rightly accused of having written the
It is apparent that the authorities - the Directeur des
Batiments, the officers of the Academy, principally the
Premier Peintre, and the Lieutenant de Police - were not
sure how best to deal with the growing volume of
criticism — by the 1780s there were sometimes more than
twenty reviews, including pamphlets and periodical
articles. Attitudes and reactions were determined by a
strong desire to eradicate - or at least emasculate —
criticism, but were frustrated by an awareness that this
was both impractical and counterproductive. Indeed, on
some occasions censorship was not imposed because it
was decided that to go through with the procedure would
have been to credit criticism with an importance that it
did not deserve.27 And it was well-known that no
pamphlets were so avidly sought after as those which had
been confiscated.
Charles-Nicolas Cochin, a senior academician
involved in much of the Academy's administration and
himself the royal censor for 'Beaux-Arts' between 1752
and 1787,27* was active in a series of initiatives to curb
and temper criticism. In 1757, he was involved in the
appointment of the abbe de Condillac as censor specifically for writings on the Salon.28 At the time of the
following Salon he was consulted about the possibility of
a periodical devoted to art criticism. This he could not
support as he doubted the feasibility of securing the
appropriate contributors and maintaining the necessary
control over its tone, which could all too easily descend
into facile abuse and cheap jokes.29 Although Cochin has
not been identified as instrumental, criticism in that
year, 1759, did not appear until well into the month of
the exhibition, as the Lieutenant de Police had ensured
that publication was delayed.30 In 1763, Cochin published an anecdotal but trenchant rebuff of Salon criticism, Les MisotechniUs aux enfers, identifying - although not
by name — and damning, La Font de Saint Yenne as the
germinal figure whose Reflexions on the 1746 Salon had
been the inspiration for a crowd of less well-intentioned
imitators. For the 1767 Salon Cochin implored the
20
Lieutenant de Police, Sartines, to insist that critics put
their names to reviews as a precondition of granting
permission for publication. Criticism as such need not be
put a stop to - witness his consideration of the 1759
periodical - but it was hoped that if self-identification
were made compulsory this might render the critics 'plus
circonspect et plus honnete' (more circumspect and more
restrained).31 In the event, not one author was willing to
comply and no pamphlets were published, with the
partial exception of Mathon de la Cour, who at first only
wished to put the name 'de la Cour' to his review, but in
the end was required to add the distinctive Mathon.
However, after the first instalment appeared he decided
to discontinue the piece, for he had apparently been
informed that such writings were incompatible with his
candidacy for the Academic des Inscriptions.32
At this point, unfortunately for Cochin, but fortunately for the study of art criticism in eighteenth-century
France, Pierre, the Premier Peintre, a longstanding
antagonist of his, decided to take issue with this policy.
As far as Pierre was concerned, to go to such trouble in
order to suppress criticism suggested that artists, and the
Academy, were afraid of it (that the 1749 Salon was
cancelled owing to artists' unwillingness to participate
after the barrage of criticism they received in 1748 seems
evidence enough that they were indeed daunted by the
prospect), although as we have seen in the cases of
Peyron and Radet, Pierre was not prepared to see his
authority and the esteem of the Academy subverted by
artists contributing to criticism. He favoured an attitude
of dismissive laisser faire and considered that 'il falloit
narguer les critiques' (one should merely snap one's
fingers at critics)33 — a response that shows a lack of
awareness or concern for the Salon as a market place,
and the vulnerability of artists' reputations in the eyes of
their public and potential patrons, as well as an unpreparedness to admit that any of the criticism written on
the Salon might be justified. Cochin was so stung by
Pierre's ill-natured interference that he abandoned his
campaign. The Abbe Aubert, editor of the official organs
the Gazette de France and the Petites AJJkhes, unsuccessfully
attempted a comparable initiative in respect of periodicals - although for reasons more egotistical than public
spirited — asking Angiviller that all Salon reviews be
submitted to him, and also claiming the right to have the
names of the authors disclosed to him.34
In an individual role, apart from writing retaliatory
pamphlets, Cochin continued to be influential as regards
the fate of some criticism. In 1771 Daudet de Jossan
smoothed the path for the appearance of his Letlre de M.
Raphael le jeune by showing it to Cochin and evidently
gained his consent, even though several unidentified
artists had unsuccessfully attempted to have it stopped35
- it would be interesting to know how they foresaw that
the pamphlet was to be unpalatably mocking. The
following Salon, Daudet was less privileged, for those
artists who considered themselves roughly handled in
1771 sought the intervention of the Academy's protector,
the Abbe Terrai, and thorough censorship was applied:
'En sorte que cet ecrit a eu toutes les peines du monde a
percer, et qu'il paroit dans un etat pitoyable, corrige,
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slightingly suggested that whilst the officers were quite
content that some of their less outstanding members
should be targets for criticism, they found it intolerable
that they themselves should have to 'passer par touttes
les rigueurs d'un examen captieux' (to be subjected to all
the rigours of a captious (public) scrutiny),25 and, in all
likelihood, emerge with their reputations — the result of
the efforts of friends and protectors — seriously damaged.25 The wish to eliminate such unwanted
accompaniments to the Salons was strong, but found
expression in resentful disdain. And we can find exactly
the same sentiments, indeed, with a more definite call for
action, in those critics who saw their own respectable
and well-intentioned efforts being compromised by provocative and sometimes deliberately antagonistic
reviews: the Abbe Gougenot wished that these writings
could be suppressed, and the compliant philosophe,
Grimm, was prepared to countenance such a policy to
deal with 'des auteurs fameliques, obscurs et meprises
[qui] travaillent a nuire du vrai talent' (starving, obscure
and scorned writers [who] merely work to discourage
true artistic talent).26
However, as Angiviller realised, if he were to press for
a policy of censorship sufficiently rigorous to stem the
flow of criticism, the measures that would have been
necessary would only have fuelled antagonism aimed at
the Academy as an authoritarian, protective institution,
aggressively shielding its members' reputations. In practice, official tolerance - or stoic indifference - went so far
as to permit pamphlets to be on sale at the bottom of the
stairs leading to the exhibition.40 Nevertheless, given the
example of Angiviller's systematic eradication of professional competition to the Academy - abolishing, in the
name of freedom, the Academie de Saint Luc, banning
any exhibitions in the Parisian pleasure palace of the
Colisee after the single initiative there in 1776, refusing
to encourage or co-operate with Pahin de la Blancherie's
Salon de la Correspondance, and stifling other independent attempts to set up competitions or lotteries designed
to stimulate non-academic artists — such zealous
monopolising of artistic production can only have
encouraged a fear in the minds of critics that a policy of
total censorship was being contemplated and might well
be enforced.
An awareness of the threat of such a policy is
registered by the dire warnings of the serious consequences for French art expressed by those critics of a
broadly democratic point of view.41 They asserted that
the health of artistic production depended on regular
public scrutiny and reaction to works, and derived their
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 6.2 1983
critical authority from a claim to represent the general
public, presented as an audience free from the constraints of institutional favouritism and social deference.
Such critics baulked at the state's propensity to impose a
police on the arts, as on other aspects of social life. The
possible elimination of criticism provoked an energetic
warning of the artistic decline that would follow from one
of the most outspoken of these critics, the author of Encore
un Coup de Patte (1787). According to this writer, it had
even been contemplated that entry to the Salon be
restricted as one means of silencing not only criticism but
'la voix publique' itself. Happily, the danger had passed:
'les clameurs des mauvais peintres ont etc repoussees
comme leurs ouvrages. Les critiques se sont multipliees,
la verite s'est fait entendre' (the clamouring of bad
painters has been ignored, like their works. Critics have
multiplied, and truth has made itself heard).42
Angiviller baulked at criticism because of its tendency
to be irreverent, and the vulgarity of its tone. To the
author of a programme aimed at ennobling a pedagogically rigorous and morally upright academic regime,
such pamphlets as Changez.-moi cttte tete, ou Lustucru au
Salon (1783), or Le Cousin Jacques hors du Salon, folie sans
consequence (1787), were anathema. Secondly, as has been
mentioned above, direct criticism of the Academy was
clearly intolerable. In fact, only a small proportion of
criticism was of the latter cast, for which anonymity was
a necessary precaution against retribution, and it seems
to have been the case that concealment of identity was
often only nominal. Authors confident that they were
unlikely to cause offence were prepared to submit their
pamphlets to the scrutiny of a censor and subsequently
to acknowledge having written them. Indeed, there is
certainly some truth in the claim made by detractors of
criticism that authors' prime motivation was an opportunistic desire to make a name for themselves by showing
off putative critical acumen in the judging of works of
art.43 This seems partly to be borne out by the fact that
several authors were in their early twenties at the time
they wrote their pamphlets; still hoping to establish a
reputation and position they thus had nothing to lose in
the way of compromising themselves.44 Gougenot retrospectively described his review, the Letlre sur lapcinlure, la
sculpture el ['architecture a M*** as an 'ecart de jeunesse' (a
youthful folly).45
In the eighteenth century, the genre of art criticism
was in large part made up of occasional contributions by
a miscellaneous collection of writers and gens d'esprit for
whom contemporary art was of only passing concern.
This was inevitable, for the Salons were relatively
infrequent and there was little scope for the sustained
production of art criticism: the word salonnia, often
misapplied to eighteenth-century criticism, was an
invention of the nineteeth century. In the eighteenth
century, the rules of the game had still to be drawn up,
and a vocabulary and style appropriate to the task
evolved. A conventional language of art did, of course,
exist, based on the classification of the components of
painting established in the seventeenth century. This
came to be eclectically augmented by more or less
spontaneous borrowing from a variety of literary, theatri2!
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defigure, en un mot sans nul interet ni sarcasme' (with
the result that this pamphlet only appeared with great
difficulty, and in a pitiful, revised state — in a word,
lacking any interest or any sarcasm).36
Cochin's approach to the problem of the control of
criticism reflects the fact that, with Angiviller (Directeur
des Batiments from 1774), he recognised that it was
neither possible nor ultimately desirable to attempt to
halt reviews of the Salon entirely. If guided by tact and
motivated by a good-natured and modest desire to assess
the production of the Academy, such writing could be
beneficial to artists' progress. But when it transgressed
the conventions of moderation and decorum that operated in social intercourse, and became no longer 'honnete', then it was bound to provoke artists to decry what
they considered to be abuse, and encourage official
censure. In an article on criticism in the Mercure in 1769,
which expressed extensive reservations about the
advisability of allowing excessively derogatory criticism
to appear, the author concluded by justifying his reflections as those of'un simple citoyen qui fait a la verite, un
des plus beaux arts qu'ait invente l'adresse humaine,
mais qui aime encore plus l'ordre et la justice' (an
ordinary citizen who in truth practises one of man's
finest arts, but who is above all attached to order and
justice).37 The other side of the coin is illustrated in a
letter from Cochin to his friend J. B. Descamps, in which
he gave a pithily candid account of the 1789 Salon. He
observed that his severe comments were equivalent to
those found in pamphlets, but 'quand on cause avec un
ami, on ne mesure pas toujours ses expressions' (one
does not always restrain one's expressions when chatting
to a friend).38
In the case of periodicals, where articles are almost
without exception unsigned, remarks of this sort are
more of a reassuring formality to the artists than a
defensive critical credo. In such a context, the role of the
review is seen as reportage of public opinion, although
unsolicited reviews were also published.51 It is, however,
unusual to encounter a periodical review having anyElives a M.L.F. sur Us Reflexions; the Abbe Gougenot knew
thing like the provocative tone that is found in
of his identity, and Bachaumont and Mariette had been
pamphlets. Periodicals had to be authorised by the state
consulted by La Font when he was writing the pamphlet.
and were thus highly vulnerable to the imposition of
Both of them advised him strongly against the proposal,
censorship and had to watch their step accordingly.
but neither seems to have leaked his name— Bachaumont
even had to tolerate the annoying suggestion that he was
Increasingly, from the late 1770s the problem of
the author.49 Nevertheless, there is no evidence to show
having to justify anonymity was to a large extent sidethat La Font's pamphlet caused him any difficulties
stepped by the adoption of a variety of literary and
worse than private rebuke, and he went on to publish not
anecdotal devices by means of which the authorial voice
only a supplementary defence of the Reflexions, which had
was transposed to situations or substituted by characters
a second, expanded edition in 1752, but reiterated his
which had their own built-in raison d'etre, ranging from
point of view on the 1753 Salon with his Sentiments sur presenting the Salon review as a dream to the transcripQuelques Ouvrages de Peinture, Sculpture el Gravure e'crits a un tion of a manuscript found on the steps of the Louvre.
particulier en province. Whether La Font enjoyed apparent The scope here is extensive and need only be broadly
immunity because he was protected by his respectable
indicated in order to draw attention to some of the
The authorship of the Reflexions was much discussed
for the pamphlet had caused a considerable stir as a
result of the unusually opinionated censure it contained.
Within certain circles the name of La Font de Saint
Yenne was demonstrably known: a pamphlet published
the same year had the revealing title Leltres des Jeunes
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status as an ex-courtier, or because the Academy was
simply not privy to his identity, or rather that the need
for greater censorship and discouragement of criticism
had not yet come to seem acute at this period, we have no
way of knowing.49*
In the face of official and artistic antagonism, how did
critics defend their anonymous position? That they were
prepared to do so indicates a seriousness of purpose: it
would have been easy to ignore objections that they were
hiding themselves and thus their real, and by implication
less honourable, motives - professional jealousy and the
spirit of cabal. There was a consistent line of attack
against criticism on the grounds that since artists were
necessarily obliged to present their works as their own, it
was unfair for critics not to reveal their identities and
exploit the licence this permitted, if not, indeed, encouraged.50 In reply, it was claimed that signing a pamphlet
would have invited accusations of egotism; also, authors
claimed relatively modest status, the disclosure of which
would in no way enhance their opinions. This point was
also made by writers who asserted an individual point of
view: anonymity was retained precisely to avoid diverting attention away from the independence of the
criticisms to the personality of the author. In conjunction
with this disclaimer, it was usual to establish critical
credentials by reference to the impersonal and abstract
criteria of nature, feeling and public opinion. An individual's personal opinions were thought likely to be less
defensible, and less interesting, than a considered reflection of the public's reaction, rare though it was for any
attempt to be made at clarifying which public the critic
had in mind - a frequent bone of contention amongst
critics and their adversaries. Furthermore, critics argued
that given their avowed impartiality, it was beside the
causes de Vital present de la peinture en France avec un examen des point to quibble as to their identity: they were motivated
by the 'love of art', and only sought to take advantage of
pnncipaux ouvrages exposes au Louvre, in declaring that he
the opportunity of the Salon to assess the state of the
was completely unknown to them while 'L'Anonyme
French
school by examining the results of this exemplary
dont nous abregeons aujourd'hui l'ouvrage passe pour
public
artistic
emulation, and offering the appropriate
n'etre pas si bien cache' (the identity of the author of the
advice.
work under review is less well hidden).48
cal and musical terms of reference, and the adoption of
what might be called a conversational or colloquial
mode. The terms in which art criticism found expression
were further diversified by the appropriation of the rich
variety of contemporary pamphlet forms to the subject of
the Salon. Criticism was addressed to an expanding
audience, and the problem of using esoteric technical
terms emanating from the studio was much discussed,
with the more explicitly popularising types of criticism
either abjuring them as being confined and confining to
artists and their circles, or alternatively treating them
didactically. The barrier to lay commentary set up by
artists, who denied the capacity of non-artists to pass
judgement on their work, was rapidly lost sight of in the
face of an overwhelming interest in the exhibitions and a
desire to give an account of, if not to influence, public
opinion. To this extent, the genre of reviewing the Salon
was open to all comers.
Moreover, discourse upon art was a social accomplishment, above all at the time of the Salon.46 To claim the
credit for publishing a witty, apparently discerning
review would be a feather in the cap of a social acolyte.
More modest critics confessed that it was with not a little
trepidation that they undertook to essay their opinions
publicly on this unfamiliar subject.47 However, such
kudos could only accrue if the identity of the author was
appreciated. Public broadcast of such an admission
would have been clumsy and may have been seen as an
unwise insult to the Academy. Currency of such disclosure had, then, to varying degrees, to be confidential or
limited to relatively private circles. When the Journal de
Trevoux reviewed the Abbe Leblanc's pamphlet on the
1747 Salon, they.contrasted his merely nominal anonymity with that of the author of the Reflexions sur quelques
implications of the forms adopted in relation to the
phenomenon of anonymity.
On the one hand, reviews of the Salon in epistolary
form — Reflexions,
Sentiments,
and
Observations — were
For the better educated members of the public capable
of some discrimination, criticism had to be genuinely
convincing in its presentation of judgements. The adoption of an appropriately impressive and persuasive style
was one solution to the problem of establishing some
degree of hold over readers' belief in the unknown
author's knowledgeability. Mariette, who was sceptical
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 6.2 1383
Similarly, a wish to allocate judgements to figures
sanctioned by social or intellectual status also fuelled the
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common. In these pamphlets the critical voice articulated in the guise of, for example, a correspondent
writing to a friend outside Paris who had missed the
Salon, is both candid and confidential, using the pretence of privacy to ignore the requisite propriety of a
public utterance.52 Some more formal reviews adopt the
objective pose of 'historians', introducing their account
of the Salon with preambles on past art, and espouse the
role of contemporary chroniclers.53 As an adjunct to
whatever other critical credentials they may define for
themselves, critics of both kinds often invoke discriminating and impartial artists and connoisseurs as
collaborators and counsellors.
On the other hand, we find anecdotal and pseudodramatic pamphlets, where the characters and settings of
the protagonists who articulate the judgements are both
invented and drawn from the fictional, fantastic and
comic repertoire of traditional and topical vintage. By
using such characters, what could in fact be quite
pungent opinions if translated into artistic vocabulary
could be expressed in, for example, a colloquial idiom
which at one and the same time was far more widely
intelligible and also elbowed aside more nuanced judgements couched in the conventional language of art, in the
same way as more respectable connoisseurs and critics
complained that they were jostled and disturbed by the
crowds.54 But such apparendy popular modes of writing
invariably represent a condescending parodic or
caricatural point of view, which plays up the incongruous dissonance created by describing, for instance,
the reactions of a blufT bourgeois woman to the 'high art'
of the Salon.55 In the case of several pamphlets of the
1780s, the comic vaudeville settings are less a platform
for criticism in the strict sense of the word than exercises
in a popular theatrical genre. It was remarked that many
of the public approached the Salon with the same kind of
expectations as they brought to visits to theatrical
comedy, and some Salon pamphlets were tailored to
satisfy this kind of perception. This was a way of
appropriating the Salon — a display made up of imposing
history paintings and clusters of glittering and pre'cieux
cabinet pictures - to a mass audience, which tended to
treat the exhibition as a fete or spectacle, a free form of
entertainment in the enticing setting of a royal palace.56
Furthermore, whereas public acquaintance with and
hence ability to judge theatre was widespread, this was
not so with painting where 'peu de gens s'y connoissent,
et tout le monde veut s'y connoitre' (few people are
familiar with it, yet everyone wants to get to know about
it). 56 -
of the worth of lay criticism, and particularly scathing
about the cowardly adoption of anonymity, reckoned
that the prevalent superficiality of such criticism was
disguised by the assumption of an imposing tone, thus
rendering die opinions expressed disproportionately
influential.57 The editor of die Observateur litteraire warned
his readers in 1759 that the judgements on the Salon in
the Observatetir's review might be considered overly
authoritative because of the degree of celebrity that he
modesdy claimed for die periodical, and diey might be
inclined to diink diat this was being exploited to bolster
the validity of his review: he explained diat he had gone
to die trouble of airing diis matter precisely in order to
establish his integrity.58
Pamphlets were also written using influential figures
from the artistic past - Rubens, Raphael, Apelles,
Lemoine - as commentators, and characters in vogue at
the present - such as the dieatrical heroes Figaro,
Marlborough and Janot, whose popularity was exploited
to provide viable vehicles for Salon reviews. These
examples of individualising pamphlets by creating or
borrowing a fictional or historical personality were
designed to take advantage of die artistically inexperienced public, who the authors of such pamphlets
evidently hoped would be readily influenced by such
essentially extraneous but engaging factors, which operated in lieu of an actual author whose reputation could
be assessed as guidance to die credibility of the opinions
expressed. As the Encyclope'die put it in the article on
Anonymity: 'for some people an audior's name is die
most important consideration; given this diey will agree
with everything unquestioningly'.59 The immense
crowds at die Salon created what critics describe-as an
unsettling cacophony of opinion; in the context of a
supposedly widespread inability to discriminate amongst
the variety of Salon reviews available - as amongst die
exhibits — these pseudo-authorial devices were intended
as cues to readers who, faced with a gamut of conflicting
opinion, might otherwise be at a loss as to how to make a
choice amongst the pamphlets.
In terms of those factors which were considered to
contribute to influencing opinion, the prosaic phenomenon of adopting the judgements emanating from
suitably authoritative quarters was identified as playing
a role. Until such examples gained currency, it was
claimed, public opinion was prone to be somewhat
tentative. The avidity with which pamphlets were seized
on by the public was partly explained in the same way although detractors of criticism claim that readers were
more interested in the calibre of the satire than the
aesthetic perspicacity of die review.60 As the author of Le
Frondeur put it in 1785, 'la classe inferieure du peuple,
accoutume a regler ses gouts sur ceux d'un maitre,
attend que le suffrage d'un homme de marque vienne
determiner le sien' (the inferior class of the people,
accustomed to model its tastes on those of a master, waits
for the opinion of a notable man before following suit),
and went on to describe his own credentials, by contrast,
as those of an undistinguished but independent critic.61
Propheties du grand Nostradamus (1787, p.40) as 'Un
monsieur nomme PAnti-blanc', i.e. Lenoir. Although
Lenoir is a common name, this must be Alexandre
Lenoir, later founder of the Musee des Monuments
francais but at this time a pupil of Doyen - his allegiance
to his master is strongly marked in the text. A reference
in a 1789 pamphlet further suggests that the identification of Lenoir as the author of L'Ombre de Rubens had
currency at least amongst art students.71 Titles themselves sometimes include clues, for example, the Observations generales of 1783, 'par M. C***P*"l'abbe"**'
Attributions are, however relatively scarce, and it is
difficult to distinguish between those based on inside
knowledge and those that are merely speculative.
Antagonists of criticism made light of this and got
around the problem of naming names or being unable to
do so by denouncing authors as dishonourably motivated
by various forms of vindictive partis pris. It was not
uncommon to assert that jealous and unsuccessful art
students used criticism to avenge themselves on their
seniors and the Academy, venting their frustration at
being deprived by their own incompetence of the rewards
of rising through the pedagogical structure, and enjoying
the privilege of state patronage.72 Students were also
accused of writing puffs for their masters and attacking
t h e Triumuirat des arts ou Dialogue entre un peintre, un musicien
their rivals. Alexandre Lenoir's L'Ombre de Rubens in part
el un poete, sur les tableaux exposes au Louvre, arnie'e 1783. Pour
conforms to this for, although there is no evidence that
servir de continuation au 'Coup de Pattt' el a la 'Patte de
Doyen condoned his actions, his 'Rubensian' training
Velours', who, as the title and general tenor indicate, was
gave him a very unsympathetic point of view towards the
the same person, again pointed out that the attribution
dark tones and stiff figures in the works of the generation
made in the Reponse a toutes les critiques of the same year
of
young history painters, notably David, the imitation of
was wrong.671 This latter attribution mentions no name,
whose manner would, he warned, lead the French school
but may possibly correspond to the earlier invocation of
back to the childhood of art. In 1779 Durameau's pupils
Carmontelle. These examples clearly suggest that
were also suspected of pamphleteering on the part of
attribution was often an. unreliable business, and if
their master.73
authors' identities were known, they usually remained —
In the same vein, another reaction to criticism that
particularly in the case of the more controversial
relates directly to its anonymous character has already
pamphlets — confined to very limited circles and were
been illustrated by Grimm's strictures on 'des auteurs
hardly common knowledge.
fameliques, obscurs et meprises [qui]travaillent a nuire
Some rumours came to light through the denials of
du vrai talent'. Lenoir, in L'Ombre de Rubens, gives a
those implicated. Sireuil wrote to the Mercure to deny the
satirical picture of an avaricious publisher commissionauthorship of an unspecified pamphlet that he had heard
ing a hack writer to produce a review, whose commercial
had been credited to him.68 As a member of the
viability was to be enhanced by its wanton critical
Academy, the portrait painter J. F. G. Colson had a
venom. For Mariette, pamphleteers were only concerned
letter read out at an academic session protesting his
to 'subvenir a leur misere' (to stave off poverty);74 and it
innocence of having written a pamphlet on the 1781
was usual to suppose that they came from marginal
Salon.69 Similarly, as has been mentioned above,
regions of society, where by implication they could only
Antoine Renou delivered a Memoire justificatif to the
be uninformed of the nature and state of art. The author
Academy in 1787 in connection with his association with
of the Reponse aux Critiques (1783) was only provoked to
the Journal de Paris.
pen his pamphlet, he claimed, because he had been
appalled at the impudence of one Vivien de la GrifonarAttributions were often allusive, as with that of the
Patte de Velours to 'M. C***', and it is difficult to gauge diere (as yet unknown, if indeed, not a pseudonym), who
had written Marlborough au Sallon, a Work not even
how intelligible such abbreviations would have been.
worthy, as he put it, of the squalid faubourg SaintThis is a phenomenon that also applies to the language of
75
criticism: regarding Gorsas's style, the Critique des Quince Marcel. This was one reason why Salon criticism came
to acquire an aura of odium that made polite, respectable
Critiques (1787) commented that 'ses allusions, ses petites
amateurs hesitate before deciding to contribute to the
allegories, ses traits lances a couvert ne peuvent etre
genre.76
sends que par un petit nombre de personnes' (his little
allegories, his covert gibes and his allusions can only be
In some cases it was necessary to counter critiques
appreciated by a small number of people).70 The author
that derided the Academy as an institution that
of L'Ombre de Rubens (1787) was identified by Les Grandes
enshrined despotic privilege and perpetuated an artistic
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stock of rumoured attributions. In 1769, Gabriel de Saint
Aubin noted in his copy of the liuret that the Comte de
Lauragais was supposed to have written one of the seven
pamphlets published that year.62 The Memoires secrets
thought Lauragais the probable author of the Reponse de
M. Jerome, which had also been attributed to Sedaine (the
secretary of the Academy of Architecture), Diderot and
d'Alembert (editors of the controversial Eruyclopidie), and
the literary celebrities Marmontel and Voisenon.63
Something should be said here of the contemporary
mechanisms of attribution. An example from the
Memoires secrets illustrates the fluctuating nature of
attributions that had at first seemed convincing, or at
least credible, but were later superseded. In the case of
the Dialogues sur la Peinture (1773), having given this
pamphlet to Antoine Renou, the Memoires later emphatically retracted this.64 With the example of the Patlt de
Velours (1781), the Memoires wrote that it had been
attributed to 'M. Marmontel', but the profile given of the
author corresponds to Qarmontelle;65 Le Pourquoi ou I'Ami
des Artistes referred to the author of this pamphlet as 'M.
C***' K Did this confusion arise because of a secretary's
or compositor's mistake, or does it reflect the oral nature
of such attributions? In fact, the attribution to Carmontelle seems to be unfounded,67 for in 1783, the author of
On the part of critics, such assertions challenge the
assumption that art was an integral part of polite society,
and that one needed to be identified as belonging to that
society in order to claim familiarity with artistic matters
and also to be capable of passing judgement in an
informed way. Denigrators of criticism disqualify its
authors on the grounds of social displacement, and
attribute their rancour to a sense of exclusion. Further, it
was considered that criticism was a subaltern kind of
writing, produced by journalists and anthologisers for
whom the activity was their work, not an occasional
social diversion.
For the Mcrcurc in 1761, criticism was unnecessary, for
Paris abounded in enlightened amateurs, and the 'public
instruit' that they formed was perfectly capable of
making up its own mind without the advice of epigenous
critics.81 Similarly, in the prefaces to the early livrets, the
Academy had taken it for granted that once the Salon
was unveiled the sole response the exhibition would
encounter would be little short of a chorus of admiration
- ratification of the concordance between the corps'
social and artistic eminence.
By contrast, some critics attacked this socially exclusive assumption not only because it undermined their
own critical credentials, but also on the grounds that it
created a cocoon from which only art tainted by the
artificiality of the milieu was likely to emerge, for artists
would rapidly become lulled into a state of complacency
by the attentions of obliging flatterers.82 In order that
their opinions be taken seriously, critics not only declare
that they have no connections with any of the exhibiting
artists, but dissociate themselves from the social milieu of
protecteurs, protectrices and gens en place where reputations
were fabricated.83 The critics' natural ally here was 'the
Public', though not the 'public instruit' of the Mercure,
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 6'2 1983
but rather one constituted by the mass of the Salon
audience. By the 1780s, this audience was probably in
the order of at least 50,000 visitors84 - an exceptional
physical manifestation of the public on such a scale. In
the face of these overwhelming numbers any notion of
the public must clearly be a construct shaped and filtered
by political and social consciousness. This consideration
is all the more relevant in seeking to understand the
significance of use of the public as a critical yardstick
given the amorphousness of die Salon crowd, which
contrasted with dieatre audiences where die divisions of
the auditorium provided labels for subdivisions of status
and opinions.
Very few commentators make any attempt to define in
practical terms what is meant by the public. In discussion of cultural matters, however, consistently implicit in
its usage is a sense of an educated audience already
familiar with art. Dubos's is the most candid statement
of this view.83 He specifically excludes the 'bas peuple',
intending to include only 'les personnes qui ont acquis
des lumieres soit par lecture soit par le commerce du
monde' capable of 'ce discernement qu'on appelle gout
de comparaison' (people who have acquired some knowledge either by reading or by experience of the world . . .
[and who have] that discernment that is called comparative taste). On the other hand, in terms of the standard
uncontroversial, one might almost say benign, perception of the public, it was recognised that their taste had
its limitations and variations, but these were thought to
be averaged out and resolved when opinion as a whole
was assessed, and it was almost always found to be the
case that the sum of the judgements accorded with those
of the cognoscenti.86
There is a current of Salon criticism which swells in
the third quarter of the century, however, in which we
find that the concept of the public takes on a polemical,
democratic sense. Invocations of the public as arbiter
take their thrust from denunciations of the closed world
of 'le monde' - high society and the literary establishment- and the inherent bias of self-interested artists and
parsimonious connoisseurs. By contrast, truth was to be
apprehended through the 'choc des opinions d'un million
individus',87 or, in more political language, through the
free assembly of naturally impartial citizens, at a 'fete
publique', equivalent to the scrutiny of Ma Nation':88 'il
faut que le peuple entier soit a meme de juger des
productions d'un Art, pour attester son excellence. Les
applaudissements d'une seule classe consacrent trop
souvent des defauts' (the whole people should judge
works of art, in order to confirm their excellence. The
applause of a single class too often confirms ingrained
faults).89 In this context identity became an irrelevance
in the justification ofjudgements: a work of genius was to
be recognised by its universal impact, 'qui maitrise et
subjugue I'ame de toutes classes d'hommes' (which
masters and subjugates the souls of all classes of men).90
Such views — somewhat tersely summarised here —
represent the most vocal critical position throughout the
period, but are complemented and countered by writers
who take issue with this polemical idealisation of the
audience. Whereas the traditional objection to the claim
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regime whose decadence was but a reflection of a morally
degenerate society;77 here even stronger denunciation of
the authors of such criticism was required. Writers who
used Salon reviews as a pretext for articulating such
social and political polemic had their views undercut by
being labelled as worse than mercenary non-entities:
they were warped creatures excluded from the status quo
who compulsively attacked individuals and institutions.78 The low literary genre of journalism was seen as
a breeding ground for such writers '[qui] n'ayant
souvent aucune existence, ni politique, ni litteraire, sont
possede de la manic du detronement, qui dinent d'une
analyse et s'habillent d'une satire a la manufacture des
jugements periodiques'([who] often have neither literary
not political position . . . [they] are infected by a mania
to dethrone anyone and anything, they earn their dinner
by a review, and pay for their clothes by manufacturing a
satire for the press).79 Some critics made no bones about
their humble status: the author of the Patte de Velours
(1781, p.48) proudly referred to his obscurity where he
worked 'au bien de l'humanite'; and Verite Critique (1781)
included a print with the caption 'L'auteur composant la
critique', showing a somewhat bedraggled man in a
garret sitting on an upturned chair writing.80 There may
be an element of self-parody here, but also of verisimilitude.
of representing public opinion had been to ask precisely
which public was involved, elitist reviews of the Salon
make explicit their resentment at the invasion of the
preserve of the exhibition by what they felt was an alien,
uncomprehending crowd. Some earlier critics had complained of the practical problems of a crowded Salon, but
their descriptions operate on an anecdotal level of social
pigeon-holing often expressed in terms of contrast- a fish
wife elbow-to-elbow with a countess, etc.9' However,
when the critic of the Mercure opened his review of the
1785 Salon, he articulated undisguised social prejudice
against the 'multitude' in his evocation of the audience:
Of what worth was criticism that invoked the public
when in the eyes of this critic, such was the objectionable
reality that lay behind this abstract notion? Nevertheless,
the rest of the review is couched in the neutral language
of art, and hardly betrays a hint of the strong feelings
that had emerged in the opening paragraph.
The expression of these two opposed points of view at
this period is not simply a reflection of a polarisation
within the realm of artistic debate, but is indicative of the
heightened atmosphere of political polemic manifest
during the 1780s,93 which found its most fulsome outlet
in clandestine pamphlet literature. However active
censorship may have been, the police were heavily
outnumbered by the ranks of pamphleteers - a situation
directly comparable to the Academy's grudging decision
to abandon any systematic attempt to control the flow of
criticism. The government and the court were targets for
political opposition that exploited a contrast between
individual and institutional corruption and a 'people'
unsullied by involvement with the high-life of authoritarian bureaucracy. In the eyes of some critics of this
persuasion, the Academy was perceived as an integral
bourgeois, genre naturel (landscape), genre dramatique, etc.
In conclusion, it could be suggested that anonymity of
Salon criticism started off as a literary convention, but by
the 1780s had come to assume a practical role more akin
to that originally necessitated by the dangerous business
of political and religious polemicising in the sixteenth
century. The supposed machinations of artistic cliques
and cabals in an exclusive social milieu had been
superseded as motives for what was sometimes only
nominal incognito by the more serious considerations of
reprisals against the expression of dissenting political
opinion. Tha,t such suppression was rarely applied to art
criticism despite its increasing provocativeness was a
result of the Academy's retreat before a force of opinion
that it could tolerate only with difficulty, but that it had
abandoned any hope of moderating.
References
1. Bibliographies of criticism are to be found in H. Zmijcwska, 'La
Critique des Salons en France avant Diderot', GazetU dts Beaux Arts,
1970 July-August, (for the period up to 1759), and La Critique dts Salons
en From* du Tempi dt Didtnt (1759-1789), Warsaw, 1980, and in
J. J. GuifTrey's edition of the Salon livrets. The fundamental source, and
also the most valuable collection of writings on art including Salon
criticism for the period up to 1808, is the Deloynes collection in the
Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, catalogued by G.
Duplessis (although this would greatly benefit from an annotated reedition).
2. See Preface to Salon livrets for 1737, 1741, 1742 and 1743.
26
2a. Sec M. Lever, 'Romans en quete d'auteurs au XVIIe siecle', Remit
d'Histoire litteraire, 1973, vol.73, pp.7-21
3. An excellent summary of the legislation controlling the conditions
for publishing is W. Hanley, 'The Policing of thought in Eighteenthcentury France', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighuenth Century, vol.183,
1980, pp.279-84.
4. See R. Damton, Tkt Literary Underground of du Old Rtgtmt, Harvard
University Press, 1982, especially 'The High Enlightenment and the
Low-Life of Literature', and 'Reading, Writing, and Publishing'.
5. Nmaeiles Anhivts dt I'Art francais (henceforth NAAF), vol.7, 1879,
p.462.
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Cette annec . . . n'a-t-on pas vu la tourbe dcs Spectateurs jeter
un coup hatif sur les productions de nos bons peintres, ensuite
se presser, se culbuter autour de quelques pctits tableaux mal
dessines, mal peints, mal composes; et la, le cou tendu, l'oeil
fixe, la bouche beante, exprimer d'une maniere tres bruyante
son admirationridicule?Cette multitude qui, dit-on, juge par
sentiment, et dont on aflecte de preferer l'approbation a celle
des gens du monde, n'est qu'un amas d'etres qui, au malheur
de ne devoir aucunes lumieres a l'education, en joignent un
plus facheux encore; celui d'avoir etoufle dans les habitudes
vicieuses d'une existance purement materielle, le germe des
facultes intellectuels que la Nature accorde a tous les
hommes.92
part of a despotic and decadent regime.94 Yet their
criticisms are ultimately more fulminating than focused,
and it is rare to encounter anything resembling a
programme of reform. Equally vague is the related
recognition of a regeneration in art, so often invoked during
the decade but hardly ever defined except in very
imprecise terms.
Whilst personal frustrations and enmities undoubtedly
add some of the bite to anti-academic criticism, it is
exceptional for this to surface explicitly: personal injustice had to be transposed into the exalted terms of a
social critique. In the same way that individual critical
sallies were concealed through allusion and insinuation,
a critic's identity and thus the perhaps ignominous
source of his bile might be apparent to an informed few,
but its revelation would have fettered the expression of a
polemical message.
It should be emphasised that criticism of this hue is
the most striking though not the most numerous amongst
the many types of pamphlet of the period. We can also
find other expressions of a refusal to accept the standards
of the Academy, and therefore of the state, in criticism of
a far milder and more restrained tone. For example, a
contrast between elevated academic rank and a
depressingly poor standard of painting was often played
up. Perhaps the most telling indication of this is the
substitution for the categories of both the hierarchy of the
genres and academic rank by alternative, more personal
orderings of the works described in a review - size,
popularity, whim, quality, or the use of relabelled,
although not really redefined genres, such as genre
THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL - 6:2 1983
49a_ For new and alas unpublished biographical information on La
Font, see P. Descourtieux, 'La Tharicitns de I'Art am XVIlime siicle. La
Font dt Saint Yemu', Mcmoire de Maitrise, Univenite de ParisSorbonne, 1977-78.
50. Mariette, CD 23.
51. Merctire, Oct. 1751, pt.I, p. 161; Journal Entydopedique, 1769,
vol.VII, pt.3, 1 Nov. pp.97-99.
52. For example, Lettrt d'ttx amateur dt Paris i un amateur de Prmixct sur It
salon dt peinture, 1787.
53. For example, Distmrs sur I'origixe, It progris et I'itat actuel de la peintmri
en Franct conttnant ^rt notica sur la frrvtripaux artista dt I'Acaditnt poor
servir d'mtroduclim au Sallon, 1785.
54. For example, La Tableaux, oi U n'j a pas dt sens OHIUIUM, histmn
veritable, 1777, which is made up of the comments of Monsieur,
Madame, et Mademoiselle Valentin, 'bons bourgeois de la rue St
Denis'.
55. La Bcurgtoist an Sallon, 1787.
56. Observations phittsophiqua, 1785, pp.5-7; Eloge da Tableaux, 1773,
p P .31-5.
56a. Anxit litttrairi, 1755, vol.6 p.69.
57. CD 23.
58. Obsemattur litttrairi, 1759, vol. IV, lettre III, pp.67-68.
59. Encyclopedit on dictionxaire rahscmne des arts et da scitnea, 'Anonyme'.
60. Corrapondana secrete, 12 Sept. 1781, p.45.
61. Le Frondeur ou dialogue sur le sallon par I'auttur du Coup dt Patte et du
Trixonmrat, 1785, p. 1.
62. E. Dacier, Catalogues de oenta et turrets de Salon Ulustris par Gabriel de
Saint-Aubin, 1909, vol.1, p.72.
63. Memoira secrets, vol.XIV, 'Additions', pp.144, 146
64. Ibid., vol. X X V I I , 16 April 1774, 'Additions', pp.207-9.
65. Memoira semis, vol.XVIII, 6 Oct. 1781, pp.80-9.
66. Le Pourquoi, 1781, p. 10.
67. In a future article I hope to examine the bibliographical ins and
outs of the attribution of this and related pamphlets which it would be
tedious to go into here, and consider the interpretation given them by
Thomas Crow in his important article 'The Oath of the Horatii in 1785,
painting and prc-Rcvolutionary polities', Art History, vol.1, no.4,
pp.424—71. For the present, it is worth pointing out, as I have done
elsewhere (Art History, vol.5, no.3, p.363), that the evidence strongly
supports an attribution to L. H. J. Lefebure, not Carmontelle.
Although this does not in itself affect the polemical sense of the
pamphlets, it docs undermine the somewhat anecdotal biographical
presentation that Crow has given to them, contrasting Carmontelle, the
literary lackey and society portraitist, with the bitter frustration and
resentment of an aesthetically perspicacious covert 'radical' that
emerges in the texts. Lefebure seems to have subsisted as a music
teacher whose creative ambitions were thwarted.
67a. Tnummrat, 1783, pp.43-43.
68. Mercurt, Aug. 1769, p. 187. Sireuil was the author of a number of
articles on art in the Mercurt around this time.
69. Procis-Verbaux dt I'Academie Royali de peinturt et de sculpture, ed. A. De
Montaiglon, vol.IX, 1889, p.83, 6 Oct. 1781.
70. Critique des Quince Critiqua, 1785, p. 14; Gorsas's second pamphlet
was La plume du coq de Micilie, 1787.
71. La Eliva au Sallon, p.38.
72. For example, Arm de tout le mondt, 1783, pp.4—5.
73. AAF, 1908, p.77.
74. CD 23, p. 10; Rt'pmsi a touta Its critiqua, 1783, p. 1.
75. Re'ponse a tautes Us critiqua, p.4.
76. C. N. Cochin, Les Misotechmtts aux infers, p.3; Lettrt a un ami, 1759,
pp.3-6.
77. Journal Encyclopcdique, vol.VII, pt.I, 1 Oct. 1787, pp.159-60.
78. J. F. Sobry, Le Mode francois, 1786, quoted in a review, Journal
Encyclopidique, 1786, vol.VIII, pt.III, 15 D e c p.418.
79. Delisle de Sales, Essai sur It Journalism! depuis 1735 jusqu'a fan 1800,
Paris, 1811, quited Hatin, opsit., vol.2, p.337.
80. Illustrated in Zmijewska, op. dt., 1980 p.6.
81. Mercurt, pt.I, Oct. 1761 p. 146.
82. C. Marionneau, La Salons Bordelais ou Expositions da Beaux-Arts au
XVIIIt sihlt, Bordeaux, 1884, p.82.
83. R. M. Lesuire, Histoire de la Ripublique da Ltltrts it des Arts en Franct,
1780, pp.2-3.
84. This figure is based on the following sources: limit sales, which had
27
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6. S « Robert Herbert, Damd, Voltaire, 'Brutus' and the Frtnck Revolution:
an essay in art and politics, London, 1972, pp.57-65.
7. J. J. GuifTrey, Notts tt Documents sur la Saiats du Dix-huitiime siecle
(henceforth GND), 1873, p.41.
8. Corrapondana sariU, 24 Sept. 1785, p.401; Chroniqut dt Paris, 1791.
n.286, 13 Oct. pp.1151-52.
9. D. Diderot, Salons, ed. J. Scznec and J. Adhemar, vol.11, p. 137.
10. Memoira secrets, 16 April 1774, vol.27 ("Additions'), p.2O7.
11. GND pp.46-47.
12. S. P. Hardy, Journal, Bibliothcque Nationale, Paris, manuscript
FF 6685-87, vol.6, 4 Oct. 1785, pp.197-8.
13. R. Portalis, Adtlaidt LabilU-Guiard (1749-1803), Paris, 1902, p.98.
14. Ibid., pp.99-100.
15. Memoins stcnts, vol.14, 1769, p.141.
16. NAAF, vol.23, 1906, p.137.
17. A. Renou, Disarm ou Mcmoire jasticatif de M.Rexm, secretaire adjoint,
lupar Iw-mimt a la seance de I'Acadimie Reryalt de Peinture et dt Sculpture, ttrmt
It 29 stpttmbrt 1787, Paris 1787.
18. Deloynes collection (henceforth CD), item 61.
19. A. M. Wilson, Didtrot, New York, 1972, p.339.
20. NAAF, vol.7, 1879, p.462.
21. Le Vacher de Chamois, Costumes tt Armalts da Grands Theatres, vol.1,
1786, n.xv.
22. CD 131; Casanova's letter to the Mercurt, Dec 1769, pp. 174-78.
23. E. Hatin, Histoire politique it litteraire de la Presse en Franct, vol.2,
1859, p.52.
24. GND, p.8.
25. Lettres Ecrita de Paris a Bruxelles sur le Salon de Panture dt I'annii 1748
in Revue Universtllt des Arts, 1748, vol X, p.433.
26. Gougenot, YA 2 55 in-4°, Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothcque
Nationale, Paris, p. 139, 1748; Grimm, Corrapondana litttrairi, 1754,
p.97.
27. GND, p.80, concerning L'Espiort des Peintrts (1785).
27a. Cochin is recorded in the lists of censors included in (A. M.
Lottin), Catalogue chronologiqut des llbrairts el des libraira-impritneurj de
Paris, 1789, pp.180, 267.
28. Cochin to Malesherbes, 21 August 1757, Bibliotheque Nationale,
Pans, MSS Fr. APFF 22143 (n.51-2).
29. Bibliotheque d'Art et d'Archeologie, Pans, MSS carton 33,
'Graveurs' 20 Dec. 1759, published by M. Tourneux, l Un projet dc
journal de critique d'art en 1759', Archives de I'Art francais (henceforth
AAF), 1913, p.32l.
30. Letter from Fioding to Tcssin, 20 Oct. 1759, AAF, 1932, vol.17,
pp.265-66.
31. CD 114 passim and GND, pp.26-27.
32. CD. 1302.
33. CD, 114.
34. Hatin, op. at., vol.2, p.35.
35. Memoira secrets, vol.V, 17 and 19 Sept., pp.372-73.
36. Ibid., 'Additions', vol.XXIV, 1773, p.346.
37. Mercurt, Dec. 1769, p.196, 'Reflexions sur la critique, par rapport a
['article de la Peinture, signed 'B.'.
38. C. N. Cochin, Quelqua Ultra InediUs, ed. M. A. Decorde. Rouen,
1869, p.54.
39. R. Portalis, op. dt., pp.99-100.
40. P. M. Gault de Saint Germain, La Trois Siiclts de la Peinture en
France, Paris, 1808, pp.65-66.
41. e.g., Tarare au Sal km de peinture, 1787, p.3: en voulant menager
I'amour propre des artistes, il precipitoit la decrepitude des arts'.
42. Encore un Coup de Pattt, 1787, p.5.
43. C. N. Cochin, Les Misotechnites aux infers, 1763, pp.5, 57; Corrispondance secrete, Dec. 1753, p. 304.
44. J. B. Pujoulx (Momus and Le Songi in 1783) aged 21; Mathon de la
Cour (Lettres sur le Salon in 1763) aged 25; L. H. J. Lefe'bure (Coup dt
Pattt, attributed to him (see note 69) in 1779) aged 27.
45. Bulletin de la Societe ie I'Histoire de I'Art francais, 1909, p.154.
46. Afjkha, Annonca tt avis dioers, 16 Oct. 1769, p.161.
47. Ibid., 28 Aug. 1771, p.138.
48. Journal de Trhxrux, Dec. 1747, article C X X X V , p.2624.
49. Gougenot: 'Critiques sur la Peinture, la Sculpture, etc.', table of
Ya 2 55 in-4°, Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris;
Maricttc: CD 23; Bachaumont: Bibliotheque de PArsenal, MSS 404
f.109.
risen from 8000 in 1755 to 20,000 in 1783. These figures are often
quoted (e.g. P. Rosenberg, Tht Age of Lo*is\ Xtf: Frtnch Painting
1710-1774, Toledo, 1975, p.10), but I have not (bund their source.
Obviously, the attendance must be greater than the number of livrets
sold; doubling the figure seems a reasonable estimate. Critical estimates vary between 20,000 (Diderot, 1765, pp.128), 21-28,000
(Mathon de la Cour, 1763, p.88 and U Frmdar, 1785, p.32), 100,000
(Journal dt litttratm, dt stitna it dts arts, 1783, vol.IV, lettre V, p.10). To
give these figures a sense of proportion, it should be recalled that the
population of Paris at this period was around 600,000 (L. Chevalier, La
Formation dt la Population Parisitmt, Paris, 1950, p.37).
85. RtJUxions critiouts sur la poisit ei sur la pemture, 1770, 7th ed., vol.11,
p.351.
86. Exawun dts Cntiouts, 1785, pp.21-22.
87. Lanlain au Salon, 1787, p.9.
88. Journal Encyclopt'dioiu, 1771, vol. VII, pt.II, 15 Nov., p.248.
89. Encort un Coup de Patu, 1787, p.3; Lt Frondtur, 1785, p.3; Dialogues sur
la Peinturt, 1773, pp. 117-8.
90. Memoirts secrets, review of the 1779 Salon, 2nd letter, p.320, in the
volume of Salon reviews (1767-1739) from the Memoirts republished
together in 1780.
91. For example, Pidanzat de Mairobert, L'Espion Anglais or Comspondstcrett entre milord AU'eyt et milord AU'ear, (London, 1783), 1777,
pp. 185-6.
92. n.+O, Oct. 1, pp. 18-20:" This year . . have we not seen the rabble
amongst the visitors to the Salon throw a hasty glance at the works of
our good painters and then press and josde around some small
paintings, badly drawn, badly painted, badly composed; and there,
with bent necks, gawping, with mouths wide open, express their
ridiculous admiration in a vigorous way? This multitude who, we are
told, judges by feeling, and whose approbation is preferred to the
disadvantage of not having had the benefit of education an even greater
one - that of having had the seeds of the intellectual faculties that
Nature accords to all men eradicated by the vicious habits of a purely
material existence".
93. For a rich account of thij period seen through pamphlet literature
see Robert Darnton, Trends in Radical Propaganda on the Eve of the
French Revolution (1782-1788), D. Phil., Oxford 1964.
94. Journal Encyclopedique, vol.VII, 1787, pt.l, pp. 159-60.
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