The Pure Doctrine
and the Painting Market

The institutionalisation of art training came to a dead end in the 19th century. The teaching curriculum in the many art academies that had been founded subscribed to a rigid scheme. Drawing antique sculptures in plaster courts, and learning predesignated poses as well as motifs from ancient mythology, were all established parts of the programme.

Centralist Paris had long since replaced Rome as the art capital. And a very close connection arose there between teaching, the art market and political propaganda. Members of the Parisian Ecole-des-Beaux-Arts sat on the selection committee for the Salon de Louvre – a grand annual sales exhibition. An official “salon style” established itself, and it also became obligatory at the German academies in Düsseldorf and Munich. Painting after painting of historical events were done in increasingly large formats, depicting figures that looked more and more like members of an amateur dramatic society. The works failed to compel because the painters drew solely on past models and styles, which no longer had any bearing on the socio-political developments in the dawning industrial era.

At the same time a lively market established itself outside of the corridors of academic painting, which worked according to the dictates of the market. Its artists deliberately geared their style and their subjects to public demand – although an important factor in shaping opinion was a new burgeoning medium in the form of the many art journals. In some instances an artist’s rise in popularity and economic success was so meteoric that, like Franz von Lenbach in Munich, he could lead the life of a “Prince of Painters”.