ABSTRACT
Art academies played a central role throughout the nineteenth century. In much of central, eastern, and northern Europe official academies controlled artists’ training, exhibitions, and the art market until the end of the century. In western Europe, they represented a powerful and stable status quo against which artists defined their identity and relationship to the public and to tradition. The norms for style, subject, scale, composition, and technique established by academies gained widespread acceptance among the middle classes, whose interest in art increased during the nineteenth century, and it was against this template that the achievements of contemporary artists were judged. Within the French Académie des Beaux-Arts there were two competing factions: the Poussinistes and the Rubenistes. J.A.D. Ingres led the Poussin faction, which upheld eighteenth-century, Neoclassical (Davidian) ideas about ennobling subjects, restrained expression and color, compositional clarity, and a highly detailed, brushless technique. Eugène Delacroix led the Rubens faction, which promoted Romantic ideas about freedom of expression within the confines of the five subject categories (history, portraiture, genre, landscape, still life). Poussinistes privileged drawing and intellect; Rubenistes, color and emotion.
