ABSTRACT
The Salon of 1850-51 was a significant moment in French art of the nineteenth century. Commentators at the time had a firm sense of it, even if on ideological grounds they disagreed about the reasons and implications. The arrival at the century's halfway point encouraged commentators to look back over developments in French art since 1789 and, in the light of them, to view with renewed hope or anxiety the first Salon of the second half of the century. There thus emerged proposals for a dual system involving a permanent exhibition and a quinquennial Salon, with an elected jury making the selection. With the closure of the Salon, Gautier produced only two further articles of art journalism in 1851, both published during the summer period when the Parisian theatres were closed and Gautier needed to plug the gap in earnings resulting from this forced interruption to his weekly theatre review.
