The Guild supported the concept that geometry is the crux of all art. Richard was able to show us using Raphael’s School of Athens painting all the qualifying skills incorporated from compasses to life drawing decorating the Philosophers.

 

He then showed us Nicholas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine women and again explained the geometry and grid structure in that picture.  Poussin, a Frenchman, took his training and ideas back to Paris where the young Louis X1Vth was newly on the throne and encouraged by Cardinal Mazarin determined to make Paris the artistic centre of the world and France the most significant power. It is no coincidence that portraits of Louis represented him as a hero, a warrior, a philosopher to burnish his reputation and in turn the place of France in the world. It was a project to make Louis into the Sun King and merge his image with the state; “L’Etat, c’est moi”.

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To achieve this French supremacy Louis appointed Charles Le Brun, a classically trained artist. He set up Royal Academies of both painting and sculpture (Academie Royale de peinture et de Sculpture) in 1648 which was followed by Academies of science, inscription and medals, and music all based in the Louvre. At that time the Louvre was a strictly academic building with no public access slightly like an Oxbridge College. There was kudos and tenure associated with being an academician and membership was highly sought after.

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Civil unrest in Paris gave Louis the opportunity to move the court out of the city. This fitted his aim of French aggrandisement and he wanted a magnificent example of French architecture. Bernini, the famous Italian architect, was invited to plan a new palace but in keeping with the make France great plan a French man, Charles Perrault, actually designed the Palace of Versailles after presenting drawings in a more opulent and grander way.  So many craftsmen worked on the palace that at the height of construction 36,000 craftsmen were there. It was a national effort with a strong classical theme. Nothing was too much, the best mirrors, the best fountains, the best murals.   The Gobelins tapestry factory was harnessed to make glorious wall hangings presenting great royal moments both for furnishings but also as state gifts to spread the sense of French power.

 

Charles Le Brun called it “the greatest art of all time “ with the Sun King always depicted at the centre. It was a not very subtle form of state propaganda.

Le Brun was a seen as an inflexible leader in the art world which set his Academies on a collision course with those not admitted who objected to state sponsored art as being the only art that was considered. Those tight, inflexible rules of artistic achievement through classical training were being challenged from outside the Academy.

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Change was forced by the French revolution. The Louvre became a public building, all the Academies were closed only to reopen as the Ecole Des Beaux Arts under Napoleon but the traditional rules and drawing methods were relaxed. Lighter, freer, more socially current pictures became accepted leading to new schools of art such as Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism.  Though arguments between classicists and colourists continued as they do to this day the walls of the Salon began to reflect the change.

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The monopoly of the classical style had been overturned and Academies were being set up all over Europe. London opened its Royal Academy in 1768. To this day in London at any one time there are no more than 100 Academicians. They must be practicing professional artists who work in the UK. Of these 100, there must always be at least 14 Sculptors, 12 Architects and 8 Printmakers; the rest are all Painters.

Lucy Picton-Turbervill

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