The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture

Over the century and a half of its existence (1648–1793), the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture amassed a collection of more than 15,000 artworks (paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, casts, and medals). The core of this collection consisted of reception pieces (morceaux de réception) – works that young artists presented to an academic jury to become members of the institution. Additionally, the collection featured Prix-de-Rome-winning paintings and bas-reliefs, commissioned portraits of the Académie’s patrons, académie drawings by student and professors, plaster casts of classical sculptures, miscellaneous donated works of art, furniture, and unclassifiable objects (e.g., skeletons used in teaching human anatomy).

As almost all the prominent artists of the old regime were members of the Académie royale, the Académie’s art collection brought together such iconic reception pieces as Watteau’s Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera (1717), Chardin’s Ray (1728) and Greuze’s Septimius Severus and Caracalla (1769). These and other examination works now offer valuable insights into the aesthetic values of the institution. Académies, plaster casts, and other objects used in teaching shed light on the educational process. While commissioned portraits of the Académie’s patrons and donated works of art illuminate the personal networks behind it. Collectively, these objects reveal how the most influential art institution in eighteenth-century Europe viewed and positioned itself.

Together with the Académie, the collection changed its home numerous times, moving from the Saint-Eustache to the Hôtel Clisson, rue Sainte-Catherine, and the Palais-Royal, but for most of its history, from 1692 to 1793, was housed in the Louvre. The collection’s arrangement in the Louvre was a remarkable example of eighteenth-century curatorial work and an “internal” counterpart to the Académie’s public display, the Salon. Unlike the Salon Carré, the main rooms of the Académie were accessible only to exclusive visitors, yet the works they contained served as major reference points for students and members, many of whom not only worked but also lived in the Palace.

After the French Revolution, the art collection of the Académie was dispersed and today is shared by the Louvre, the Versailles, the ENSBA, and many other museums in France and worldwide.

In collaboration with the Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon (Louvre), the INHA, and the Beaux-Arts de Paris, we have initiated a project to reconstruct the Académie’s art collection using digital methods. The first phase involved building a database establishing what objects originally comprised the collection and where they are preserved now. To demonstrate the importance of the collection to understanding ancien régime art, we have also launched a book series, which will open with a volume on reception pieces (scheduled for publication in 2024). Our next step will be the creation of a 3D model digitally recreating the arrangement of the collection in the eighteenth-century Louvre.