18th century art galleries in Paris

[wohl_der_nacht]

I am at my wits' end, and a large part of my plot has just fallen apart. Help.

Basically, it's 1776, and my main character is visiting Paris. As he has quite an obsession with all manner of art (literature, theatre, painting, sculpture etc.) I thought he might visit an art gallery whilst he's there. Obviously, my first choice was the Louvre - great

Comments

[mkhobson]

Salons and academies would have group showings and competitions which would probably best suit your fictional need.

Have you looked at this Wikipedia entry?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_art_salons_and_academies

[lyonesse]

a party at a private collector's?

a particularly amazing church, perhaps notre dame?

[dorianegray]

Have a look through Horace Walpole's letters (available on Project Gutenberg). He visited Paris several times around about your period, and was a mad keen culture vulture; he talks about paintings that he's seen and where he sees them.

[syntinen_laulu]

He can still go to the Louvre. Louis XIV had made it the home of the royal art collection in 1692, and although it wasn't a public museum as such it housed the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture which held regular salons. And even when there wasn't a salon on, I'd bet that a genteel visitor could still arrange to visit the collections there; this was normal not just in palaces but in non-royal great houses at the time. Remember Lizzy Bennet visiting Pemberley in Pride & Prejudice - she and her aunt and uncle just poled up and asked the housekeeper, who was quite accustomed to showing people round.

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/histoire_louvre.jsp?bmLocale=en

[penhaligonblue]

The period you're looking at was a transitional time from private collections to public museums. It was really only in the 19th century, when a wider sections of society became interested in and capable of cultural refinement, that museums as we now think of them came into existence. Before then, folks got their art and science fixes by visiting private collections (by invitation or for a fee).

In Pride and Prejudice, for instance, the heroine tours her love interest's country house (while he's away) in order to see the superb art and architecture. More relevant to your setting, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun refined her painting technique by visiting the private gallery of her neighbor, whom she eventually married. Even today, plenty of aristocrats rely on tours of their private art collections for much of their income. This may even have been the case in 1776 with the Louvre, which was a royal palace at the time

[penhaligonblue]

Hello! Just found this in the Wikipedia entry on the Louvre:

By the mid-18th century there were an increasing number of proposals to create a public gallery with Lafont Saint-Yenne publishing, in 1747, a call for the royal collection's display. In 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned the display of some of the royal collection in the Louvre. A hall was opened for public viewing on Wednesdays and Saturdays and contained Andrea del Sarto's 'Charity' and works by Raphael. Under Louis XVI, the royal museum idea became policy. The comte d'Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie - which contained maps - into the "French Museum". Many proposals were offered for the Louvre's renovation into a museum, however none was agreed on. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution.