Academic Art ( Academism )
(in 19th century)
   The term "Academic Art" is associated particularly with the French Academy and its influence on the Paris Salons in the 19th century. Though Academic art can be meant to extend to all art influenced by the European Academies, it's often meant to refer to artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des beaux-arts.

   The Académie des beaux-arts, was founded in an effort to distinguish artists "who were gentlemen practicing a liberal art" from craftsmen, who were engaged in manual labor. This emphasis on the intellectual component of art making had a considerable impact on the subjects and styles of academic art.

   Paris Salons were held in the Salon d'Apollon in the Palais du Louvre. They were enormously influential in establishing officially approved styles and in molding public taste, and they helped consolidate the Royal Academy's dictatorial control over the production of fine art.

   Academic Art was in fashion in Europe from the 17th to the 19th century. It practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and more usually used to refer to art that followed these two movements, in the attempt to synthesize both of their styles. Artists such as William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Leon Gerome epitomize this style. It is reflected also by the paintings of Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart. Academic Art is also called academism, academicism, art pompier, and eclecticism, and sometimes linked with historicism and syncretism.

See also Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.