Vue du Salon du Louvre en l'année 1753
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
Image: 5 13/16 x 7 1/8 in. (14.8 x 18.1 cm) Sheet: 6 1/4 x 7 5/8 in. (15.8 x 19.3 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Wrightsman Fund, 2006
Accession Number
2006.84
Tags
Art Historical Context
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin’s 1753 etching captures the bustling atmosphere of the Salon du Louvre, the official exhibition of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Crowds of elegantly dressed men and women fill the grand gallery, examining paintings hung densely from floor to in the traditional “salon style Through precise line work and figures, Saint-A records not just the artworks on view but the social ritual of public art appreciation in mid-eighteenth-century Paris. Held annually at the Louvre, the Salon offered rare public access to contemporary French art and became a vital foru...
About the Artist
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin · 1724–1780
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780) was one of the most vivid and irrepressible graphic artists of eighteenth-century France, a tireless draughtsman whose sketchbooks and prints constitute an extraordinary visual chronicle of Parisian life during the Ancien Régime. Born into a family with strong connections to the decorative arts — his father was an embroiderer to the king — Saint-Aubin received fo...