The Beaux-Arts Framework

The Institute of France has for centuries controlled royal or public support for the arts in France. Under its wings it has both a School of Fine Arts for the visual arts and the Paris Conservatory for music, as well as many other institutions. The schools of fine arts and music were set up along the similar lines. The goal was to train the next generation of artists and musicians in the classic arts of a past golden age. For visual artists, sculptors, and architects, this meant the art of ancient Greece and Rome. For musicians, this meant the art of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Italy. For young artists outside the official School of Fine Arts, instructional lithographs could be purchased and copied. These lithographs showed how to make a sketch, then to refine the sketch into a set of contours, and then to add shading and texture.