The Swan song. Academic painters from the Musée d'Orsay

After decades of disdain or disinterest, the so-called "Pompier" painters benefited from the scientific research carried out from the 1970s-1980s, and in particular the pioneering work of Bruno Foucart, Gerald Ackerman and Robert Rosenblum. More recently, monographic exhibitions like the ones dedicated to Jean-Paul Laurens, Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme among others, as well as important academic research have contributed to the radical renewal in the perception of a little known side of French art.
With an exhibition space at the heart of Madrid, the Mapfre Foundation is offering the Musée d'Orsay the opportunity to organise an exhibition of these academic painters for the first time in history, in order to give the general public the chance to appreciate this long criticised art in the light of new knowledge. Based on the themes of nudes, history, myth, portraits, religious painting and historical landscapes, the exhibition highlights the wealth of styles, aesthetics choices and subjects, as well as the constant evolution of an art wrongfully accused of being static, conventional and boring.
It also provides a means to gage the influence of Realist, Orientalist and Symbolist trends on the traditional artists of their time. The one-off dialogue with some of the works by Courbet, Renoir and Puvis de Chavannes enable the mutual exchanges between artist who upheld traditions and those of the avant-garde movement to be considered, and to adjust the overly antagonistic vision we have of them. With the temporary assembly of numerous loans from the Musée d'Orsay to the regional museums, the exhibition provides an opportunity to revisit a collection that is usually dispersed across France. Primarily composed of works purchased or commissions by the State from artists in the second half of the 19th century, this collection also brings home the importance of the role that the Musée du Luxembourg played at the time as the "national gallery of living artists".