Academic art, academicism, or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. This method extended its influence throughout the Western world over several centuries, from its origins in Italy in the mid-16th century, until its dissipation in the early 20th century. Its reached its apogee in the 19th century, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. In this period, the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts were very influential, combining elements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres a key figure in the formation of the style in painting. The success of the French model led to the founding of countless other art academies in several countries. Later painters who tried to continue the synthesis included William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart among many others. In sculpture, academic art is characterized by a tendency towards monumentality, as in the works of Auguste Bartholdi and Daniel Chester French.
Image: The Birth of Venus by William Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)
Image: Alexandre Cabanel Phèdre
Image: The Roses of Heliogabalus
Giorgio Vasari helped found the Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy and Company for the Arts of Drawing) in 1563
The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The current president of the academy (2021) is Alain-Charles Perrot, a French architect.
The Institut de France; seat of the Académie des Beaux-Arts