Salon painting

Konrad Kiesel, The Mandolin Player, end of 19th century.

Salon painting is a style of painting that was popular in the 19th century. The name comes from the Salon carré of the Louvre, in Paris. This salon is known as Salon de Paris today. Since the time of Louis XV, it was regularly used for art exhibitions. These became known as salons. In these salons, artworks were shown that the ruling class approved. This means, that very often, it was used for paintings that the rulng class liked.To be able to show paintings there, the artists adapted their painting styles: they made history paintings, and they painted mythological figures, in scenes that wee known from classical stories. This also gave them a pretext to show a lot of naked skin. This was good, because many upper class people had voyeuristic tendencies, and the people also liked to see mostly naked figures in a historical setting.