L'art pompier

L'art pompier - literally 'fireman art' - is the derisive name late nineteenth-century critics gave to the large official academic paintings of the French Salon, above all its historical and allegorical canvases. The joke was visual: the Attic helmets of the classical warriors and allegorical figures in such works resembled the plumed helmets of French firemen, and the word also half-punned on pompéien ('Pompeian') and pompeux ('pompous'). To those who used it, pompier art was the epitome of bourgeois taste - grand, polished, and insincere. Its masters were Bouguereau, Cabanel, Gérôme, and Couture, and their manner descended from David's imperial history paintings. The label stuck to the work of a whole generation, though since the opening of the Musée d'Orsay the paintings have enjoyed a critical revival, shown on more equal terms with the Impressionists who mocked them.

Defining characteristics

• Grand historical and allegorical subjects from antiquity, mythology, and empire
• Highly polished, 'licked' finish with invisible brushwork and academic drawing
• Heroic nudes and draped classical warriors in Attic helmets - the 'fireman' look
• Theatrical, rhetorical compositions: staged diagonals, heroic gesture, moral narrative
• Opulent texture - flesh, silk, armor, marble - rendered with photographic smoothness
• Grand scale designed for the Salon wall and official state patronage

Key figures

• Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889) — Salon favorite whose Birth of Venus (1863) defines the polished pompier nude
• William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) — Prolific master of idealized mythological nudes and sentimental figures
• Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) — History and Orientalist painter of meticulously staged antiquity
• Thomas Couture (1815-1879) — Academic history painter and teacher of the Salon tradition (and of Manet)

Example works

• The Birth of Venus — Alexandre Cabanel (1863)
• Pollice Verso — Jean-Léon Gérôme (1872)
• Nymphs and Satyr — William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1873)

Sources

• L'art pompier - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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