Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17778
Authors: Claire Dupin de Beyssat; Diana Seave Greenwald; Kim Oosterlinck
Abstract: From the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the Paris Salon was the leading visual arts exhibition venue in France. For an artist, having a painting admitted to the Salon was a good signal; obtaining one of the competitive medals systematically awarded at the exhibition was even better. Based on two unique datasets, this paper quantitatively analyzes which elements drove the likelihood of winning a medal. Both in its own time and the secondary literature about the exhibition, the juried Salon system has often been criticized for being prejudiced. Our paper shows the changes in the way the jury acted as rules and regulations varied over time, adding a dynamic dimension to our analysis. We find that nepotism, proxied here as having one’s master sit on the jury, helped win medals, but this was not systematically the case. The hierarchy of genres setting history paintings at the top was not always respected. By contrast, women were systematically discriminated against. Even for the minor genres, in which many were forced to specialize, medals were more likely to end up being won by men.
Keywords: art markets; france
JEL Codes: N33; N93; Z11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| having a master on the jury (Y40) | likelihood of winning a medal (C52) |
| genre of the artwork (Z11) | likelihood of winning a medal (C52) |
| gender of the artist (J16) | likelihood of winning a medal (C52) |
| systematic discrimination against female artists (J16) | likelihood of winning a medal (C52) |