Salon (gathering)

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A salon is a gathering of men and women to participate in formal and informal discussion centered around a specific topic. A salonnière, the woman who ran the salon, decided upon its central preoccupation which may include politics, literature, art, fashion or business. This type of gathering was held in the drawing room (salon in French) of the salonnière's home.^[1] The participants sought to increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "to please and educate" (aut delectare aut prodesse est). The term salon is commonly associated with French literary and philosophical gatherings of the 17th century and 18th century, though the practice continues today in many cities around the world.

Contents 1 Overview 2 The Role Of Women 2.1 Salonnières and their salons 3 Salons outside of France 4 Other uses of the word 5 See also 6 Further reading 7 External links 8 References

[edit] Overview

The word salon first appeared in France in 1664 (from the Italian word sala, used to designate the large reception hall of Italian mansions). Literary gatherings before this were often referred to by using the name of the room in which they occurred, like cabinet, réduit, ruelle and alcôve ¹. Before the end of the 17th century, these gatherings were frequently held in the bedroom (treated as a more private form of drawing room): a lady, reclining on her bed, would receive close friends who would sit on chairs or stools drawn around. This practice may be contrasted with the greater formalities of Louis XIV's petit levée, where all stood. The expression ruelle, literally meaning "little street", designates the space between a bed and the wall in a bedroom, and more generally the entire bedroom; it was used commonly to designate the gatherings of the "précieuses", the intellectual and literary circles that formed around women in the first half of the 17th century. The salon originated in France at the end of the 16th century. The French salon was the creation of Madame de Rambouillet in her attempts to escape the vulgarities of court life.^[2] She established the rules of etiquette of the salon which resembled the earlier codes of Italian chivalry. The salon evolved into a well regulated practice that focused on and reflected enlightened public opinion by encouraging the exchange of news and ideas. By the mid-eighteenth century the salon had become an institution in French society and functioned as a major channel of communication among intellectuals.^[3]

Nobles' courts have always drawn to themselves poets, writers and artists, usually with the lure of patronage, an aspect that sets the court apart from the salon. Another feature that distinguished the salon from the court was its absence of social hierarchies and its mixing of different social ranks and orders.^[4] In the 17th and 18th centuries, "salon[s] encouraged socializing between the sexes [and] brought nobles and bourgeois together"^[5]. Salons helped facilitate the breaking down of social barriers which made the development of the enlightenment salon possible. In the 18th century, under the guidance of Madame Geoffrin, Mlle de Lespinasse, and Madame Necker, the salon was transformed into an institution of Enlightenment.^[6] The enlightenment salon brought together Parisian society, the progressive philosophes who were producing the Encyclopédie , the Bluestolkings and other intellectuals to engage in the project of enlightenment.

[edit] The Role Of Women

At a time when society was defined and regulated by men, women could exert a powerful influence as salonnieres. Women had a very important role in the Salon and were the center of salon life. They were responsible for selecting their guests and deciding whether the salon would be primarily social, literary, or political. They also assumed the role as mediator by directing the discussion. The salon was really an informal university for women. Through the salon women were able to exchange ideas, receive and give criticism, read their own works and hear the works and ideas of other intellectuals. Many ambitious women used the salon to pursue a form of higher education.^[7]

[edit] Salonnières and their salons

The most famous of the literary salons of Paris formed in the 1620s were the Hôtel de Rambouillet by Madame de Rambouillet and the rival salon that gathered around Madeleine de Scudéry. Here gathered the original "blue-stockings" (les bas-bleues), whose nickname continued to mean "intellectual woman" for the next 300 years.

Paris salons of the 18th century:

• Madame Geoffrin
• Madame de Tencin
• Julie de Lespinasse: her chief draw was d'Alembert, but "though the name of M. d'Alembert may have drawn them thither, it was she alone who kept them there."
• Madame du Deffand, the friend of Horace Walpole
• The Marquise de Lambert
• The Duchesse du Maine
• Madame d'Épinay
• Madame Necker, the wife of the financier Jacques Necker
• Madame Helvétius, the wife of Helvétius
• Sophie de Condorcet, wife of the mathematician and philosopher Condorcet, visited by foreign notables and French thinkers alike.
• Madame Roland, the political salon that was the resort of the Girondists at the first stages of the Revolution.
• Madame Swetchine, wife of General Swetchine.

Some 19th century salons were more inclusive, verging on the raffish, and centered around painters and "literary lions" such as Madame Récamier. After the shocks of 1870, French aristocrats tended to withdraw from the public eye. Marcel Proust called up his own turn-of-the-century experience to recreate the rival salons of the fictional Duchesse de Guermantes and Madame Verdurin. Some late 19th and early 20th-Century Paris salons were major centres of music, including those of Winnaretta Singer (the Princesse de Polignac) and Comtesse Greffulhe.

[edit] Salons outside of France

The salon was a French invention which flourished through out the 17th and 18th century. Salon sociability quickly spread though out Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries many large cities in Europe had salons modeled after the parisian salon, although these salons were not as prominent as the salons in France.

In England, salons were held by Lady Elizabeth Montagu and Hester Thrale in the 18th century; in Germany, the most famous salons were held by Jewish ladies, such as Henriette Herz and Rahel Varnhagen; in Spain, by María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba in the end of the 18th century; and in Greece by Alexandra Mavrokordatou in the 17th century.

In 16th-century Italy some scintillating circles did form in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga. Italy had an early tradition of the salon; the courtisan Tullia Aragona held a salon already in the 16th century, and Giovanna Dandolo became known as a patron and gatherer of artists as wife of the doge in Venice in 1457-1462, but this did not start a tradition as the salon-instution in France, as men and women were traditionally more separated in social life in Italy; the real pioneers were instead the abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden and the French-born princess Colonna, Marie Anne Mancini, who rivaled as salon hostesses in 17th century Rome.

In Iberia or Latin America a tertulia is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones. The word is originally Spanish and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts. Since the twentieth century a typical tertulia has moved out from the private drawing-troom to become a regularly scheduled event in a public place such as a bar, although some tertulias are still held in more private spaces. Participants may share their recent creations (poetry, short stories, other writings, even artwork or songs).^[8]

In Poland, the duchess Sieniawska held a salon in the end of the 17th cenury, and the salons became very popular there during the 18th century; the most famous salons were the Thursday Dinners of King Stanisław August Poniatowski in the end of 18th century, and the most notable salon-hostesses was Zofia Lubomirska and Izabela Czartoryska.

In Scandinavia, the salon was introduced in Sweden by Sophia Elisabet Brenner in the end of the 17th century and Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht and Malla Silfverstolpe were salon hostesses in the 18th and the 19th centuries, respectively, while Christine Sophie Holstein and Charlotte Schimmelman were the most notable hostesses in Denmark in the beginning and the end of the 18th century.

American "society hostesses" such as Perle Mesta have performed a function similar to the host or hostess of the European salon.

[edit] Other uses of the word

Main article: Paris Salon

The word salon also refers to art exhibitions. The Paris Salon was originally an officially-sanctioned exhibit of recent works of painting and sculpture by members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, starting in 1673 and soon moving from the Salon Carré of the Palace of the Louvre.

The name salon remained, even when other quarters were found and the exhibits' irregular intervals became biennial. A jury system of selection was introduced in 1748, and the salon remained a major annual event even after the government withdrew official sponsorship in 1881.

[edit] See also

• French art salons and academies
• Paris Salon
• Salon des Refusés
• Salon d'Automne
• Salon des Indépendants

[edit] Further reading

• Beasley, Faith E. Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France. Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Company,2006.
• Craveri, Benedetta. The Age of Conversation. Trans.Teresa Waugh. New York: New York Review Books,2005.
• James Ross, ‘Music in the French Salon’; in Caroline Potter and Richard Langham Smith (eds.), French Music Since Berlioz (Ashgate Press, 2006), pp.91–115. ISBN 0-7546-0282-6.
• Mainardi, Patricia. The End of the Salon: Art and the State of the Early Republic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Amelia Ruth Gere Mason, The Women of the French Salons (New York: Century, 1891)

[edit] External links

Private salons

• Mlle de Scudéry
• Les Contes de Fées: The Literary Fairy Tales of France: 17th-century Paris salons of Mme d'Aulnoy, the comtesse de Murat and others by Terri Windling.
• Julie de Lespinasse, Mme Geoffrin in memoirs.
• Americans in Paris: Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, and Sylvia Beach. Three 20th century salons.
• http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/historical/TheWomenoftheFrenchSalons/toc.html

(Biographies of French salonists from Madame de Rambouillet to Madame Recamier and descriptions of salon culture from the 17th to the 19th century.)

Art exhibitions

• Paris Salon of 1769: photos illustrate some of the paintings shown that year.
• Comic art: The Paris Salon in Caricature: Getty Museum exhibition, 2003.
• Jewish Women and Their Salons

[edit] References

• (French) Dictionaire des lettres françaises: le XVIIe siècle, revised edition by Patrick Dandrey, ed. (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p.1149. ISBN 2-253-05664-2