Notes pour une histoire sociale du piano

Entrepreneurial Patronage in Nineteenth-Century France The Art collections which acquire in the nineteenth century importance as indicators of social status for financiers and industrialists are less the expression, in the first half of the century, of personal taste than a means of imitating the aristocracy. These collections constitute the primary means by which businessmen were able to influence artists. All periods of art are represented by the paintings in these collections but Dutch painters of the seventeenth century bulks particularly large and its influence was of the first importance for French art of the period. By degrees, however, these collections tend to express the personality of their owners and avant-garde art gradually becomes more popular than ancient or academic art. Thus the increasing variety of Schools of painting and the cuit of originality finds an immediate outlet and a source in the expectations of the collectors of the latter part of the century. For example, I. de Camondo and J. Dollfus are avid collectors of Impressionists, the master fashion designers Poiret, Doucet and J. Lanvin sponsor the Fauvists. Nineteenth century patronage takes other, perhaps less noble forms too, but of more decisive implications for the artists themselves; editors of illustrated books, whether of standard editions or special collectors editions, provide artists with a means of getting themselves known and keep them supplied with materials. Art dealers become the principal intermediaries between painters and art-lovers. Their role, like that of the Collectors', is a symbolic as well as economic one. Cadart, for example, originates the renewed interest in the etching. Durand-Ruel publieizes the Impressionists in America. Vollard supported Cezanne and proposed new means of expression to the painters he patronized. Spitzer and Bing were the true promotors of «Art Nouveau» and the renewal of interest in the decorative arts at the turn of the century. The multiple ways in which these different elements link up calls into question the traditional views of the philistine bourgeois and the accursed artist.Lenoir Rémi. Notes pour une histoire sociale du piano. In: Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Vol. 28, juin 1979. Les fonctions de l’art. pp. 79-82