The School of Selected Students in the System of French Academic Art Education of the 18th Century

For the first time in Russian historiography, the article reconstructs the history of the School of Selected Students, established in 1747 as an additional link of academic art education. The article uses cultural-historical and socio-psychological approaches. The author refers to the numerous sources of the 18th—19th centuries stored in the National Library of France (Paris): treatises devoted to upbringing and art education in France in the 18th century, protocols of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, correspondence of the directors of the French Academy in Rome with the directors of royal buildings. Currently, the National Library of France is actively working on digitizing these and other materials, making them available to researchers around the world. Despite the fact that these sources are generally well known to the world scientific community, they have been extremely rarely referred by Russian researchers, and never in the context considered by the author.

The School existed for only 28 years and was a unique pedagogical experiment aimed at preparing the most talented (selected) young artists (laureates of the Prix de Rome) to enter the French Academy in Rome and, in the long term, at forming the elite of the art world.

In order to review the School of Selected Students in the system of French academic art education, the author solves the following research tasks: consistently reconstructs all the circumstances of the School’s foundation and organization, reveals its creators’ intentions, and also explains the position of its opponents, who, with their constant attacks, created a tense discussion field around the existence of this educational institution. In addition, the article identifies the names of major artists who left the School of Selected Students; examines its internal structure, charter, features of the educational process; defines the circle of people who were engaged in teaching; establishes which books were available to students. The author pays attention to the School’s everyday life: the relationship between students and mentors, discipline, daily routine, financial difficulties. The results obtained allow us to conclude that this experiment was successful, and explain why the School of Selected Students was closed without having existed for 30 years, despite the obvious successes of its graduates.

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