The aim of this dissertation is to present a more accurate assessment of nineteenth-century French academic art and its place not only in European art history but also in the history of American culture in the early Gilded Age. I focus on the phenomenally successful American careers of its four leading artists: William Bouguereau (1825-1905), Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), and Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891).

Several exhibitions and monographs have been devoted to these individual artists in the past three decades; however, these artists have been studied individually and largely within a European art framework, rather than collectively as a phenomenon in the context of the American art world of the early Gilded Age. Lacking is a thorough examination and comparative study of these artists’ meteoric rise to prominence, their impact on the art scene in the United States, and their eventual eclipse. My study is the first to take a comprehensive approach to this collecting phenomenon through an analysis of contemporary accounts in journals, periodicals, art histories, and dealers’ stock books.

The early Gilded Age in the United States was a golden era for these four artists. Two international expositions—the 1867 Universal Exposition held in Paris and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago—bracketed the golden age of French academic painting. This study explores the trajectory of their careers during this twenty-five year span by means of an analysis of multiple factors that led to their striking success in the United States. Among the most significant factors were the art dealers: Goupil & cie. and George Lucas in Paris, and Samuel P. Avery and Michael Knoedler in New York. These dealers brought French pictures to the United States following the four French artists’ success at the 1867 Exposition, where American art was broadly perceived to be a failure. Aided by dealers, prominent American collectors quickly amassed collections comprised primarily of French academic art, and paintings by this quartet of French artists were among the most expensive on the market. American critics kept the artists in the spotlight, American writers canonized them in their first histories of French art, and collectors placed their pictures in newly-formed art museums. However, by the time the World’s Columbian Exposition took place, the four artists’ work had begun to seem outdated. The 1893 Exposition ushered in a new era, as contemporary American and French Impressionist art had quickly begun to replace French academic art in American collections.