The Salon of 1737 was an art exhibition held at the Louvre in Paris, opening on the 18 August 1737. It the was first formal edition of the Salon to take place, although exhibitions had been taking place there since 1667. Significantly, for the first time the artworks were displayed in the Salon Carré, rather than at the Galerie d'Apollon providing a much greater space. The new venue gave its name both the Salon, which became the major art exhibition in France, as well as the practice of stacking pictures five of six high on the walls. I,nitially intended to be annual, it was held biannually for much of the eighteenth century. [1]
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The influential rococo painter François Lemoyne commited suicide shortly before the Salon was held, although several of his pupils including François Boucher and Charles-Joseph Natoire were prominent. Other major figures who would go on to dominate French art during the middle of the eighteenth century Jean Siméon Chardin, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Marc Nattier and Charles-André van Loo all exhibited paintings at the Salon. [2]
Jean-François de Troy displayed the genre painting Before the Ball and it's companion piece After the Ball. [3] Jean-Marc Nattier's exhibited the allegorical Justice Punishing Injustice. Charles-Antoine Coypel displayed the religious history painting Joseph Accused by Potiphar's Wife. [4]
