Chalk Horse Artists in the Salon des Refusés

Chalk Horse congratulate Jasper Knight (Wynne) Dane Lovett (Archibald) and Julian Meagher (Archibald) for their acceptance into the S. H. Ervin Salon des Refusés

From S. H. Ervin:

The annual Salon des Refusés exhibition is selected from the official entries to both the Archibald Prize (for portraiture) and the Wynne Prize (for landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours or figure sculpture) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The Salon des Refusés was initiated by the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 1992 in the tradition of the renegade French Impressionists of the 1860s who held a breakaway exhibition from the reactionary French Academy. In 1863, the French Academy rejected a staggering 2800 canvases submitted for the annual Salon exhibition. Among those refused were Paul Cézanne, Camille
Pissarro, Henri Fantin-Latour, James Whistler and Édouard Manet, who entered his now legendary painting, Le déjeuner sur l'Herbe. This particular work was regarded as a scandalous affront to taste. The jury also argued these artists were “a clear danger to society and that the slightest encouragement would be risky.”

Julian Meagher, courtesy Chalk Horse

Since there were very few independent art exhibitions in imperial France, the taste of the buying public was dictated almost entirely by the Academy. Most members of the public invested only in artists sanctioned by the Salon. Rejection by the Academy therefore threatened many artists with professional extinction. The protests that followed the Academy's 1863 decision were so public and so pointed, that eventually Napoleon III himself appeared at the Palais de l'Industrie and demanded to see the rejected works. He then instructed the Academy to reconsider its selection and when it refused, the Emperor decreed that the rejected paintings go on display in a separate exhibition. And so the phrase Salon des Refusés entered into the world's artistic lexicon. One hundred and twenty nine years later, the S.H. Ervin Gallery revived the tradition and the name.

Dane Lovett, courtesy Chalk Horse

Each year our guest panel goes behind the scenes of the judging process for the annual Archibald Prize and Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to select an exhibition from the many works entered in both prizes, yet not chosen for the official award exhibition. The criteria for works selected in the Salon are quality, diversity, humour and innovation.

Jasper Knight, courtesy Chalk Horse

In 2010 42 artworks were selected (from 849 Archibald Prize & 798 Wynne Prize official entries) for the 2010 Salon des Refusés exhibition at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 27 March – 23 May. The exhibition will then tour to Tweed River Art Gallery, Murwillumbah, NSW, 24 June – 08 August.

For available work by these artists please contact us