The Toulouse salons: a regional counterweight to the Parisian art scene? (1861–1939)
Résumé
This paper analyses the functioning of the primary art market for living artists in the periphery of France, in a context where there was no secondary market nor intermediaries such as art dealers. It is based on a historical data set constituted manually, regarding the Toulouse Salons—the Union artistique de Toulouse (UAT) between 1861 and 1909, and the Société des Artistes méridionaux (SAM), between 1907 and 1939. These exhibitions, which were intended to give artists a regional alternative to the Parisian academic and dealer-critic systems, failed at emancipating the local artists from the domination of the capital.