Salon of 1845

The Salon of 1845 was an art exhibition held at the Louvre in Paris which opened on 15 March 1845.^[1] The annual Salon organised by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, it took place during the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe I.

Romanticism and Orientalism were then a strong influence in French art. Eugène Delacroix's The Sultan of Morocco was inspired by a trip to North Africa the artist had made in 1832. Another noted Orientalist work was Théodore Chassériau's The Caliph of Constantine.Delacroix also displayed the religious painting Mary Magdalene in the Desert.^[2] Gustave Courbet submittied his painting The Hammock but it was rejected by the authorities.^[3]

The series of large-scale commissions by the state for the Galerie des Batailles at the Palace of Versailles with The Battle of Rivoli by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, depicting one of Napoleon's great victories.^[4] A more recent incident in the French conquest of Algeria was shown in Horace Vernet's The Capture of the Smala of Abd El-Kader.^[5] Édouard Pingret's The Arrival of King Louis Philippe at Windsor Castle depicted the State Visit of Louis Philippe I to the United Kingdom the previous year, in which he had been received by Queen Victoria in Windsor Castle.^[6]

The Italian sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini exhibited Nymph with a Scorpion^[7] while Louis-Joseph Daumas displayed a plaster cast of his future bronze statue The Genius of Navigation.