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| René-Antoine Houasse Hercules slaying the Hydra with the help of Iolas (reception piece) 1673 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
"René-Antoine Houasse's reception piece, submitted in 1673, represented "Hercules, who overcomes the Hydra be searing the root of its heads, which regrow as often as they are decapitated. In this exploit, and in a second victory over a crab come to the Hydra's aid, the painter intended to signify that the power of the Seven United Provinces leagued with the other enemies of France had been unable to prevent the king's conquest of Holland." This is surely the kind of work to which Félibien refers in the preface to his Conférences de l'année 1667: "History and fable must be rendered; great actions must be represented in the manner of the historian and agreeable subjects in that of the poet; and, rising still higher, the artist must be able to conceal beneath the veil of fable the virtues of great men and the loftiest mysteries. A great painter is one who acquits himself well in such enterprises." Ingenuity of invention was essential to such works, and this is probably why the painter was asked to present his sketch and be able to explicate it. When Guillet de Saint-Georges began, in 1684, to supply descriptions of the reception pieces, he found it necessary to request memoirs from the painters explicating their intentions."
"A candidate for admission to the Académie had first to find a "presenter" among the officers, someone who would stand surety for him. Because in most cases this was the candidate's former master, it was more difficult for a painter or sculptor from outside the academic milieu to apply, though the difficulty was not prohibitive. The presenter guided the candidate in his proceedings, vouched for his moral respectability and talent, and introduced him to the acting officers, who were invited to come and inspect his works in order to establish whether or not his candidacy was receivable. . . . Upon acceptance of his sketch, the agréé could begin working on the reception piece. Again, the regulations provided that painters should paint on Académie premises, while sculptors and printmakers were allowed to work in their own studios. In all these cases, the agréé's work was to be supervised by two officers, who were not allowed to comment on the work in progress. A time limit was fixed, and, almost invariably, was breached. In the seventeenth century, the limit was six months . . ."
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| Charles de La Fosse Proserpina abducted by Pluto (reception piece) 1673 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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| Jean Jouvenet Esther before Ahasuerus (reception piece) 1675 oil on canvas Musée de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse |
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| Louis Licherie Abigail bringing Gifts to David (reception piece) 1679 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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| Guy-Louis Vernansal The Extinction of Heresy in France Allegory of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 (reception piece) 1687 oil on canvas Château de Versailles |
"The interruption of admissions between 1690 and 1699 modified both the requirements of the officers and the efforts of the aspirants. Some few pictures were still painted evoking the glorious deeds of the reign, or, more rarely, illustrating subjects taken from the Old Testament, but for the most part mythology prevailed. . . . Nevertheless, the two reception pieces [directly below] most appreciated at that time were by painters who claimed to place the imitation of nature above any rules. These were Portrait of the Artist as Hunter by François Desportes and Susanna at the Bath by Jean-Baptiste Santerre. Both painters chose to focus on a single figure and sought "simplicity." Their biographers emphasize the return to nature effected by these painters in the face of excessively restrictive conventions."
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| Alexandre-François Desportes Portrait of the Artist as Hunter (reception piece) 1699 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-Baptiste Santerre Susanna at the Bath (reception piece) 1704 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Hyacinthe Rigaud Portrait of the Sculptor Martin van den Bogaert called Desjardins (reception piece) 1700 Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-François de Troy Apollo and Diana slaying the Children of Niobe (reception piece) 1708 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
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| Jean-Antoine Watteau Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera (reception piece) 1717 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Charles-Joseph Natoire Venus ordering Vulcan to make Arms for Aeneas (reception piece) 1734 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
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| François Boucher Rinaldo and Armida (reception piece) 1734 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-Baptiste Greuze Septimius Severus reproaching Caracalla (reception piece) 1769 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"One particularly well-documented case is that of Jean-Baptiste Greuze's admission in 1769. Having received his conditional acceptance in 1755, he postponed the execution of his reception piece year by year. He must several times have been reprimanded, though this has left no trace in the minutes. A letter apologizing and promising delivery, written in June 1766 . . . has survived. We know from Denis Diderot that Greuze was banned from exhibiting at the Salon till he had fulfilled his duty, and he was absent from the Salon of 1767. In August 1769, he finally submitted a picture; its subject was the Roman emperor Severus reproaching his son, Caracalla, for seeking to assassinate him in the passes of Scotland: Severus told his son, "If you desire my death, order Papinius to kill me with this sword." The officers of the Académie considered the picture mediocre but felt it would be unwise to reject a painter already famous throughout Europe and lauded by the critics; moreover, if Greuze had been rejected, the picture could not have been exhibited at the Salon. They therefore chose a compromise position, admitting Greuze not as a history painter, but as a genre painter, on the basis of the scenes of family life that he had exhibited since 1761."
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| Nicolas-Guy Brenet Theseus retrieving the Arms of his Father (reception piece) 1769 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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| François-André Vincent Abduction of Orithyia by Boreas (reception piece) 1782 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes |
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| Jean-Baptiste Regnault The Education of Achilles by the Centaur Chiron (reception piece) 1783 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"True, the Académie was not open daily, but the regulation that Charles Antoine Coypel had imposed in 1751, in defining the prerogatives of the concierge, specifies that he "shall be present when strangers come to visit" the Académie. We know from Guérin's description of the rooms that the body welcomed visitors. Artists therefore sought to leave to posterity works that would contribute to their posthumous reputation. Thus Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, who had painted one of the ceilings of the Galerie d'Apollon as a reception piece and therefore had no painting on display at the Académie, on 5 July 1783 donated an allegorical picture [directly below] celebrating the glory of the comte d'Angiviller, framed and behind glass in order to make the colors immutable."
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| Jean-Jacques Lagrenée Allegory on the Opening of the Museum (substitute for reception piece) 1783 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-Joseph Taillasson Philoctetes, Ulysses and Neoptolemus (reception piece) 1784 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux |
– texts and quoted passages from The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture: The Birth of the French School, 1648-1793 by Christian Michel, published in France in 2012, translated by Chris Miller and published by Getty Research Institute in 2018