3 THE FRENCH

BEAUX-ARTS
Jean-Philippe Garric

In the history of French architecture, the term “Beaux-Arts” refers to an academic

institution: the famous art school on Rue Bonaparte on Paris’s Left Bank. But it also
evokes an architectural culture, collectively built within and around the institution
by several generations of students and teachers, a culture that hinged upon shared
standards, values, and practices. Just as there is a “Beaux-Arts style” – one that is
clearly understood by the School’s alumni and demonstrated by their creations –
there is a “Beaux-Arts spirit”: a shared view on the figure of the architect and
his/her role in society. It is even possible to speak of a “Beaux-Arts system,” consid-
ering that beyond the School itself, the elite who graduated from it, the hierarchies it
established, and the evaluation criteria it used significantly contributed to organizing
the architect’s profession in France, by sharing out public orders and official duties.
The Beaux-Arts, as a pedagogy, a method of composition, and even a system of
organization, encapsulates the continuity of the great classical tradition into the
nineteenth century. As such, historicism, that ideology which so much dominates
the century and which rejects any notion of universal and immutable knowledge,
was not absorbed so readily by the École. In fact, for the great majority of progres-
sive artists and architects of the era, especially the Romantics, the Beaux-Arts
became synonymous with rear-guard orthodoxy, and was the object of incessant
mockery, if not outright attacks. Yet, paradoxically, a great majority of that van-
guard was itself schooled at the École – including, for instance, the two fountain-
heads of American architecture, Richard Morris Hunt and Henry Hobson
Richardson. The Beaux-Arts can thus be conceived as the repository of a stable
architectural knowledge, not just in France but in much of the Western world.
It is against that traditional platform that many new ideas would be measured.
And despite the rigidity of its official doctrine, it should be noted that the École
kept within its own structure many “free” spaces where discussions and debates
could occur – notably the famous “ateliers” (studios) run by the students them-
selves, and the École de Rome where the winners of the “Grand prix,” commonly

The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume III, Nineteenth-Century Architecture.

Edited by Martin Bressani and Christina Contandriopoulos.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

called the “Prix de Rome,” could carry out their own architectural speculations away
from the control of the Parisian Académie des Beaux-Arts.

The School’s first mission was of course educational. It trained most French architects
in charge of designing and executing the main buildings and urban developments in
the country, as well as those (often the same ones) who held administrative positions
key to the implementation and control of public architecture.1 Yet, as it fulfilled its
educational function, providing France with professionals able to meet the architec-
tural challenges of the nineteenth century, the School also worked as a laboratory,
producing debates and doctrines and generating a universal architectural model that
took concrete shape not only in a number of theoretical projects and exemplary
works, but also in numerous publications, some of which were to exert great influ-
ence. This architectural model – which, outside the School, was widely taught by its
former students – also spread to other educational institutions and inspired a major
part of works built by French architects and constructors trained elsewhere in Paris or
in France. Eventually, it also gained international influence as the School welcomed
many foreign students (in 1846, Richard Morris Hunt became the first US citizen to
study at the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris, as then did many others), some of whom
were to play a significant role in their own country, both through their built creations
and through their teaching contributions. In order to appreciate the nature and role
of the École des Beaux-Arts in architecture, it is necessary to examine a number of
aspects. This chapter will first review the origins of the School and its founding prin-
ciples, after which it will examine how the School worked, including the organization
of ranking competitions. It will then review the five-year stay at the Académie de
France in Rome for the very select few who won the Prix de Rome, the ultimate
culmination of the Beaux-Arts curriculum. After that, it will examine the Beaux-Arts
buildings, with an emphasis on some of the most remarkable constructions designed
by the School’s alumni. Finally, it will show how the “Beaux-Arts system,” with all its
academic conservatism, managed to stand up to critics and controversies while
always furthering the methods and content used within the School.

Origins of the École des Beaux-Arts

Although only officially established on August 4, 1819, the École des Beaux-Arts
stemmed from a teaching system reinstated in the wake of the French Revolution,
with the creation of the Institut de France on October 25, 1795, and the reestablish-
ment of the Prix de Rome in 1797. The running and principles of the School then
largely hinged upon those in use during the last decades of the Ancien Régime.2 As
its name indicates, Beaux-Arts architecture was allied to other artistic fields, espe-
cially painting and sculpture, rather than to construction and engineering. As an
example of that bias, for instance, the jury of the Prix de Rome in architecture com-
prised all members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, whatever their field: painting,
sculpture, music, or architecture. This approach stemmed from a choice made in
 The French Beaux-Arts 3

the mid-eighteenth century to dissociate two forms of expertise that had been
closely interrelated since the Renaissance: engineering and architecture. This
divorce designated the architect as artist, a conception partly originating from
Alberti, who, as early as the mid-fifteenth century, established a clear difference
between design and construction. It was given new impetus after 1750 with the
popularity of painter-architects such as Giambattista Piranesi in Rome and Éti-
enne-Louis Boullée in Paris.3 Without rejecting the classical legacy of the Italian
seicento and the classical orders of architecture, this transformation led to a
new approach to design based on composition and focused upon the plan as the
formal expression of the project. The ordered symmetrical composition in plan,
composed of elementary spaces with regular shapes (hallways, vestibules, stairs,
galleries, amphitheaters, etc.), was matched in elevation by a composition of
masses or volumes likely to strike a chord with the audience, not unlike color com-
position for painters. Drawing and painting was in fact a crucial skill for the archi-
tect, allowing him both to display his artistic talent and to represent and defend his
projects. The method was a legacy from the final decades of the Académie royale
d’architecture (from the end of the 1760s to 1793), then dominated by Boullée’s
personality and subjected to the influence of sensualist philosophy. As Pérouse
de Montclos has already noted,4 the ateliers (design studios) in which students in
the late eighteenth century prepared their competition entries could be viewed
as laboratories for the future architecture of the nineteenth: not only did they
prefigure the integration of new administrative and institutional programs, but
they also anticipated the character-theory developed in the Cours d’architecture
of Jacques-François Blondel, the leading architecture teacher in Paris in the mid-
eighteenth century.5
The nineteenth-century Beaux-Arts also maintained older traditions in its ped-
agogical method, organized around various monthly competitions that allowed
students to learn gradually, eventually able to compete for the coveted Rome Prize.
Each year, only one student received the ultimate reward which opened up the
possibility of a brilliant career in government architectural services. This very elitist
system, especially for a governmental institution, meant that the main official
duties of the whole public architecture sector in France hinged upon the few dozen
Prix de Rome winners (and, to a lesser extent, the second prize winner). They held
all the key positions at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the Conseil des Bâtiments
Civils (Council of Civil Monuments and Buildings), and academic institutions. They
were also designated as responsible for the design of all major public monuments.
The École’s pedagogic system had three main characteristics: first, it was organ-
ized around a series of design competitions rather than formal classroom training;
second, it put express emphasis on the artistic dimension of architecture, neglecting
the more practical aspects that would have to be learned in parallel on the job; and
third, it structured its curriculum in three distinct stages. Students were first initiated
into the basics of their art through independent classes or in architecture firms; then
they received advanced training in design studios (the famous ateliers supervised by
leading architects but organized by the students themselves), where they prepared
4 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

the École’s competition projects; finally they could compete for the Prix de Rome, a
competition open only to the most distinguished students. The system was more or
less based on the method set in place during the Ancien Régime, where students
were also placed under the aegis of three successive instructors: the teacher in
charge of beginner classes, the one who ran the studio where students prepared
for official competitions, and finally the Academician under whose name students
registered for the crowning Prix de Rome competition. For instance, the first
teacher of Pierre Fontaine (who won second place at the Prix de Rome in 1785
and was later Napoleon’s architect) was Pierre Panseron, who ran a private class
where students learnt how to draw the classical orders and improve their drawing
skills. His second teacher was Antoine François Peyre, in whose studio he first met
his friend and later partner Charles Percier. Finally, his third teacher was the
Academician Jean-François Heurtier. As for Percier, he took initial courses at the
École Gratuite de Dessin (Free Art School for craftsmen) and then with Julien David
Le Roy as tutor at the Académie.6 I single out Percier and Fontaine as they would
become quite representative of the whole Beaux-Arts system, with their work often
being used as exemplar for the next generation of students.
Beyond the content and organization of studies, the École des Beaux-Arts was
able to keep in line with the type of teaching provided in Paris before the Revolu-
tion thanks to the men who maintained a presence both before and after this water-
shed historical moment. A few architect-teachers were active at the school before
1793 and after 1795 (the most notable being Antoine François Peyre). And some of
the most prominent teachers after the Revolutionary period had been star students
in the former era, particularly Charles Percier and Antoine Laurent Thomas Vau-
doyer. These figures insured continuity not only through their teachings, but also
through their work as students and architects, engraved and published from 1787
onward. So in spite of the major changes and traumas brought about by the French
Revolution, architectural education remained remarkably stable in Paris from the
eighteenth to the nineteenth century, thanks to Academicians who kept up with the
old traditions rather than starting on an entirely new basis.

The Curriculum of the École des Beaux-Arts

Drawing made up the common base of architecture students’ education: the acqui-
sition of drawing skills started as early as the teenage years of the architect-to-be
and stood as a common language, used to develop competences, ideas, and projects
and also to communicate with peers, clients, or craftsmen in charge of constructing
buildings. In retrospect, the importance of drawing may seem greater than it was,
as the lavish Beaux-Arts drawings now kept in archives and museums are the
only thing left of that teaching; no record of the verbal exchanges carried in the
Beaux-Arts studios exists nor is there any nineteenth-century treatise on Beaux-Arts
pedagogy.
 The French Beaux-Arts 5

Students could officially enter the School only after competitive examinations.
So both students from and outside the School studied together in studios – the lat-
ter preparing for their future entrance examination. It meant that, once admitted,
students already had strong foundations. Upon entrance, students took part in con-
cours d’émulation (competitive projects organized monthly). As students won these
competitions, they moved up the hierarchy of the School, split into two classes.
Only those admitted to the first class were able to vie for participation in the Prix
de Rome. Students could receive one or two valeurs (points) for each of these com-
petitions, six of which were necessary for first-class admission and nine to apply for
the diploma established after 1867. Some students never made it beyond the second
class, but they could still bear the title of “former student of the École des Beaux-
Arts.” Among those who made it to the first class, only very few eventually became
Prix de Rome winners or second prize winners.7
Neil Levine has described remarkably well the nature of examinations and qual-
ification standards in his thorough analysis of the 1824 Prix de Rome competition,
won by Henri Labrouste – among the most prominent nineteenth-century French
architects trained at the École des Beaux-Arts.8 That year, the program consisted in
the design of a “Cour de cassation” or Highest Court of Appeal. Thirty students
were eligible to compete for the Prix de Rome, and the competition was carried
out, as usual, in two stages. Upon completion of the first, consisting of an “esquisse”
or “sketch,” eight candidates were selected (and ranked), and thus able to continue
in the competition. This “sketch” examination, which in 1824 took place on May
14, lasted 24 hours, during which it was forbidden to leave the School or to have
any contact outside the building.
The authors of the eight selected sketches were then asked to submit fully-
developed drawings by September 21 of the same year. Candidates were thus
granted a four-month period to complete their final documents. One aspect was
essential: their final plans had to keep scrupulously to their original sketch, other-
wise they were automatically disqualified. The sketch not only outlined the overall
idea of the composition, it also detailed the number and position of elements (win-
dows, doors, columns), as well as the main lines of the elevation and the orders
used. The ensemble of these elements was called the “parti,” namely the primary
idea directing the whole design. The final project delineated all details, from the
exact width of walls to that of windows, and provided an accurate graphic defini-
tion of the building. Final adjustments were subject to thorough research and dis-
cussions, especially between the candidate and his tutor. The importance of the
final phase of the project was great; it allowed the candidate to demonstrate his
talent in drawing and his capacity to seduce the jury, but also his ability to develop
an initial idea into a final project on a larger scale. Although ranked eighth in the
first step of the competition, Henri Labrouste nonetheless won the first prize
thanks to this process.
These competition procedures underwent a number of changes during the nine-
teenth century. From 1845 onward, the eight finalists were selected without being
6 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

ranked. After 1864, the 24-hour sketch examination became a mere pre-selection
step for the final competition stage based on a different program. This competitive
examination process, which selected the best students and thus determined the
future architect’s position in the French hierarchical system, was public. The com-
petition programs were written by the Professor of Theory of the School, and pro-
jects were evaluated by members of the Institute. As for the necessary training for
these competitions, it was gained outside the School in independent studios located
in the neighborhood and was managed by the students themselves. It was the stu-
dents who originally invited studio tutors (usually a prominent architect working in
Paris), it was they who paid the rent and collectively pooled their resources. In this
twofold process – an official, centrally-controlled system of competitions and inde-
pendent studio training – the École des Beaux-Arts relied on interpersonal relation-
ships rather than modern teaching methods. Only very belatedly did they identify a
collective educational goal or a didactic project and publish textbooks. For many
years, the only books published by the School were collections of model engravings
made up of student works, drawn from either school competitions or projects car-
ried out by Prix de Rome winners in Rome. Only in 1894 was the first textbook
published explicating the École’s pedagogical method: Julien Guadet’s Eléments
et théories de l’architecture.9 Yet the title of the book, like the organization of its table
of contents, reflects a project methodology that had been in use since the late eight-
eenth century. From a principal axis of symmetry and a strongly hierarchical plan
organized around the principal rooms, the architect had to assemble, according to
predefined patterns, a series of autonomous units or “elements”: hallways, stairs,
galleries, courtrooms, amphitheaters, etc. The system consisted of two phases:
learning to draw each element separately, then learning to combine them to form
an overall plan (Figure 3.1).

Villa Medici, the Classical Model, and Italophilia

Although only very few students had the privilege of staying at the Villa Medici (the
French Academy in Rome), the internship in the Eternal City represented the sym-
bolic fulcrum of the training at the École des Beaux-Arts. Its duration, set at five
years in 1797, then reduced to four after the reform of 1863, allowed a thorough
study of the great monuments of Italy (especially from Roman antiquity) and the
production of lavish graphic documentation. It was a reward for the very best stu-
dents, granting them the privilege of pursuing their education at public expense
and in contact with Italy’s great architectural masterpieces. It provided these ambi-
tious young people – who were eventually to play a major role in the French
official public architecture system – with an opportunity to reflect and take part
in lively academic exchanges, confronted as they were with the so-called canonic
works that formed the very basis of architectural knowledge. They could thus
assert their own personalities within the prestigious circle into which they had
 The French Beaux-Arts 7

Figure 3.1 Charles Percier, Palace for the Academies, ground plan of his entry for the Prix
de Rome competition of 1786, published in A. P. Prieur and P. L. Van Cléemputte,
Collection des prix (Paris, 1787–97), part VI, plate V.
8 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

been admitted. Their stay in Rome as Grand Prix winners would form the basis of
their social and professional recognition, and therefore they had to build upon it.
When it was first established in the seventeenth century, the Académie de
France in Rome aimed at allowing outstanding young artists to further their train-
ing by studying Roman ruins and monuments, thus providing the Académie in
Paris with valuable documentation on canonic classical buildings. But it took a
while before these studies of Roman monuments were systematized. Only in
the mid-1780s was a list of monuments finally established, assigning each student
to a specific building. The work on Trajan’s Column, assigned to Charles Percier in
1788, marked the beginning of the famous series of “envois de Rome,” lavish draw-
ings of ancient monuments sent yearly to the Académie in Paris. The exclusive
focus on classical models lasted well into the twentieth century and resulted in
a unique corpus of drawings and restoration projects which led to several major
publications. It represents probably the most exemplary aspect of the works stem-
ming from the École des Beaux-Arts in the field of architecture.10
These detailed studies of major classical monuments enhanced the students’
drawing skills and of course strengthened the classical basis of their education.
Moreover, it exposed them to the advancement of historical and archaeological
knowledge and to the increasing accuracy of representations, which, in practice,
limited the flexibility of projects hitherto based on the replication and interpre-
tation of classical models.11 In this regard, there was a marked opposition
between the last generations of the late eighteenth century, who often pictured
a fantasized antiquity, as in Boulée’s great imaginary projects, and the 1820s gen-
eration, who developed more accurate knowledge of works in situ, which would
result in either a more literal imitation or a more eclectic approach in contem-
porary projects.
Yet, despite the ever-increasing accuracy and advances of archaeological knowl-
edge, studies of the canonic works of antiquity were far from being a mere objec-
tive record. They were interpretive studies that led to controversies and sometimes
very vivid debates that questioned the “canonical” approach toward the past, often
serving as a way for the younger generation to differentiate themselves from their
predecessors. A significant debate of this kind occurred in 1829, when the Perma-
nent Secretary of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Antoine-Chrysostome
Quatremère de Quincy, and the Director of the Académie de France in Rome,
Horace Vernet, had a serious dispute over Henri Labrouste’s restoration project
of the three Greek temples at Paestum, the latter’s fourth-year “envoi de Rome,” tra-
ditionally the most ambitious study completed within a student’s five-year stay.12
Ambitious and daring architects thus took advantage of the variety of classical
monuments and the remaining uncertainties regarding their dating or their original
condition to make a point about the nature of architecture and its historical evo-
lution. Such was the case for the first studies on the scale of an entire city, carried
out by Jean Hulot on Selinunte in 1906, and by Léon Jaussely on Pompeii in 1910.13
It was thus still possible, despite advances in archaeological knowledge, to have a
level of freedom in interpretation and therefore to express personal positions. The
 The French Beaux-Arts 9

architecture of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the Baroque offered another
vast, nearly unexplored reservoir of studies. Though academic regulations before
1871 did not allow students to devote their studies to the buildings of the Renais-
sance (known as “modern” as opposed to “classical”), in fact the survey and graphic
documentation of monuments of that period had a major role to play from the very
beginning of the École des Beaux-Arts. Besides their “official” work on classical
monuments, students often studied monuments produced in the quattrocento
or even during the Middle Ages during their spare time, keeping up with a tradition
established by Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine who successively published a
book on Roman palazzi (1798) and one on villas and gardens of the Renaissance
(1809). Following their example, a number of Prix de Rome laureates, often former
students of Percier and Fontaine, published collections featuring engraved plates
that represented “modern” buildings. From the volumes on the architecture of
Tuscany published by Auguste Grandjean de Montigny and Auguste Famin
between 1806 and 1815 to the outstanding and well-known Édifices de Rome moderne
by Paul Letarouilly in 1840, a series of publications by Prix de Rome winners nur-
tured by a deep nostalgia for their Roman stay enriched the culture of architecture
students with a “modern” Italian component.
The Italian Renaissance and Mannerism were thus incorporated into education
at the École des Beaux-Arts, adding a repertoire to the classical culture originating
from the days of the Académie royale d’architecture and traditionally based on clas-
sical antiquity and masterpieces of French architecture, as defined by Jacques-Fran-
çois Blondel in the mid-eighteenth century.14

Masterpieces of the Beaux-Arts Architecture

The works of architects from the École des Beaux-Arts deeply marked the Parisian
and French architectural landscape, making a significant contribution to shaping
the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” as Walter Benjamin famously labeled
it.15 Within this large-scale production, a few buildings stand as milestones, exem-
plifying the development of Beaux-Arts architecture at the time of their construc-
tion. To cite but one famous example: the Paris Opéra, designed and built by
Charles Garnier from 1861 onward. This building, which played a major role in
the reorganization of the 8th arrondissement of Paris by Haussmann, stands as
a spectacular example of the combination of the French theatre tradition, such
as the Grand Théâtre of Bordeaux (1773–80), with the decorative and architectural
styles of Italian Mannerism. It has several Beaux-Arts characteristics: an architec-
tural “composition” made of autonomous, predefined architectural features,
clearly legible from the exterior volumetric; the blending of sculpture and painting
with architecture; and finally, an organization and a sequencing of spaces combin-
ing academic rationality with baroque fluidity.16
All French public buildings in the nineteenth century were designed by graduates
of the École des Beaux-Arts – mostly Prix de Rome winners. In the field of sacred
10 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

Figure 3.2 Pierre Fontaine and Louis

Hippolyte Lebas, the Chapelle expiatoire
built in expiation of the execution of Louis
XVI and Marie-Antoinette, 1816–26.

architecture, let us start with the Chapelle expiatoire (Figure 3.2), built by Pierre
Fontaine, with the assistance of Hippolyte Lebas (1816–26).17 This small chapel is
composed of several sections that bring together a variety of references from antiq-
uity and the Renaissance, blending classical rigor with a search for spatial effects. It is
a perfect example of Beaux-Arts architecture in its early stages: a building clearly
influenced by the neoclassicism of a previous era, but already quite eclectic and fea-
turing a complex assembly of simple elements. Although less typical, the church
Notre Dame de Lorette, which was built a few years later by Hippolyte Lebas
(1823–36), also stands as a fine example that combines classical references with
Italian models. This replica of a Roman basilican church generated a great deal of
interest at the time, considered, within the École des Beaux-Arts, as a good alterna-
tive to Mannerist domical churches or earlier medieval examples. In this regard,
Marseille Cathedral provides an even better example. Designed by Léon Vaudoyer,
this huge monument was an ambitious enterprise started in 1855, as part of the
development of the port city during the expansion of the French colonial empire.
It was a very eclectic composition dramatically sited overlooking the new port, com-
bining French and Italian Romanesque elements with strong Byzantine accents. Its
striped walls of white and grey limestone and its series of domes around the apse and
at the summit of the steeples made for a unique ensemble, demonstrating Beaux-
Arts architecture’s capacity for inventive characterization.18
Another major public project was the Palais de Justice (the law courts) in Paris,
built by Joseph-Louis Duc and Étienne-Théodore Dommey (1840–75) on the site of
a series of earlier monuments, some of which dated back to the Middle Ages. At the
 The French Beaux-Arts 11

very heart of the Parisian landscape, the building is among the best examples of
the sort of historicist eclecticism that would come to dominate nineteenth-century
architecture. Parisian libraries provide further well-known examples, including two
designed by Henri Labrouste: the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the
Bibliothèque Nationale, both renowned for their austere masonry envelope, pro-
tecting stunning reading rooms with exposed iron-frame structures. These daring
iron structures bear witness to the variety of approaches and styles emerging from
the École des Beaux-Arts. Henri Labrouste was not always full of praise for the
École, yet for a long time he ran a studio at the Beaux-Arts that was not exactly
in line with the main thrust of academic practice. Both his libraries are comparable
in style with two other great academic edifices created through the transformation
of former convents: the École des Beaux-Arts, whose central building, the Palais
des Études, was designed by Félix Duban (1832–39) (in collaboration with
Labrouste) (Figures 3.3 and 5.1), and the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers
(1838–72), converted and enlarged by Léon Vaudoyer.
Finally, graduates from the Beaux-Arts were involved in the design of not
just the great public buildings on which they were presumably trained to work,
but also a great variety of modern building types, ranging from great market
structures such as Les Halles by Victor Baltard and Félix Callet (from 1845
onward), hospitals such as the Hôtel-Dieu by Émile Jacques Gilbert and Arthur

Figure 3.3 Félix Duban, inner courtyard of the Palais des Études, at the École des Beaux-
Arts (courtyard 1832, glass roof 1863).
12 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

Stanislas Diet (1849–78), and train stations such as the Gare d’Orsay built by
Victor Laloux (1898–1900).

Academic Controversies and Institutional Stability

The long-lasting hegemony enjoyed by the École des Beaux-Arts was not replicated
by any other architecture academies. In the French capital – then the world’s most
prominent artistic center – the École was not the only institution providing archi-
tecture training. Other academic institutions, sometimes equally prestigious but
more technical or engineering-oriented, such as the École polytechnique and
the École Centrale, trained men to design buildings and oversee construction.19
But despite this competition, the École des Beaux-Arts, keeping up with the older
tradition of the Académie royale d’architecture, remained the exclusive institu-
tion for the training for elite architects, those interested in the artistic dimension
of their work. This prominent position, established just after the French Revo-
lution even before the official inauguration of the École des Beaux-Arts in 1819,
lasted in France until the closing of the School in 1968. At the international level,
the School remained a model and a point of reference until the 1930s. This long-
lasting hegemony did not mean that the École was not subject to criticism and
controversies, some of which were extremely intense. As early as the late
eighteenth century, the establishment of architectural training at the École poly-
technique could be construed as a form of criticism of the École’s pedagogy. The
first teacher of architecture at the polytechnique, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand,
developed a new rationalist pedagogy that differed in many ways from the
Beaux-Arts’ artistic and decorative approach.20 In the 1830s, the École was sub-
jected to criticism from the romantic generation, led by Jacques Ignace Hittorff
and Labrouste. Controversies arose, for instance, over the subject of polychromy
in classical architecture.21 The worst attack came in 1863, when Eugène-
Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc led a radical reform project, backed up by Napoleon
III. Appointed to a chair of art history and aesthetics especially created for him,
Viollet-le-Duc had to confront the anger of a student mob unhappy with the
reform he initiated. Having no choice but to resign, he lost the support of his
allies and much of the old curriculum was reinstated.22
These disputes which regularly cropped up through the nineteenth century
were finally settled by 1900. Beaux-Arts teaching, as described in Guadet’s Éléments
et théories, now integrated a wide range of references and models that made the
school appear more open and inclusive. One has to wait another 60 years for
the École to be finally dismantled, architectural education being partitioned in
the current school system, halfway between the old academic system and the uni-
versity model. After 1968, the École could neither resist the international prestige
of a modernist architectural pedagogy derived from Bauhaus, nor the major
upsurge of students of the post-World War II generation, brimming with dissent
and unwilling to submit to academic authority.
 The French Beaux-Arts 13

Notes

1. Georges Teyssot. “Planning and Building in Towns: The System of Bâtiments Civils in
France, 1795-1848”, in The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth-Century French Architecture, ed.
Robin Middleton (London: Thames and Hudston, 1983).
2. Jean-Philippe Garric, “L’Académie royale d’architecture aux origines de l’art de la com-
position, 1779–1799,” in L’Atelier et l’amphithéâtre. Les écoles de l’architecture entre théorie
et pratique, ed. Guy Lambert and Estelle Thibault (Wavre: Mardaga, 2011).
3. Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Etienne Louis Boullée (1728–1799: Theoretician of Revo-
lutionary Architecture (New York: Braziller, 1974).
4. Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, “Les Prix de Rome.” Concours de l’académie royale
d’architecture au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Berger-Levrault/École nationale supérieure des
Beaux-Arts, 1984).
5. Werner Szambien, Symétrie, goût, caractère: Théorie et terminologie de l’architecture à l’âge
classique, 1550–1800 (Paris: Picard, 1986).
6. Jean-Philippe Garric, Percier et Fontaine: Les architectes de Napoléon (Paris: Belin, 2012).
7. Jacques Lucan, Composition, non-composition: Architecture et théories XIXe–XXe siècles (Lau-
sanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2009).
8. Neil Levine, “The Competition for the Grand Prix in 1824: A Case Study in Architec-
tural Education at the École des Beaux-Arts,” in The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth-Century
French Architecture, ed. Robin Middleton (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
9. Julien Guadet, Eléments et théorie de l’architecture: Cours professé à l’école nationale et spé-
ciale des beaux-arts par J. Guadet 1894, 4 vols. (Paris: Aulanier, 1901–4).
10. Laura Mascoli Pinon, Pierre Pinon, and François-Xavier Amprimoz, Les envois de Rome
(1778–1968), Architecture et archéologie, Collection de l’école française de Rome, 110
(Rome: École française de Rome, 1988).
11. Pierre Pinon, “Il valore della ricerca archeologica,” in Henri Labrouste 1801–1875, ed.
Renzo Dubbini (Milan: Electa, 2002).
12. Neil Levine, “The Romantic Idea of Architectural Legibility. Henri Labrouste and the
Neo-Grec,” in The Architecture of the École des Beaux-Arts, ed. Arthur Drexler (New York:
MoMA, 1977).
13. Marie-Christine Hellmann and Philippe Fraisse, Paris-Rome-Athènes: Le voyage en Grèce
des architectes français aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Paris: École nationale supérieure des Beaux-
Arts, 1982); Laura Mascoli Pinon, Pierre Pinon, Georges Vallet, et al., Pompéi: Travaux
et envois des architectes français au XIXe siècle (Paris: École nationale supérieure des Beaux-
Arts, 1981).
14. Jean-Philippe Garric, Recueils d’Italie: Les modèles italiens dans les livres d’architecture fran-
çais (Liège: Mardaga, 2004).
15. David van Zanten, Designing Paris: The Architecture of Duban, Labrouste, Duc, and Vau-
doyer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
16. Girveau Girveau, dir., Charles Garnier: Un architecte pour un empire (Paris: Editions des
beaux-arts, 2010).
17. Jean-Philippe Garric, La Chapelle expiatoire (Paris: Editions du Patrimoine, 2006).
18. Barry Bergdoll, Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1994).
14 Historicism, the Beaux-Arts, and the Gothic

19. Valérie Nègre, “Architecture et construction dans les cours de l’École centrale des arts
et manufactures (1833–1864) et du Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (1854–
1894),” in Bibliothèques d’atelier: Edition et enseignement de l’architecture, Paris 1785–
1871, ed. Jean-Philippe Garric (Paris: INHA, 2011).
20. Jean-Philippe Garric, “Durand ou Percier? Deux approches du projet d’architecture au
début du XIXe siècle,” in Bibliothèques d’atelier: Edition et enseignement de l’architecture,
Paris 1785–1871 (Paris: INHA, 2011).
21. Robin Middleton, “Hittorff’s Polychrome Campaign,” in The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth-
Century French Architecture, ed. Robin Middleton (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
22. Bruno Foucart, ed., Débats et polémiques à propos de l’enseignement des arts du dessin (Paris:
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1984).

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 The French Beaux-Arts 15

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