The Académie Julian in Paris and Its Polish Students

Abstract

The paper discusses the presence of Polish women at the Académie Julian, a private Parisian art school which offered the highest level of teaching, and competed with the state-owned École de beaux-arts. Its greatest popularity with female students from outside France occurred at a time when admission to state universities was forbidden to women, i.e. before 1904. Founded by Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) in 1868, the school operated in several districts of Paris for the next century. Its longest-running atelier was located at 5 rue de Berri. Many Polish artists, such as Anna Bilińska, trained there. The history of this atelier, until its closure in 1974, needed to be compiled. The original equipment from rue de Berri, as well as archives relating to the female artists who studied there in the 19th century, were preserved in the collection of Christophe-Emmanuel Del Debbio and loaned for the exhibition The Artist. Anna Bilińska 1854– 1893, organized at the National Museum in Warsaw in 2021. A significant number of the exhibits have been purchased for the museum’s collection. Nearly 100 objects have been added to the Etchings and Drawings Cabinet, the Collection of Iconography and Photography, the Collection of Old European Art, the Sculpture Collection, the Poster Collection and the Collection of Decorative Art, thus making the Warsaw museum the best equipped with mementoes of the leading private art school of Paris in the second half of the 19th century. A list of 94 Polish female artists studying at the Académie in the years 1876–1928 has been compiled, based on the surviving student registers and photographs of the classes. The list contains dates of their training in the school’s various studios, the names of professors in charge of the classes and the home addresses of students during their stay in Paris. The list adds to the history of the education of Poles at the Académie Julian, initiated with research conducted by Marek Zgórniak.