The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (425 page)

 
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Salle , David
.

See
NEO-EXPRESSIONISM
.

 
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(1879–1955).
The outstanding Finnish
Expressionist
painter. He was the son of a tailor belonging to the strict puritan and fundamentalist religious sect of the Hihhulit, and the unhappy background of his early years later formed the basis for some of his paintings. After spending several years as an itinerant jobbing tailor in Sweden, he studied art in Helsinki and in 1909 and 1914 visited Paris, where he was influenced by French modernism, particularly
Fauvism
. His favourite subjects were the harsh Karelian landscapes and simple, unsophisticated peasant people of Finland, whom he painted in brilliant but firmly organized colours. He was the leading figure of the
November Group
and became regarded as the nationalist Finnish painter
par excellence
.

 
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Salon
.

France's official art exhibition, first held in 1667 and originally limited to members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (see
ACADEMY
). The name derived from the fact that exhibitions were held in the Salon d'Apollon in the
Louvre
. Their frequency was originally somewhat irregular (though with stretches when they were held annually or biennially); from 1849 they were annual. The jury system of selection was introduced in 1748. As these were the only public exhibitions in Paris the official academic art obtained through them a stranglehold on publicity, and in the 19th cent. a number of rival Salons were organized by progressive artists. In 1881 the government withdrew official sponsorship and a group of artists organized the Société des Artistes Français to take responsibility for the show with a jury elected from each previous year's exhibitors. It still remained hostile to new and creative artists, but from this time the Salon began to lose its prestige and influence in the face of the various independent exhibitions. The
Salon des Indépendants,
for example, appeared in 1884, and the
Salon d'Automne
in 1903.

 
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Salon d'Automne
.

Annual exhibition, held in the autumn in Paris, founded in 1903 as an alternative to the official
Salon
and the
Salon
des Indépendants.
Bonnard
,
Rouault
,
Matisse
, and
Marquet
were foundation members and the Salon d'Automne is best remembered for its 1905 exhibition, when Matisse and his associates won notoriety as the
Fauves
. Also noteworthy were the memorial exhibitions of
Gauguin
(1903, the inaugural exhibition) and
Cézanne
(1907).

 
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Salon de la Rose + Croix
.

Art exhibition held annually in Paris from 1892 to 1897. It was organized by the Rosicrucians, an esoteric brotherhood (allegedly founded in the 15th cent. by one Christian Rosenkreuz) which in the late 19th cent. had close connections with the
Symbolist
movement. The order's symbol, reflecting the name, was a rose and cross combined. Joséphin Péladan (1859–1918), a man of letters who called himself Sâr (i.e. High Priest) Péladan, founded a lodge of the brotherhood in France and this organized the exhibitions. They became a focal point of Symbolism, and the catalogue to the first exhibition said its objects were ‘to destroy
Realism
and to bring art closer to Catholic ideas, to mysticism, to legend, myth, allegory, and dreams’.

 
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