Académie de Saint-Luc

The Académie de Saint-Luc was the guild of painters and sculptors set up in Paris in 1391, and dissolved in 1776.[1]

It was set up by the Provost of Paris in 1391, along the lines of the Guilds of Saint Luke in the rest of Europe.

The Académie de Saint-Luc was successful, as it attracted the artists who did not have access to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. This was particularly the case for women artists. In the 18th-century, there were 130 female members of the Académie de Saint-Luc, many more than at the royal academy, which in 1783 limited its female members to four.

In the 1770s, the success of the Académie de Saint-Luc provoked the enmity of the Royal Academy, which complained to the King and successfully petitioned for the closure of their rival. In February 1776 therefore, the Académie de Saint-Luc was closed on the order of Louis XVI of France. Some of its members later became accepted by the Royal Academy.