structural:summarization, quality:corruption
Apotheosis: Parisian salons and further influence

The 19th century was the heyday of the academies, in the sense that their output became extremely well accepted among a much wider—but often less cultured and less demanding—public, giving academic art a popularity as great as that enjoyed today by cinema, and with an equally popular theme, covering everything from traditional historical subjects to comic vignettes, from sweet and sentimental portraits to medievalist or picturesque scenes from exotic Eastern countries, something unthinkable during the Ancien Régime.

By the second half of the 19th century, academic art had saturated European society. Exhibitions were held often, with the most popular exhibition being the Paris Salon, and beginning in 1903, the Salon d'Automne. These salons were large scale events that attracted crowds of visitors, both native and foreign. As much a social affair as an artistic one, 50,000 people might visit on a single Sunday, and as many as 500,000 could see the exhibition during its two-month run. Thousands of paintings were displayed, hung from just below eye level all the way up to the ceiling in a manner now known as "Salon style". A successful showing at the salon was a seal of approval for an artist, making his work saleable to the growing ranks of private collectors. Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Léon Gérôme were leading figures of this art world.

During the reign of academic art, the paintings of the Rococo era, previously held in low favor, were revived to popularity, and themes often used in Rococo art such as Eros and Psyche were popular again. The academic art world also admired Raphael, for the idealism of his work, in fact preferring him over Michelangelo.