Académie Suisse

From Delacroix to Cézanne, most major French artists frequented this venue to meet colleagues and to study after male and female models.

The academy was located in a squalid, red house, 4 Quai des Orfévres, where a sombre corridor led to very old, well-worn and dirty stairs that took one up to the front door on the second floor.

[10] The studio was not attractive in appearance, but was fairly well-lit by a quinquet with twenty lamps; an amphitheater of eighty stools or benches was more-or-less occupied according to the season, but one never saw very many empty seats.

The increasingly nicotine-stained walls were covered with academies left in payment of a month in arrears by impoverished art students.

[11][12] The Académie Suisse was much smaller and more informal than the École des Beaux Arts, where many students went on to continue their studies.

[16] Paying fees meant that the cost of models could be shared collectively, which was a great aid to students who had little money.

Influential individuals such as museum curators and art professors would frequently pay visits, such was the acclaim of the academy and the respect for its proprietor.

[25] Passe further states that two years later in 1879 the aged Crébassol sold his studio to the Italian model and sculptor Filippo Colarossi (1841–1906)[26][27] for the sum of 500 fr.

[21] Colarossi wanted to start his own professional art academy and had, through hard work and economy, saved the required funds.

He renamed it the Académie Colarossi,[31] a very successful, fee-funded school that offered expert tuition to male and female students from all over the world.

The memory of his existence was further dimmed when in 1905, the block of buildings including 4 Quai des Orfèvres was expropriated and demolished to make way for the extension of the Palais de Justice in 1906.

Its president was the renowned sculptor Jean Antoine Injalbert (1845–1933) and its aim was to hold exhibitions by former students, both in France and abroad.