The woman in Mi Novia is designed to appear similar to the "other ladies of distinction" portrayed by the other so-called Salon painters.

With his friends and his future wife, Camille Donicieux (1847-79), as his models, Monet observed his figures in natural light and worked on the grand-scale canvases that Salon painters used for mythical and historical subjects.

Louis Joachim Gaudibert was indebted to the conventions of the Salon painters is only glancingly stated.

In 1974, art critic and commentator Hilton Kramer of The New York Times called the book "the indispensable text" for a reconsideration of the merits of the Salon painters, as the book demonstrated the web of connections in the cultural and institutions of the time that affected artistic tastes and aspirations of that time.

"Our most popular postcard-picture may well be the 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' by the French 19th-century Salon painter Paul Delaroche," MacGregor says.

The newsletter also publishes previews and reviews on exhibitions of representational painting that its membership may find interesting including painters from the American Impressionist movement, French Salon painters and Victorian Artists.

The biography posted by the National Gallery of Art notes that, "Petit also dealt in Salon painters and handled the works of many successful and fashionable artists of the period, rivaling another Parisian dealer, Boussod & Valadon [successors to Goupil & Cie].

Otherwise, what stands in for real Impressionism are dozens of paintings by the Salon painters of the 1870's and 80's, who often adopted the bright colors and insistent brushwork of the Impressionists without achieving the rigor or simplicity of their compositions.

Like the German painter Anselm Kiefer, Mr. Tacla, who comes from Chile, combines an up-to-date sensibility with the majestic approach of a 19th-century Salon painter.

But King might consider one final irony: Even as he concludes with an image of a battered statue of Meissonier "grimly accepting his unhappy encounter with posterity," Meissonier and his fellow Salon painters are having a bit of a comeback.