Membership of an academy may be by genre or technique and limited by numbers or age. The Royal Academy, London, for instance, at one time limited the number of engravers who could join, and where artistic styles and tastes change, new categories of membership may be created as necessary. When
Antoine Watteau applied to join the
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, there was no suitable category for his
fête galante works, so the academy simply created one rather than reject his application, describing him as a "peintre des festes galantes". While this acknowledged Watteau as the originator of the genre, it also prevented him being recognised as a
history painter, the highest class of painter, and the only one from which the academy's professors were drawn. Charles-Antoine Coypel, the son of its then director, later said: "The charming paintings of this gracious painter would be a bad guide for whoever wished to paint the Acts of the Apostles." In 1728, when
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was admitted to the same academy for
The Ray, it was as a "painter of animals and fruits". '',
Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin == Gallery ==