English middle class began to be more discerning in their art acquisitions, as symbols of their flaunted social status. In France and England in the mid 1700s, public interest in art began to become widespread, and art was regularly exhibited at the Salons in Paris and the Summer Exhibitions of London. The first writers to acquire an individual reputation as art critics in 18th-century France were Jean-Baptiste Dubos with his Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture (1718) which garnered the acclaim of Voltaire for the sagacity of his approach to aesthetic theory; and Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne with Reflexions sur quelques causes de l'état présent de la peinture en France who wrote about the Salon of 1746, commenting on the socioeconomic framework of the production of the then popular Baroque art style, which led to a perception of anti-monarchist sentiments in the text. The 18th-century French writer Denis Diderot greatly advanced the medium of art criticism. Diderot's "The Salon of 1765" was one of the first real attempts to capture art in words. According to art historian Thomas E. Crow, "When Diderot took up art criticism it was on the heels of the first generation of professional writers who made it their business to offer descriptions and judgments of contemporary painting and sculpture. The demand for such commentary was a product of the similarly novel institution of regular, free, public exhibitions of the latest art". Meanwhile, in England an exhibition of the Society of Arts in 1762 and later, in 1766, prompted a flurry of critical, though anonymous, pamphlets. Newspapers and periodicals of the period, such as the London Chronicle, began to carry columns for art criticism; a form that took off with the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768. In the 1770s, the Morning Chronicle became the first newspaper to systematically review the art featured at exhibitions. 19th century From the 19th century onwards, art criticism became a more common vocation and even a profession, developing at times formalised methods based on particular aesthetic theories. In France, a rift emerged in the 1820s between the proponents of traditional neo-classical forms of art and the new romantic fashion. The Neoclassicists, under Étienne-Jean Delécluze defended the classical ideal and preferred carefully finished form in paintings. Romantics, such as Stendhal, criticized the old styles as overly formulaic and devoid of any feeling. Instead, they championed the new