Not to be confused with the Fédération artistique, which brought together performing artists. As far as visual artists were concerned, the revolt had been rumbling for a long time because of the Academy's blocking of access to the annual Salon, without which it was impossible to make a name for oneself. When Courbet and Daumier refused the alms of the Légion d'honneur in June 1870 on the grounds that "the State is incompetent in matters of art", the artists organised a memorable dinner in support of the two insolents.

On 4 September, the Republic appointed an artistic commission, set up at the Louvre with Courbet as its chairman, with the task of safeguarding the national museums threatened by the Prussian invasion. As soon as the Commune was proclaimed, Courbet published a letter to artists in "Le Rappel" on 19 March 1871, in which he proposed an assembly to reorganise the Beaux-Arts and ensure the annual exhibition. An executive committee of 16 artists was set up to prepare the assembly and on 6 April an appeal was published in the Journal officiel de la Commune. Moulin, a sculptor, Courbet, a painter, and Pottier, an industrial designer (the Federation would include craftsmen alongside artists) called for a large meeting in the large amphitheatre of the Ecole de Médecine. Some 400 people attended to adopt a bold programme that was published two days later in the Journal officiel:

"The artists of Paris formed a Federation and decreed :

- Equal rights for all crafts

- The free expansion of art, free from all government control and privileges

-They absolutely reject any mercantile display tending to substitute the name of the publisher or manufacturer for that of the true creator".

A few days later, at the Louvre, they elected Courbet president of the Federation and a federal commission of 47 members from all trades responsible for implementing the programme and organising the exhibition. The exhibition did not take place because of the repressive measures taken by Versailles.

The artists who participated in the creation of the Federation are not all well known, far from it, but research is underway on around twenty of them.

They bear witness to the ostracism that most of them suffered: imprisonment, deportation, exile, looting of studios, madness and poverty. However, despite the incessant persecution, Courbet is rightly a world-famous painter, and his works can be seen at the Musée d'Orsay. Dalou, who was delegated to the Louvre during the Commune, was a great sculptor, a friend of Rodin and the creator of the dynamic group on the Place de la Nation in Paris.

The programme of the Federation of Artists is still relevant today, despite the fact that 150 years later, the Ministry of Culture is exercising its supervisory role without democratic control, and the hold of speculators over the value of artists borders on the delirious.