Academic Art is particularly associated with the French Academy and its influence on the Paris Salons in the 19th century. Although it can be meant to extend to all art influenced by the European Academies, it's often meant to refer to artists influenced and studied by the standards of the Académie des beaux-arts.

The Académie des beaux-arts, was founded in an effort to distinguish artists practicing a liberal art as apposed to those engaged in manual labor. The emphasis on the intellectual component of art making had a considerable impact on the subjects and styles of academic art.

Academic Art was in fashion in Europe from the 17th to the 19th century. Those who practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, were usually referred as academic artists, in the attempt to synthesize their styles.

Often times, academic art was also called academism, academicism, art pompier, eclecticism, and, sometimes, linked with historicism and syncretism.

Bibliography:
L'Art Pompier, Louis-Marie Lécharny, 1998
Art & the Academy in the Nineteenth Century, Denis, 2000