How did 18th-century thinkers distinguish fine arts from useful arts?

During the 18th century, thinkers began to distinguish between fine arts and useful arts primarily to categorize human activities based on their purpose and their relationship to taste. This distinction is largely attributed to the French writer Charles Batteux, who sought to provide a systematic theory of art by reducing the fine arts to a single principle: the imitation of beautiful nature.1

The distinction functions as follows:

• Fine Arts: These were identified as activities addressed to taste, with the primary objective of imitating nature to produce aesthetic pleasure. This category encompasses forms such as painting, sculpture, and music, which are valued for their capacity to evoke aesthetic experience rather than for practical utility.123
• Useful Arts: This category was used to accommodate various human activities—such as dressmaking, decoration, manners, and ornament—where taste is involved but the primary focus remains on practical function or utility.2

While this classification became a common framework in aesthetics, some philosophers have noted that it serves more as a gesture than a rigid boundary, as the interests satisfied by both fine and useful arts often overlap.2