Le Chalet du Cycle au Bois de Boulogne (1900)

Jean Béraud: Le Chalet du Cycle au Bois de Boulogne

Le Boulevard St. Denis, Paris (1899)

Jean Béraud: Le Boulevard St. Denis, Paris

On the Champs-Elysées (1892)

Jean Béraud: On the Champs-Elysées

Harlequine (ca. 1890)

Jean Béraud: Harlequine

In the 1890s, Béraud departed (like so many artists and writers at this time) from his earlier naturalism in favor of more symbolic content, as if discontented with mere surface appearances. He did not totally renounce street scenes, but he experimented with new subjects, such as his contemporized versions of biblical stories and costume pieces like Harlequine, in which a single figure is the sole focus of the painting.

This conventionally pretty woman is dressed for costume ball as the female counterpart of the stock figure Harlequin. Her costume adopts elements of the traditional commedia dell'arte character: the diamond pattern, the bicorne hat, the stage sword whose harmlessness is coquettishly demonstrated by the model. But Béraud discards the half-mask so that her porcelain-smooth profile is fully visible. The traditional multicolored costume is exchanged for stylish pink and black.

Elegant she may be, but she is also a vivacious coquette. Béraud emphasizes her desirability through her coy behavior and exposed legs. Her painfully tight corset, which achieves the fashionable 18-inch waist, adds to her seductive charms. [The Haggin Museum]

Jean Béraud (1889)

 Jean Béraud: La Patisserie Gloppe

  

Jean Béraud: The Departure of the Bourgeois

The Salon of Countess Potocka (1887)

Jean Béraud: The Salon of Countess Potocka

The Funeral of Victor Hugo (1885)

Jean Béraud: The Funeral of Victor Hugo

The twentieth century could not wait fifteen years for a round number; it was born, yelling, in 1885. It all started with a wake and funeral such as Paris had never staged even for royalty. In May, 1885, four months after an immense state banquet to celebrate his eighty-third birthday, Victor Hugo died. He left the following will: “I give fifty thousand francs to the poor. I desire to be carried to the cemetery in one of their hearses. I refuse the prayers of all churches. I ask for a prayer from all living souls. I believe in God.” Four years earlier, during public celebrations of his eightieth year of vigor, the Avenue d'Eylau, where he lived, had been officially renamed in his honor. Now his remains lay in state for twenty-four hours on top of a mammoth urn which filled the Arc de Triomphe and was guarded in half-hour shifts by young children in Grecian vestments. As darkness approached, the festive crowd could no longer contain itself. The night of May 31, 1885, night of vertiginous dreams, dissolute and pathetic, in which Paris was filled with the aromas of its love for a relic. Perhaps the great city was trying to recover its loss. . . How many women gave themselves to lovers, to strangers, with a burning fury to become mothers of immortals! What the novelist Barres here describes (in a chapter of Les déracinés entitled "The Public Virtue of a Corpse") happened publicly within a few yards of Hugo's apotheosis. The endless procession across Paris the next day included several brass bands, every political and literary figure of the day, speeches, numerous deaths in the press of the crowd, and final entombment in the Pantheon. The church had to be specially unconsecrated for the occasion. By this orgiastic ceremony France unburdened itself of a man, a literary movement, and a century. [Indiana University Bloomington]

The Boulevard at Night (1883)

Jean Béraud: The Boulevard at Night, in front of the Theatre des Varietes

La Brasserie (1883)

Jean Béraud: La Brasserie

Rue de Havre in Paris (1881)

Jean Béraud: Rue de Havre in Paris

The work includes an overview of the central street of Paris from its mouth on Boulevard Haussmann. To the right of the street and composition, Béraud fixed like a snapshot part of the marquee building department store "Printemps" in its reconstruction phase after the fire that destroyed it in 1881.

The red and white awning stripes, above the figure hat first, marks one of the sections of the Rue de Provence, which crosses the Havre. Below, despite the foreshortening of perspective, the entrance of Lycee Condorcet, photographed years later by Zola, is seen. [Source]

A Parisian Ball (1880)

Jean Béraud: A Parisian Ball

Jean Béraud was born in St. Petersburg, where his father worked as a sculptor, probably one of the many foreign artists commissioned to work on the cathedral of St. Isaac. Béraud studied under the Academic figure painter, Léon Bonnat, but quickly eschewed his master’s idealised compositions for realistic depictions of Parisian daily life. In 1873, he began to exhibit regularly at the annual Salon and soon achieved both commercial and critical success. His Parisian illustrations, painted with scrupulous precision and a discriminating eye, were favorites of an urbane and sophisticated audience. The emblematic canvas A Parisian Ball shows how Jean Béraud grounded a modern and innovative artistic technique, subject matter and composition within an academic tradition, winning him the accolade of Charles Baudelaire, who described him as the “Champion of the Heroism of Modern Life”.

This painting shows the bold and confident handling of artificial light that attracted the admiration of art critics when Béraud first exhibited a soirée scene at the Paris Salon of 1878, who noted that “It is easier to treat one or other of the subjects set for the Prix de Rome than it is to paint a group of fashionable men in tail coats and young ladies in ball gowns standing in a drawing room, by the light of chandeliers and candles…it obviously needs great intelligence and a perfect understanding of chiaroscuro ” (Paul Mantz, « Le Salon », Le Temps, 1878, July 11, p. 2).

No fewer than fifteen sources of artificial light illuminate the ball room and smoking room of this fashionable belle époque Parisian hôtel particulier, where pairs of gas lights shine on every mantle piece and are reflected in large looking glasses, which also reflect the light of the chandeliers. Béraud quipped that he painted “en plein gaz”, rather than “en plein air”, noting that artificial light “simplifies and unifies colors…the great light of lamps and chandeliers produces an effect that is absolutely distinct from day scenes, namely the nearly absolute absence of even shadows. The [modern] profusion of light in nocturnal life eliminates the strong contrasts that have until our day kept painters away from depicting such scenes.” (Letter from Béraud to unknown recipient, Fondation Custodia, Collection F. Lugt, Paris).

“Such scenes” were the nocturnal social life of Paris that interested the artist whether the subjects belonged to dazzling high society or the seedier side of the city, and of which he established himself as an unobtrusive observer. Béraud was particularly interested in depicting activities surrounding the spectacle rather than the spectacle itself, and the present composition places the artist and viewer in a corner of the smoking room, where he can observe the men who have left the ballroom to slouch in the more private, masculine interior. Their relaxed poses and conversations contrast to the stiff formality glimpsed in the ballroom, to which the viewer’s gaze is directed by another observer, the man who stand in this doorway, watching and perhaps preparing his plunge into the crowd of pastel tulle. In the dark, burgundy smoking room, the only feminine presence is the bust on the mantelpiece but women dressed in pink, sky blue and yellow dominate the sky blue, cream and gilded neo-rococo ball room. The artist thus make a wry commentary on the relations between the genders using composition and divisions of color and space. [Galerie Heim]

La Marseillaise (1880)

Jean Béraud: La Marseillaise

This spirited work, of Bastille Day in 1880, epitomizes Jean Béraud’s animated tableaux of Parisian life at the height of the Belle Epoque. Chanting the Marseillaise, workers, artists, students and shopkeepers march from the Place de la Bastille west along the tricolore-draped rue Saint Antoine. First celebrated in 1790, Bastille Day commemorated the storming, on 14 July 1789, of the Bastille fortress by the people of Paris, a key inaugural event of the French Revolution. However, celebrating Bastille Day was suppressed by successive French regimes, including by Napoleon himself and by the restored Bourbon monarchy. To mark the Republic's centenary, in 1879-80 the new liberal leaders of the Third Republic re-established the 14th as a national holiday, and Béraud’s painting coincides with a new patriotic and republican sentiment sweeping across the country after the sombre period of introspection following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

La Marseillaise brings together many fascinating details evocative of the period. The front rank of marchers represents the types of people rebuilding France after the war. On the left the older man in the long tan coat is perhaps a syndicaliste or labor leader, flanked by men and boys in the short blue smocks still worn by tradesmen in France today. In the center are two men in black who, by their unconventional dress, appear to be artists or writers. One wears a red cummerbund instead of a belt, while the other sports a flamboyant pink cravat and a tall hat typical of the dandyism and bohemianism in French art circles in 1880. Between them walks a pregnant woman, representing the future of France. While to the right, three teenagers of differing persuasions – a lycéen with a leftist republican viewpoint, a military cadet with a more moderate-conservative view, and a church student with the Ultra-Catholic party - stride united towards tomorrow. [Sotheby’s]

Outside the Opera, Paris (1879)

Jean Béraud: Outside the Opera, Paris

Les Halles (1879)

Jean Béraud: Les Halles

 

 This is one of Béraud's early street scenes, for which he was famous in the 1880s. So precise is his rendition that this spot can be located on a map. It shows the central market of Paris, Les Halles, on the left and the church of Sainte-Eustache (built 1532-1637) on the right, viewed from the rue Baltard where it meets the pointe Sainte-Eustache. Les Halles, one of the splendid Second Empire projects, was designed by Victor Baltard and employed the most advanced construction technology of the time, iron and glass. "The belly of Paris, " as the market was called by Emile Zola, was one of the symbols of the city's modernity.

The produce market next to the enclosed sheds is alive with activity and brightly colored vegetables. As is usual in Béraud's painting, a pretty woman in fashionable dress is an important focal point. The artist's attention to the individuality and movements of the other customers and workers reveals differences in character and behaviour, while class distinctions are clearly indicated by clothing. The confrontation of the hefty peasant woman and top-hatted gentleman, to the left, and the maid of a few steps behind her mistress, in the center, are cases in point.

Beyond the market itself, Béraud offers glimpses of the bustling streets, where pedestrians mingle with horse-drawn vehicles. In the center is an omnibus, a mode of public transportation introduced to Paris some forty years earlier.

Like the Impressionists, Béraud was interested in showing specific time and place. This, upper-class people wear the latest fashions, trees are sparsely leafed, suggesting early spring, and umbrellas are held, some open, some closed, implying that a light rain has just ended or is just begining. [Haggin Museum]

Soirée in the Hotel Caillebotte (1878)

Jean Béraud: Soirée in the Hotel Caillebotte in Rue Monceau

Woman at Prayer (1877)

Jean Béraud: Woman at Prayer

Sunday at the Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Paris (1877)

Jean Béraud: Sunday at the Church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Paris

When this painting was exhibited in the Salon of 1877, it was seen as a document of contemporary Parisian life. Béraud depicts a view of the rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré, which had recently become a fashionable shopping street. The church was designed in the eighteenth century by the architect J.F. Chalgrin. [Metropolitan Museum of Art]