Le Boulevard St. Denis, Paris (1899)

Jean Béraud: Le Boulevard St. Denis, Paris

Rue Royale, Paris (1898)

Louis Marie de Schryver: Rue Royale, Paris

The Fairgrounds at Porte de Clignancourt, Paris (1895)

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: The Fairgrounds at Porte de Clignancourt, Paris

The Flower Seller, Rue de Rivoli (1892)

Louis Marie de Schryver: The Flower Seller, Rue de Rivoli

On the Champs-Elysées (1892)

Jean Béraud: On the Champs-Elysées

Relèvement du chemin de fer de ceinture, Station du Bel Air et rue Montempoivre (1888)

Paul Désiré Trouillebert: Relèvement du chemin de fer de ceinture, 

Station du Bel Air et rue Montempoivre

The modern city was the artistic muse of the French Impressionists and their contemporaries. The Barbizon School trained Paul Désiré Trouillebert was among the artists who found inspiration in Paris' industrial surroundings. In the present painting, Trouillebert takes as his subject the Bel Air train station then undergoing renovations. Such a scene, which would have been an inconceivable subject for artists earlier in the century, offered Trouillebert a means of exploring the avant-garde theme of urban industrialization. Trouillebert adds a touch of softness to what could otherwise be a cold portrait of modernity by including a mother and child holding hands in the foreground and rendering his composition in pastel colors. [Christie’s]

The Siege of Paris (1884)

Ernest Meissonier: The Siege of Paris

At the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Ernest Meissonier sketched out an initial idea for a painting that would symbolise the Siege of Paris. He would only take this up much later, finishing the work in 1884. His vision combines reality and allegory. The figure of Paris - represented by Madame Meissonier, draped in a black veil and a lion skin, in front of a tattered French flag – rises above the ruins of a barricade. Above her, in a sky of billowing clouds of ash and unfolding tragedy, the spectre of famine hovers over a Paris destroyed by fire.

All around, in a scene of confusion, dead and dying soldiers lie stretched out on the palm leaves of martyrdom. With his characteristic, highly detailed realism, Meissonier describes each face, each detail of clothing. Collapsed against the personification of Paris, the painter Henri Regnault, lies dying. He was killed at the age of 27 during the second battle of Buzenval in January 1871. He symbolises a young generation full of promise, decimated by the conflict.

Although defeated, the uninjured soldiers continue to fight. They can be seen on the left of the painting loading a cannon and sounding the charge. Finally Meissonier evokes the suffering of civilians through a few scenes observed with compassion: an old man looks for his son amongst the bodies, a woman shows her husband their dead child, another woman cries over the body of her husband.

The defeat had a profound and long-lasting effect on France at the end of the 19th century. This trauma explains why, for many years, the 1870 war was a common theme in art, and remained popular with the public. Like other painters, sculptors and writers, Meissonier glorifies the spirit of sacrifice and heroism of his compatriots, in a conscious desire to increase national feeling and prepare for revenge. [Musée d’Orsay]

The Boulevard at Night (1883)

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

Market Day (1882)

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: Market Day

Sunday Afternoon in the Jardin d'Acclimatation (1882)

Jean Richard Goubie: Sunday Afternoon in the Jardin d'Acclimatation

Located in the northern part of Paris' Bois de Boulogne, the Jardin d'Acclimatation (also known as the Jardin Zoologique d'Acclimatation) was opened on October 6, 1860 by Napoleon III and Empress Eugènie. The Jardin was designed, in part, to compensate for the heavily man-made landscapes of the Bois du Boulogne and entirely rebuilt into picturesque landscapes under Baron Haussmann's guidance in 1852-58. Its early director Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire intended the Jardin to "acclimatize" newly imported exotic animals to European environments, ultimately domesticating them or cross-breeding with domestic species (Baratay and Fugier, pp. 141-6). Though kangaroos, giraffes, and monkeys resided in enclosed houses or cages, others of the menagerie were allowed relative freedom to roam in low-fenced enclosures. It is one of these areas that Goubie depicts with vivid detail in the present work, exhibited to acclaim at the Paris Salon of 1882. Here, a crowd of children (accompanied by mothers and caretakers) feed an eager gander of geese, along with swans and ducks, while others enjoy an animal ride.

A student of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Goubie secured his reputation with equestrian scenes of well-dressed Belle Époque riders on a country ride or hunt astride handsome horses. The present work further demonstrates his keen sensitivity to the relationship of people and animals.  This composition could easily illustrate late nineteenth century guidebooks to Paris, such as the widely read editions published by Karl Baedeker, who encouraged a visit to the Jardin's "enclosures... containing quadrupeds trained for the purposes of the garden or the amusement of visitors. A great source of delight to children here is a ride on the back of an elephant or a dromedary, or a drive in a carriage drawn by ostriches, llamas, etc." (Karl Baedeker, Paris and Environs, 7th ed., 1881, p. 159). As Goubie portrays, the elephants in particular drew great crowds. The pachyderm's bulk and strength seemed an incredible feat of nature, while its docile termerament encouraged visitors to make safe contact. As Baedeker promised, spending a sunny afternoon among the Jardin's animals afforded "one of the most attractive promenades in the environs of Paris". Parisians could step away from city streets and into a realm of exotic (if heavily cultivated and curated) delight.

Goubie's panoramic composition creates a dramatic sense of space and movement: he places the promenaders along a winding path, allowing the viewer to follow them from the horizon line and as they exit the picture space.  An element of humor further enlivens the subject, which skewers the visitors' eagerness to "see and be seen" among the Jardin's inhabitants. The blues, reds, bright pinks and purples of the children's smart costumes outshine the fur and feathers of the animals on display. Only the ostrich, pulling the red carriage, its long neck rising above the crowd, seems to acknowledge the viewer's presence. [Sotheby’s]

Victor Gabriel Gilbert (1881)

Victor Gabriel Gilbert: Fish Hall at the Central Market

  

Victor Gabriel Gilbert: The Flower Market, Paris

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]

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert (1880)

 Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: A Corner of the Fish Market

  

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: The Flower Market

The Hôtel de Ville in reconstruction (1880)

Paul-Joseph-Victor Dargaud: The Hôtel de Ville in reconstruction

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]

Selling Flowers, Paris (1879)

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: Selling Flowers, Paris

Outside the Opera, Paris (1879)

Jean Béraud: Outside the Opera, Paris

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert (1978)

 Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: Market Day

    

 Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: The Flower Seller

  

Victor-Gabriel Gilbert: The Vegetable Market, Paris

The Construction of Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre (1878)

Paul-Joseph-Victor Dargaud: The Construction of Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre

Paul-Joseph-Victor Dargaud's Paris studio was located at 34, boulevard de Clichy not far from the the building site of Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre. The present work was painted in 1878, three years after the basillica's foundation stone was laid, and captures the complex construction efforts that would continue through 1914. [Sotheby’s]

Avenue Foch, Paris (1877)

Edmond-Georges Grandjean: Avenue Foch, Paris