Paris 1900
PRESS KIT
MARCH 2014
TH E CI TY O F E N T E RT A I N M E NT
2 April - 17 August 2014
INFORMATION
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 – 1901).
Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in «Chilpéric» 1895-1896
Oil on canvas 145 x 149 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art, collection of Mr and Mrs John Hay Whitney
© Bridgeman Giraudon
Organised with the kind co-operation of With support from
CO NTENT S
Press release p. 3
Scenographyp. 5
The exhibition trailp. 6
Described worksp. 9
Paris 1900 in the permanent collections p. 12
The exhibition catalogue p. 14
Lectures and events about the exhibition
p. 15
Workshops and visits p. 17
The Paris 1900 exhibition app p. 18
Partnersp. 19
The Petit Palaisp. 25
Practical informationp. 26
Press visit
Tuesday 1st April 2014
9.30 am – 1.00 pm
Media relations
Mathilde Beaujard
[email protected]
Tel : 01 53 43 40 14
Communications manager
Anne Le Floch
[email protected]
Tel : 01 53 43 40 21
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
P RES S RELEA SE
The exhibition Paris 1900, the City of entertainment is an invitation to the
public to relive the splendour of the French capital at the time when the Paris
Exposition universelle was heralding the arrival of the 20th century. More than
ever before, Paris was seen throughout the world as a sparkling city of luxury with
a sophisticated way of life. Over 600 works will plunge visitors to the Petit Palais into the atmosphere of Belle Époque Paris. There will be paintings, works
of art, costumes, posters, photographs, films, furniture, jewellery and sculptures. The technical inventions, the cultural effervescence, and the sheer elegance of Parisian women will be staged and displayed as representative legends of
Paris during this time, an image which has since been promoted in literature and
the cinema throughout the world.
Mucha
The Nature, 1899-1900
Badisches Landsmuseum
© Karlsruhe, Badisches
Landsmuseum
An inventive and original scenography which integrates the new-fangled cinematograph into the museum trail takes the visitor on a journey similar to that made
by the 51 million tourists who flocked to Paris in 1900.
The trail is organised around six ‘pavilions’ and begins with a section called
‘Paris, showcase of the world’ – a reference to the Exposition universelle. New
railway stations were built for the occasion: the Gare de Lyon, the Gare d’Orsay
and the Gare des Invalides, as well as the first Metro line, known as the Métropolitain. This extraordinary event will be commemorated in the exhibition with
architectural projects, paintings, films and also picturesque souvenirs and pieces
of scenery and decoration that have been kept since that time.
But ‘Paris 1900’ is far more than a tribute to the Exposition universelle. Paris at
that time offered many more opportunities for wonderment and for spending
your money. In the luxury shops and the art galleries, art-lovers could discover
the creations of the pioneers of Art Nouveau. They are presented here in a
second pavilion devoted to masterpieces by artists such as Gallé, Guimard,
Majorelle, Mucha, and La-lique.
Jean Béraud
Parisienne, place de la Concorde
Oil on wood, 35 x 26,5 cm
© Paris, Musée Carnavalet / RogerViollet
The third section is allotted to the fine arts and underlines the central place
that Paris occupied within the art scene. At that time talents from everywhere
were converging at the French capital to train in studios, to exhibit in the Salons
and to sell their wares in the expanding network of art galleries. Paris as a cosmopolitan city is evoked with paintings by Edelfet, who was Finnish, Zuloaga, a Spaniard, and the American, Stewart. The exhibition confronts visitors with paintings
by Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Vuillard, alongside works by Gérôme,
Bouguereau and Gervex, artists whose acclaim ranged from Academicism to
Impressionism (now finally recognized), to late Symbolism, with new figures on
the art scene such as Maillol and Maurice Denis, while the art of Rodin reigns
supreme.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
Visitors are then invited to discover the creations of Paris fashion, then at its
zenith. Its success was emblazoned on the monumental doorway to the Exposition
universelle, which was surmounted by the figure of a Parisian woman dressed by
Jeanne Paquin. The fashion houses of the Rue de la Paix attracted a vastly wealthy cosmopolitan clientele, and also served as inspiration for the clothes of the
«midinettes» (young Parisian saleswomen of seamstress). The finest treasures
of the Palais Galliera, such as the famous evening cape by Worth, will be accompanied by large society portraits by La Gandara and Besnard, and paintings
depicting the world of milliners and dressmakers’ errand girls by Jean Béraud
and Edgar Degas.
The remaining two pavilions offer a taste of the world of entertainment in
Paris: from the triumphs of Sarah Bernhardt to the successes of Yvette Guilbert, from Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande to L’Aiglon by Edmond Rostand, from
opera to café-concerts, and from the circus to the brothels. The illustrations of
the bright as well as the dark side of this city abandoning itself to pleasure suggest that it remained the capital of the world and the source of all gratifications.
Legendary venues like the Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir became favourite
subjects for artists like Toulouse-Lautrec. From the great demimondaines who
lived hedonistic lifestyles such as Liane de Pougy and La Belle Otero to the horrors of prostitution and drugs, the exhibition shows the other side of the picture,
themes which would prove to be influential in aesthetic revolutions.
Alfons Mucha
Poster for Alfred Musset’s play ‘Lorenzaccio’, 1896.
Théâtre de la Renaissance.
Lithograph.
© Bibliothèque Forney /
Roger-Viollet
The legend of the Belle Époque has endured to this day not only because of the
contrast with the horrors of the First World War, which followed so soon after it,
but because there was a genuine cultural blossoming. Its unprecedented force is
demonstrated in this exhibition. The Petit Palais is the most beautiful architectural gem remaining from the year 1900 in Paris. Now at last this wonderful building
is devoting an important exhibition to that seminal period accompanied by
a programme of events and an extra trail through the permanent galleries,
showing paintings from the collections that have never been seen before. For
the first time ever, Paris pays a wonderful tribute to this period of time.
Henri Gervex
An Evening at the Pré-Catelan, 1909.
Oil on canvas, 217 x 318 cm
© Paris, Musée Carnavalet/ Roger-Viollet
Curators
Christophe Leribault, Director of the Petit Palais
Alexandra Bosc, Curator at the Palais Galliera
Dominique Lobstein, Art historian
Gaëlle Rio, Curator at the Petit Palais
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
SC ENOG RA PH Y
A rhythmical and carefully constructed scenography
Visitors are guided to the entrance of the exhibition through the South gallery of the Petit Palais by a series of banners on flagpoles, echoing the flags that marked out the entrance of the Exposition universelle in 1900.
The scenography of the exhibition consists of a succession of well-identified key spaces, in the image of the pavilions at universal exhibitions, with surprise effects all along the exhibition trail and with ‘passages’ in order to
move from section to section. Each ‘pavilion’ has its own particular layout, ceiling height and wall colour, and the
works are displayed and lit in a way peculiar to that pavilion. The passages, which punctuate the trail, have lower
ceilings than the pavilions and their darker atmosphere acts as a way of clearing the mind between sections. In the
passages there are historical film clips relating to the various sections and an installation that combines multiple
projections with sets of mirrors to give visitors the impression of being inside the images as they move along.
The pavilion Paris, vitrine du monde (Paris, showcase of the world) takes the form of a covered street. The pavilion
Paris, Art Nouveau is a large centralized space with the two small sides which are shaped like semi-circles. The
pavilion Paris, capitale des arts (Paris, Capital of the Arts) is divided into two areas; the first is designed as a large
museum room or salon, and the second, which is more modestly proportioned, is mainly devoted to works by
Rodin. The pavilion called Le mythe de la Parisienne (The mythical Parisienne) overflows with works of all kinds;
it is divided into several sub-spaces with inter-related views and perspectives. The pavilion Paris la nuit (Paris by
night) takes visitors back to the atmosphere of Parisian nights in 1900, with a ‘house’ in the middle of the space
recalling the lighter side of life at that time. The sixth and last pavilion Paris en scène (Paris on stage) consists of
three ‘merry-go-rounds’ golden yellow sides, one of which is the entrance to a little cinema where Méliès’s 1902
film A Trip to the Moon is projected.
At regular intervals in the exhibition, cinematographic documents of the period pay tribute to what was soon to
become the seventh art. The use of these films as part of the scenography, particularly in the ‘passages’, gives a
wealth of variety to the visitor trail. The trail finishes in the middle of the permanent collections – a reminder that
the Petit Palais itself was indeed created for the Exposition universelle in 1900
ÉQUIPE PHILIPPE PUMAIN
ARCHITECT-SCÉNOGRAPHER
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment- 2 April – 17 August 2014
THE EX HIBITIO N TRAI L
Paris 1900, the city of entertainment
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 –
1901).
Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero
in «Chilpéric» 1895-1896
Oil on canvas 145 x 149 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art,
collection of Mr and Mrs John Hay
Whitney
© Bridgeman Giraudon
René-Jules Lalique
‘Capucines’ Comb, 1898.
Horn, silver, enamel 13,9 x 9,2 cm
© Paris, Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet
After a century of political convulsions, France could at last celebrate its newfound stability and look to the future with optimism. The country was now a republic, the economy was flourishing and it was diplomatically strong, all of which
promised carefree days ahead. Paris was admired more than ever before for its
artistic and intellectual influence. It was also capable of attracting the rich and
powerful from all over the world with its promise of luxury, gastronomy and every
kind of pleasure and distraction for the connoisseur. Everything was in place for
Paris to trump any other city and establish itself, for the space of an Exposition
universelle, as the capital of the world.
Just like the tourists who came to participate in that great celebration of international brotherhood and euphoria, visitors to this exhibition can wander through
and take in, the other facets of Paris during that period: Art Nouveau, fashion and
fine art, the shows and the nightlife – the ultimate forms of entertainment before
everything went up in flames in the First World War.
Paris, showcase of the world
Following the opening of the Exposition universelle on 15th April 1900, for a few
months, Paris became the centre of the world and the showcase of all nations.
Planning for it had begun in 1896 and it involved building work that had a marked
effect on Paris town planning. A great deal of infrastructure, ranging from the
Metro to a new bridge, the Pont Alexandre I I I, and two new railway stations, the
Gare d’Orsay and the Gare des Invalides was created to facilitate access to and
traffic within the 120 hectares (300 acres) of the exhibition. No exhibition of
that size had ever been organised before. The theme was «the achievements of
a century» and it was visited by 51 million visitors who came to admire masterpieces from all nations, including monarchies that until then had kept their distance from republican France. Attractions were more popular than pedagogical
demonstrations, and electricity was no longer admired as a source of amazement
but as technical progress.
The exhibition could be reached from the Place de la Concorde and it stretched
along both banks of the Seine as far as the Champ de Mars and the Trocadéro.
There was an annexe of 110 hectares (270 acres) of exhibition in the Bois de Vincennes devoted to agriculture, the automobile, workmen’s houses and the Olympic Games. But the jewel in the crown of Paris was erected on the corner of the
Champs-Elysées: the Petit Palais.
Paris Art nouveau
Art Nouveau was a reaction against the academic tradition and styles inspired
by the past. Its repertoire of forms and motifs was based on close observation of
the natural world. It was an international trend that cultivated asymmetry and a
line known as the ‘whiplash curve’. It owed a great deal to Japanese art, and its
greatest proponent in Paris, Siegfried Bing, in the Rue de Provence, coined the
term Art Nouveau.
Unity in art was a stated principle of the movement and its influence reached
almost every creative field, from the largest to the smallest. Hector Guimard’s
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
Castel Béranger in the Rue La Fontaine, Paris, is an outstanding example of Art
Nouveau architecture and the same aesthetic principles are present in the magnificent jewellery of René Lalique or Alfons Mucha. There was a leap of inventive creativity which covered such highly traditional techniques as ivory carving,
bookbinding, wallpaper and stained glass.
Thanks to a spirit of emulation among creative designers from Nancy, from Belgium, and the rest of Europe, the presence of wealthy clients who liked the style,
and craftsmen of great skill, Paris provided the international Art Nouveau movement, in all its local variants, with a tremendous impetus. It marked the culmination of the style, which became known in France as le style 1900.
Paris, capital of the arts
Paul Cézanne
Ambroise Vollard, 1899.
Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm
© Paris, Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet
For the 1900 Exposition universelle, the French government of the day, the Third
Republic, erected two buildings, in the heart of Paris, to the glory of the fine arts:
the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais. Between them they displayed a vast panorama of French art from its origins up to 1900. There was decorative art as well as
painting and sculpture and the whole was dominated by a retrospective devoted
to works produced in the preceding ten years.
The works in this room have been chosen from the major pieces of the turn of the
century. They make no claim to being exhaustive but they do represent the variety
of trends present at the time, from the survival of academic history painting to
the last flush of Realism, when Symbolism was coming back into fashion, Impressionism was finally recognized, Auguste Rodin reigned in the Alma Pavilion and
the generation of Nabis artists were pursuing their own pathway.
Although creativity in Paris seemed to be becoming diluted by variations on outof-date movements, the high-quality of teaching continued to attract artists from
all over the world, as did the hope that they might attain international recognition by exhibiting their work on the walls of the Salons. Artists had access to a
fast developing art market run by well-established dealers like Georges Petit and
Durand-Ruel, or new dealers such as Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill. They
organised a rapid succession of exhibitions – there were group shows but most
were monographic. These exhibitions were the breeding ground for the avantgardes of the 20th century.
The mythical Parisienne
Anonymous
Tea-gown (formal dress for private
gatherings), belonging to the actress
Réjane 1898 - 1899.
White cotton voile, machine made
lace, white flower-patterned (roses)
embroidery.
© Eric Emo / Galliera /
Roger-Viollet
The monumental gateway that provided access to the Exposition universelle was
dominated by a statue. The expected statue of Marianne, symbolising the Republic, had given way to a Parisienne dressed by Jeanne Paquin and sculpted by
Paul Moreau-Vauthier. It was an eloquent substitution and emphasised the role
of this universally admired figure, whom a contemporary journalist defined thus:
«The Parisienne is distinguished from other women by an understated elegance
appropriate to every circumstance in life. Her characteristics are restraint, good
taste, innate refinement and that indefinable something which is unique to her, a
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
mixture of allure and modernism that we call chic».
The little Parisiennes, particularly the dressmakers’ and hatmakers’ errand girls
(les trottins), were as much an embodiment of the essence of good taste as Comtesse Greffulhe or Marcel Proust’s Duchesse de Guermantes. As for rich foreign
customers, they returned home tinged with some of that glory after a tour of the
finest couturiers and a stop-over in the studio of a fashionable portraitist, charged with immortalising them in their finery.
Paris, by night
Edgar Chahine, La Midinette, 1903.
Print ,46,7 x 25,7 cm
© Paris, Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet
With the modernisation of street lighting, Paris became a place where work gave
way to leisure and it was possible to go out at night. Even for the less well off there
were café-concerts and music halls, balls and circuses. Shows were everywhere in
the city. Paris began to acquire a reputation as a capital of fun, where temptation
and corruption could provide as many frissons of pleasure as of danger.
Aristocrats and industrial or commercial magnates from the old and the new
world lodged in Paris, drawn by the sensual and festive aura of its nightlife, which
added strength to the myth of the Belle Époque. Women in this nighttime world
were as much ornaments as prey. The well heeled were not the only beneficiaries
of this atmosphere; everyone could give free rein to their desires when the entire
town was transformed into a vast boudoir. And the heady sense of the forbidden
was soon available for export in the form of Le Coucher de la Mariée (Bedtime
for the Bride), the first striptease of the early cinema.
Paris on stage
Henri Gervex
An evening after the races at the
Pavillon d’Armenonville, 1905.
Oil on canvas, 66 x 98 cm
© Paris, Musée Carnavalet/
Roger-Viollet
Before tasting the pleasures of the Parisian nights, it was the done thing to take
advantage of the pleasures and diversions of the city. One had to be seen at the
Pré Catelan or the Pavillon d’Armenonville, fashionable restaurants where a
mixed and cosmopolitan society preened its feathers before it was time for the
show. It was, of course, not done to arrive in time for the beginning and the most
fervent opera goers did not fill the auditorium at the Opéra Garnier until the
ballet of the second act.
The theatres were within the financial reach of everybody and radical changes
were taking place at the time. Although most were either repertory or boulevard
theatres, others, like the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre or the Théâtre Libre, promoted unknown dramatists and a new style of acting.
Although the cinematograph was still mainly a curiosity, there were pioneers who
were aware of its potential, and this did not escape certain stars of the theatre;
Sarah Bernhardt and Constant Coquelin had no qualms about being filmed in
silent movies. The cinema in its turn was to contribute, as it still does, from Hollywood to Billancourt, to the myth of the Belle Époque – a blend of optimism and
vague eroticism accompanied by intoxicating music that covered any hint of the
terrible carnage to come.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
DES C RIBED WORKS
‘Project for the monumental gateway to the Exposition universelle of 1900’, René Binet (1898)
René Binet
Project for the monumental gateway
to the Exposition universelle of 1900,
1898.
© Cl. Musées de Sens – E. Berry
René Binet the architect was a pupil of Victor Laloux at the École des Beaux-Arts
de Paris. His talents as a watercolourist and designer were recognized early on.
It was the 1900 exhibition which really launched his career, however, when he
was commissioned by the government to build one of the main entrances, the
monumental gateway at Cours-la-Reine. He was a great enthusiast for the work
of the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who studied marine invertebrates. Binet
designed his gateway in the shape of a stylised radiolarian (a microscopic marine
organism). For his watercolour he took inspiration from Haeckel’s marine biology
plates.
The 45 metre-high gateway stood on the bank of the Seine on the corner of the
Place de la Concorde. It consisted of a hemispheric cupola resting on three
greatarches. The wings on either side of the great arch were decorated with two
friezes, one on top of the other, in polychrome earthenware. The upper frieze
represented the triumph of work and was executed by the sculptor Emile Müller
from a model by Anatole Guillot. The lower frieze was a series of animals in the
Assyrian style by Paul Jouve and Alexandre Bigot. On top of the gate was a 6.5
metre-high monumental statue by sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier, who at the time
was at the beginning of his career. It represented ‘The Parisienne’, a woman wearing a long evening coat open to reveal a modern dress designed by the couturier
Jeanne Paquin.
This polychrome construction was designed as a triumphal arch through which
forty thousand visitors could pass in an hour. It was decorated with thousands
of yellow and blue glass studs which glistened at night. Binet’s gateway was not
universally acclaimed by artists but it was a great success with the general public
and was reproduced in every imaginable form, much as the Eiffel Tower had been
in 1889.
Gaëlle Rio
«The Nature», Alfons Mucha (around 1899-1900)
Crowned with a diadem and an egg-shaped ornament, this young woman’s eyes
are half closed, as if she were lost in a reverie. Her face is a perfect oval framed
by the voluptuous locks of her hair. In spite of her naked breast, she gives the
impression of being deaf to all entreaties, like the distant princesses of Khnopff
or Maeterlinck.
The piece was often thought to be a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt or Cléo de Mérode but in fact it is an allegorical representation of Nature. A cast of it was exhibited in the Austrian section of the 1900 Exposition. The work bears the mark
of Emile Pinedo, ‘ statuaire bronzier, expert arbitre… 40 boulevard du Temple’.
Pinedo had an art foundry and won a silver medal at the Expositions of 1889 and
1900. Four versions of this bust are known to exist. Two of them are held in private collections and the other two are in public collections (Karlsruhe, Badisches
Landesmuseum and Richmond, Virginia Museum of Art, The Sydney and Frances
Lewis Art Nouveau Fund).
Dominique Morel
Alfons Mucha
(Ivancice, 1860 – Prague, 1939)
The Nature, circa 1899-1900. Gilded
and silvered bronze; 70,7 x 30 x32 cm
© Karlsruhe, Badisches
Landsmuseum
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
«Cupid and Psyche», Auguste Rodin (post-1900 replica from a model executed circa 1885)
Auguste Rodin
(Paris, 1840 – Meudon, 1917)
Cupid and Psyche, post-1900 replica
from a model executed circa 1885.
Marble ; 25 × 65 × 41,5 cm.
© Paris, Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet
The Cupid and Psyche group is one of Rodin’s many variations on the Psyche
theme which he described as «the quite delicious story of woman and how she
came into being». A literal illustration of the myth held no interest for Rodin, who
was taken by the erotic connotations of the story. He made use of the qualities of
marble, traditionally the material most capable of creating the illusion of flesh,
to convey the sensuality of the embrace. By means of an effect which he often
used, Rodin created a contrast between the chiselled, rock-like quality of the base
and the smooth, polished bodies of the lovers. The design for this model dates
from the mid 1880s, a period of intense creativity for Rodin, who at the time was
making hundreds of sketches for the Gates of Hell. Cupid and Psyche belongs
with a group of figures illustrating «the carnal embrace of two beings who love
each other». These figures – Damned Women, Daphnis and Lycenion, and The
Metamorphoses of Ovid – were apparently inspired by a couple of dancers that
Degas introduced to Rodin. By changing various things, as he often did, Rodin
reused the initial sketch for several compositions, simply changing the sex of one
of the models. An early version of Cupid and Psyche in marble, now held in an
American private collection, was presented at the World’s Columbian Exposition
of 1893, then in 1900 at the Alma Pavilion. The success of the group with collectors
encouraged Rodin to make replicas in marble and editions on bronze.
Cécilie Champy
The evening cape of Comtesse Greffulhe, tailored from a Boukhara caftan given by the Tsar, circa 1896.
Charles-Frédéric Worth(1860-1952)
Charles-Frédric Worth
Evening cape belonging to Comtesse Greffulhe, née Élisabeth de
Caraman-Chimay (1860-1952), tailored from a Bukhara caftan given
by the Tsar, circa 1896.
Cloth made from silk and metallic
threads with silver and gold Tenerife
motifs on a background of violet,
black chiffon and gold metallic lace.
© Patrick Pierrain / Galliera /
Roger-Viollet
It is well known that Comtesse Greffulhe was the inspiration for Proust’s character the Duchesse de Guermantes, the most elegant of all Parisiennes. What is
amusing is that his model was actually a Belgian by birth but, as Taxile Delord
wrote in 1841, «Of all the Parisiennes, many of them are foreigners». Elisabeth
Greffulhe reigned over Paris society with her musical salon and fascinated the
whole of Belle Époque society. She it was who started the League of Small Hats in
1906, a new fashion for the theatre that would make the stage visible to members
of the audience without their view being blocked by the imposing decoration of
their neighbours’ headgear. This famously elegant woman frequently made the
headlines with her spectacular outfits; like, for example, the ‘Byzantine’ dress
– also held in the Palais Galliera – which she wore to her daughter’s wedding in
November 1904, which was so spectacular that, in the eyes of all the guests, it
eclipsed the bride’s own dress, making the Comtesse herself the queen of the day.
The cape displayed here is similarly dramatic. Its effect is largely due to the
richness of the cloth, a magnificent Bukhara caftan, probably given to the Comtesse by the Tsar during a visit to Paris in 1896. Elisabeth Greffulhe had it tailored
by Worth, her couturier, into a fabulous evening cape which endowed its wearer
with a unique and poetic magic, like the rest of her wardrobe, which is conserved
in the Palais Galliera.
Alexandra Bosc
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
«Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in «Chilpéric» 1895-1896», Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1895-1896)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864 –
1901).
Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero
in «Chilpéric» 1895-1896
Oil on canvas 145 x 149 cm
Washington, National Gallery of Art,
collection of Mr and Mrs John Hay
Whitney
© Bridgeman Giraudon
After the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, a number of commentators maintained that Operetta, the dominant genre in the theatre of the time, had corrupted
the country through its excesses and its irreverence. They even went so far as to
suggest that operettas were responsible for France’s defeat by Germany. It took
twenty-five years in limbo before the wily director of the Théâtre des Variétés,
Fernand Samuel, brought Hervé’s light opera Chilpéric, an international symbol
of Parisian gaiety, back to the stage. The operetta tells the delightfully illogical
story, typical of Hervé, of the love of the Frankish king Chilpéric for Frédégonde
– an ill-fated love affair on account of Chilpéric’s marriage to Galswinthe, whose
Visigoth origins were nonetheless a pretext for bolero costumes and dances. Toulouse-Lautrec, who was only four years old when Chilpéric was first performed in
1868, saw the piece in all its extravagant splendour and was immediately captivated by the performance of the singer and dancer Marcelle Lender. He returned to
see the opera dozens of times, taking along friends, who didn’t always share his
enthusiasm. Lautrec was not the sole admirer of the beautiful actress. The artist
Stop, asked by his newspaper to fill a page with caricatures on Chilpéric, devoted
most of the page to Marcelle Lender, in the very same costume (styled by Charles
Landolff) as she is seen wearing here.
Bérengère de l’Epine
«An Evening at the Pré-Catelan», Henri Gervex (1909)
Henri Gervex (Paris, 1852 – Paris,
1929)
An Evening at the Pré-Catelan, 1909
Oil on canvas, 217 x 318 cm
© Paris, Musée Carnavalet/
Roger-Viollet
This large painting was commissioned by Léopold Mourrier, owner of the Pré-Catelan, the famous restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, which opened in 1905. It is
a late image of Paris society during the Belle Époque. Recognizable in the middle
of the painting, with the painter’s second wife, are Duke Hélie de TalleyrandPérigord and, with her back to us, his rich American wife Anna Gould. Among
the diners, as if lined up in the windows, are: at a table on the right, the amply
proportioned figure of the Marquis de Dion, a pioneer of car manufacturing and
influential politician and, posing in the central bay, the very beautiful Liane de
Pougy. In the left hand window sits Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont.
Whether Mourrier, who commissioned the painting, actually chose these people
or not, he must have approved of their presence, particularly since the painting
was put on public display at the 1909 Salon de la Société Nationale des BeauxArts. The work is ambitious both in size and in its highly original framing and
luminosity. It reflects the astonishing social mix of Parisian high society. It is unlikely that a picture featuring representatives of industrial power, sporting heroes,
the old aristocracy and a demimondaine, could have been painted anywhere else
but here. Above and beyond its depiction of the glories of gastronomy and French
lifestyle, An Evening at the Pré-Catelan contributed to the mythology of the Belle
Époque. Proust depicted a stylised version of it immediately after the First World
War in his description, similar in every aspect, of the dining room of the Grand
Hôtel de Balbec in A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (In a Budding Grove),
which he compared to ‘an immense and wonderful aquarium’, against whose wall
of glass the population, clustered invisibly in the outer darkness, pressed their
faces to watch.
Christophe Leribault
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
«PARIS 1900» IN T H E
PE RM A NENT CO LLECTIO NS
To complement the exhibition, works from the Belle Epoque have been brought out of
the reserves and added to the permanent collection trail.
Grande Galerie: The immense painting by Léon Lhermitte, Les Halles, now back in the Petit Palais
Léon Lhermitte, Les Halles
1895, Oil on canvas, 404 x 635 cm
© Stéphane Piera / Petit Palais
Les Halles, the immense painting by Léon Lhermitte, had been rolled up in the reserves for 70 years. It has been restored thanks to the patronage of the Marché
International du Rungis and returned to its original place in the Petit Palais, in the
top-floor gallery for large-scale 19th century French art.
Léon Lhermitte, who was born in Picardy, was a consummate Naturalist painter in the
tradition of Courbet and the novels of Emile Zola. He thought of himself as a witness
of his time and made on the spot drawings of everyday life, which he later used for
large paintings. In 1882 La Paye des moissonneurs (Musée d’Orsay) was his first highly
successful work. He belonged to that group of figures in the art world who defended
independent art against the inertia of the academic establishment.
In 1889 Léon Lhermitte was chosen to paint a monumental picture for the Hôtel de
Ville in Paris. He decided to paint a modern subject, deliveries to Les Halles (the
wholesale market), which was a complete break with the usual allegorical décor. The
painting was a sensation at the 1895 Salon. In 1904 it was transferred to the recently
opened Petit Palais and hung in the grand painting gallery on the ground floor.
After that it was rolled up and for a good part of the 20th century placed in a reserve,
where it could not be visited. It was restored over a period of four months. A team of
six restorers unrolled the canvas and re-stretched it, with the help of the Petit Palais
technical team, before fitting it onto a new stretcher made of aluminium. The painted surface was cleaned and the residue from the mounting (plaster, white lead and
a sticky coating) was eliminated. Finally the protective varnish over the painting was
evened up. In its new-found brightness, this work illustrates the effervescence of life
in Paris during the Belle Époque. Right now, at the dawn of the 21st century, when the
Halles district is being totally renovated, Léon Lhermitte’s painting is an opportunity,
to rediscover the industrious working-class activity of Zola’s Paris.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
On the ground floor (Room 25): An Architect in 1900 - Charles Girault and the Petit Palais
Emile Peynot. Portrait of Charles
Girault. Médaillon. 1885.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville
de Paris, Petit Palais. © Petit Palais /
Roger-Viollet
Auguste Gulbert-Martin (1826-1900).
Hope. Mosaic, circa 1896. Musée des
Beaux-arts de la ville de Paris.
© Eric Emo / Petit Palais / RogerViollet
The exhibition Paris 1900, the City of entertainment provides an opportunity for
the Petit Palais to pay tribute to its architect, Charles Girault (1851-1932). Although
the Petit Palais is recognized as one of the architectural gems of the Exposition
universelle and its outline is a familiar landmark just off the Champs-Élysées,
its designer is an unjustly neglected figure. Charles Girault, winner of the Prix
de Rome, member of the French Academy, and architect to King Léopold II of
Belgium, had an exemplary career at the turn of the last century. The fact that the
Petit Palais received a large donation from his descendants in 2012, is all the more
reason to honour his memory. Part of that donation, which included L’Espérance,
a model of the superb mosaic in Louis Pasteur’s tomb, is displayed here for the
first time, alongside drawings, paintings, sculptures and medals from the Petit
Palais collections.
Charles Girault, born in 1851 in the Nièvre Departement, was from a modest family background. He started out as an apprentice locksmith. His talent for drawing
encouraged him to apply for a place at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he was
admitted to the workshop of Honoré Daumet. He won the Prix de Rome in 1880
and began a career in Paris on his return from the Villa Medici in 1884. Pasteur’s
tomb, built in 1896, was his first public success. In 1896, at the age of forty-four, as
the result of a competition, he was appointed architect for the Petit Palais. This
was a great responsibility since it was to be one of only two permanent buildings
(the other was the Grand Palais, for which he was also partly responsible) in the
Exhibition; and it had to be built in four years. The Petit Palais lies in the middle
of a prestigious perspective: between the Champs-Elysées, the Invalides, and the
Place de la Concorde. This presented the architect with a double challenge. He
had to design a project in harmony with the surrounding monuments. But he also
had to create a modern building worthy of its anticipated function, which was to
be the ‘Palace of the Fine Arts for the City of Paris’.
Charles Girault coped brilliantly with the challenge. This architect with an unblemished academic background designed the Petit Palais as a ‘model museum’
that would combine, with total elegance, classical references, Art Nouveau, and
technical innovations like the use of reinforced concrete. Since 1900, the Petit
Palais has drawn gasps of admiration from great numbers of visitors, marvelling
at such bold elements as the entrance gate, designed by Girault, the mosaics in
the entrance hall, the colonnade and frescoes in the courtyard garden and the
cast iron banisters on the corner staircases.
Charles Louis Girault (1851-1932).
«Exposition universelle of 1900,
Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts aux Champs-Elysées: rear façade».
Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.
© Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
T HE EX HIBITIO N CATALO G UE
Contents of the catalogue
Essays
Catalogue
Christophe Leribault,
«Au comptoir central de la
Fantaisie»
Dominique Kalifa
«Au rythme de la culture de masse »
Pierre Citti,
«Paris littérature et parisianisme»
Jean-Claude Yon «Les spectacles à
Paris»
Myriam Chimènes,
« Les salons et la vie musicale
parisienne»
Dominique Lobstein
« Les Beaux-Arts, institutions et
marché»
Laure Troubetzkoy,
«Paris en 1900 vu de la Russie»
Emilie Martin-Neute,
«L’exposition décennale»
Gaëlle Rio, « Paris, vitrine du monde »
Dominique Morel,
« Paris, Art nouveau ou l’art dans tout »
Isabelle Collet et Cécilie Champy,
« Paris, capitale des arts »
Alexandra Bosc,
« Le mythe de la parisienne »
Susana Gallego-Cuesta, « Paris, la nuit »
Bérengère de L’Epine et Pauline Girard,
«Paris en Scène»
Annexes
Time Line: Artistic affairs in Paris from 1895
to 1905,
List of works displayed,
418 pages
Price : 49,90 euros
With nearly 420 pages and several hundred original and sometimes unexpected reproductions, the exhibition catalogue for Paris 1900, the City of entairtanment edited by Isabelle Collet, head curator of the Petit Palais, and art historian
Dominique Lobstein. It is a long needed, comprehensive and richly documented survey recounting the glories of the
capital of France at the dawn of the twentieth century. It is a synthesis that goes beyond the emblematic Exposition
universelle to cover all the elements that contributed to the reputation of Paris: the arts, fashion, opera and even the
brothels.
The introduction by Christophe Leribault, general curator of this exhibition, pays tribute to the Belle Époque of the
joyful and multifaceted city that Paris was in 1900. It is followed by introductory essays by specialists in their subjects,
giving an overview of Parisian culture. Dominique Kalifa, Professor at the Université Pantheon-I-Sorbonne and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, discusses the spread of that culture which the other authors also deal with according
to their own specialised fields. Pierre Citti, Professor of French literature at the Université Paul-Valéry (Montpellier 3)
discusses developments in the literary world, while Jean-Claude Yon, Professor at the Université de Versailles SaintQuentin-en-Yvelines, is interested in theatre and the very many new kinds of show. Myriam Chimènes, director of
research at the CNRS, writes about the role of musical salons, and Dominique Lobstein details the history of an art
world which was in a great state of change.
In the catalogue section that follows these essays, some forty works per section have been selected for reproduction,
sometimes for the first time, and are the subjects of commentaries by connoisseurs of the period, curators, and art
historians. Their choices reflect the richness and depth of the subject and range from an advertising fan to the tapestry
from the Gobelins designed to evoke the colonies in one of the pavilions of the exhibition, from theatre programmes
designed by Mucha, Toulouse-Lau¬trec or Bonnard to the cape of the Comtesse Greffulhe tailored by the couturier
Worth from a Bukhara carpet given to her by Tsar Nicholas II. There are two additional original texts to take account of
the City and its special aura. One, by art historian Emilie Martin-Neute, discusses the decennial exhibition of the Exposition universelle, seeing it as the laboratory of an art attempting to survive. The other, by Laure Troubetzkoy, university
professor and director of the university department of Slavonic studies at the Centre Malesherbes, brings many new
details to an analysis of the surprise with which Russia viewed the Paris 1900 exhibition.
At the end of the book, there are several annexes, beginning with a list, never before compiled, of all the exhibitions
that took place in Paris between 1895, when there were ninety-four, and 1905, when there were one hundred and fortyseven – a reflection of new developments and diversification in creative and commercial activities. This is followed by
the detailed list of the works exhibited with a selective bibliography of the most recent books about each of the sections
of the exhibition.
Editions Paris Musées
As an art book publisher, Paris Musées publishes some thirty books every year – exhibition catalogues, guides to collections, and brochures. These fine books reflect the riches of the City of Paris museums and the tremendous diversity of
temporary exhibitions held in them.
www.parismusees.paris.fr
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
L E CT UR ES A ND EVENTS RELATI N G
TO THE EXHIBITI O N
Lectures
Auditorium of the Petit Palais – Admission free subject to available space
Tuesdays 12.30–2.00 pm – Art historians and curators develop various themes
raised by the exhibition
• Tuesday 8 April : « L’Art Nouveau à l’Exposition universelle de 1900 »,
par Marie-Amélie Tharaud, curator, Musées Nationaux du
Palais de Compiègne
• Tuesday 29 April : « 1900, l’Exposition à la recherche d’un toit »,
par Dominique Lobstein, art historian
• Tuesday 13 May : « La Parisienne, le mythe de la femme élégante »,
par Alexandra Bosc, curator, Palais Galliera
• Tuesday 20 May : « Les femmes-objets : statuettes et sculptures décoratives
vers 1900 », par Cécilie Champy, curator, Petit Palais
• Tuesday 3 June : « Rodin en 1900 »,
par François Blanchetière, curator, Musée Rodin
• Tuesday 10 June: « Les verres Art Nouveau du Petit Palais »,
par Dominique Morel, departmental head curator, Petit Palais
• Tuesday 17 June : « La femme et l’Art en 1900 »,
par Gaëlle Rio, curator, Petit Palais
• Tuesday 24 June : « La peinture moderne au Petit Palais (1900-1914) »,
par Isabelle Collet, departmental head curator, Petit Palais
• Tuesday 1 July : « Le théâtre Grévin: un théâtre en 1900 », par Pascale
Martinez, Assistant Professor of Art History at U C O d’Angers
• Tuesday 8 July : « La caricature et l’illustration à l’Exposition universelle de
1900 », par Luce Abélès, independant researcher
Fridays 12:30–2:00 pm: Paris 1900: histoire et société, a series of lectures by
historians, jointly organised by the Comité d’histoire de la Ville de Paris and
the Petit Palais.
• Friday 11 April : « La richesse poétique des années 1900 », par Jean-Michel
Maulpoix, poet, Professor, Université Paris
Ouest-Nanterre La Défense
• Friday 2 May : « Paris dans l’imaginaire de la Belle Epoque »
par Dominique Kalifa, Professor, Université Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne, Member of the Comité d’histoire de
la Ville de Paris
• Friday 16 May : « Un métro pour Paris : bouleversements et regards des
Parisiens » par Pascal Desabres, Doctor in history,
Université Paris I V – Sorbonne, on attachment to the
Centre Roland Mousnier
• Friday 23 May : « Les spectacles du Paris 1900 : un panorama » par
Jean-Claude Yon, Professor, Université of
Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
• Friday 23 May : « Sarah Bernhardt, : reine de l’attitude et princesse des gestes » par Claudette Joannis, departmental head curator, director of the musée des artistes à
Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
• Friday 13 June : « Les boulevards de la presse » par Patrick Eveno,
Professor, University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Friday 20 June : « Paris et l’Art Nouveau (1890-1914) » par Jean-Baptiste Minnaert, Professor, University François Rabelais, Tours
• Friday 27 June : « 1900, l’âge d’or de la République ? »
par Vincent Duclert, Professor, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales
• Friday 4 July : « Paris 1900 : la capitale des capitales ? »
par Christophe Charle, Director of the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (I H M C - C N R S/E N S),
Member of the Comité d’histoire de la Ville de Paris
Concerts
• 17 May 2014, Galerie Sud:
Four 1900 themed concerts for European Museum Night
Trio Elégiaque at 7.00 pm and 9.00 pm
Victor Sicard, baryton and Anna Cardona, painist at 8.00 pm and 10.00 pm
• 21 June 2014, Auditorium :
For the Summer Music Festival, ‘Jeunes Talents’ will be giving 4 thirty-minute
concerts between 2.30 pm and 5.30 pm
Extra events
• Sunday 18 May at 11.00 am and 2.30 pm : «Le Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre»
(1h30): concert and screening: a unique experience of the 1900 Exposition universelle
• Saturday 24 May 2014, 2.30–5.30 pm: Arsène Lupin, héros 1900. A literary
encounter to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Maurice Leblanc
• Sunday 25 May at 2.30 pm : Film screenings and documentaries about Arsène Lupin and Maurice Leblanc
Films screening*
2.30 pm:Paris during the Belle Époque has been the inspiration for thousands of
films. Between April and July, a selection will be screened in the Auditorium of
the museum.
The series begins with a lecture about the birth of the cinema.
Saturday 12 April 2014: Lecture Le cinéma avant le 7ème art, Jean-Yves de
Lepinay, Director of Programmes, Forum des Images
• Saturday 5 April 2014 : «Le fantôme du Moulin Rouge», René Clair, 1925 (1h30)
• Saturday 26 April 2014 : «Casque d’or», Jacques Becker, 1952 (1h36)
• Saturday 10 May 2014 : « Madame de… », Max Ophüls, 1953 (1h40)
• Saturday 31 May 2014 : «French Cancan», Jean Renoir, 1955 (1h48)
• Saturday 7 June 2014 : «Le temps retrouvé», Raoul Ruiz, 1999 (2h49)
• Saturday 14 June 2014 : «Moulin Rouge!», Baz Luhrmann, 2001 (2h07)
Projection précédée d’une conférence : « Le Moulin Rouge, 125 ans d’histoire »
par Jacques Pessis, journaliste et historien de la chanson
• Saturday 28 June 2014 : «Chéri», Stephen Frears, 2009 (1h30)
• Saturday 5 July 2014 : «Midnight in Paris», Woody Allen, 2011 (1h40)
These films can also be found on the Forum des images website throughout May
2014. www.forumdesimages.fr
* Note : This information is subject to change.
Please check our website : www.petitpalais.paris.fr
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
W O RKS HOP S A ND V IS I T S
For teenagers/adults
Visits with lectures
Duration: 1h30. No reservation. 4,50 euros + ticket of admission
Every Tuesday at 14.30; Thursday at 6.00 pm and Saturday at 4.00 pm.
Dates: 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 26, 29 April, 6, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 24 May, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19,
21, 24, 26, 28 June, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, 24, 29, 31 July, 1, 3, 5 August.
Painting workshop
3-day cycles with a painter plastician. 10.30 am – 12.30 pm and 1.30 pm – 5.30 pm. 58,50 euros
+ ticket of admission to the exhibition
Reservation at [email protected]
Painting and Art Nouveau: the aesthetics of curves
Taking as a starting point works in the exhibition, particularly paintings of vegetation,
animals and figures, in which the aesthetics are curvilinear, participants will work on an
oil painting that incorporates the human body and nature – two powerful Art Nouveau
themes (detailed programme available on petitpalais.paris.fr). 15, 16, 17 April.
Painting and Art Nouveau: Colour Game
Taking as a starting point drawings and paintings in the exhibition, particularly works by
Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Maurice Vlaminck, participants will
work on an oil painting where the emphasis is on the treatment of colour, in flat tones and
in fragmented touches, after studying these different effects in dry pastels. 9, 10, 11 July.
For children aged 7 to 11
Duration 2 hours. On Wednesdays and during the Spring holidays 15 children maximum.
6,50 euros. Reservation at [email protected]
Atelier : Je crée mon affiche 1900
After looking carefully at works in the exhibition, particularly the famous posters by Mucha, Steinlen and Chéret with their typically Art Nouveau, florally inspired curvilinear
forms, children can make and print their own 1900s style poster.
9, 15 and 17 April at 2:30 pm.
Workshop: The little optical toy factory
Taking inspiration from works in the exhibition, particularly Georges Méliès’s films and
the posters by the Lumière brothers and Pathé, children can make various optical toys,
forerunners of the cinematograph.
16, 30 April at 2.30 pm, 22, 24 and 25 April at 10.30 am
Family (over 5 years old)
Workshop: Creating our own 1900s poster
After looking carefully at works in the exhibition, particularly the famous posters by Mucha, Steinlen and Chéret with their typically Art Nouveau, florally inspired curvilinear
forms, parents and children make and print their own 1900s style poster.
Wednesday 7, 21, 28 May, 4, 18, 25 June, 2 July at 2.30 pm.
Lip-reading visit in French for the deaf and hard of hearing
Duration 1h30. For maximum 12 people. Reservations: [email protected]
28 May at 10.30 am
The exact dates and times of the activities can be consulted in French on the
website petitpalais.paris.fr, under the menu Activités.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
T HE PARIS 1900 EX HIBITIO N A PP
The «Paris 1900» exhibition app can be downloaded free of charge as
from the end of March 2014 from the Apple Store and Android Market.
Paris Musées and the Petit Palais, in partnership with the Graduate School of
Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
(K A I S T), are launching an app for the Paris 1900, Paris 1900, the City of entairtanment. The app takes a broader look at the theme of Paris at the beginning of
the 20th century and acts as a guide to the exhibition, as well as to the museum’s
permanent collections.
The explanatory information provided for exhibition visitors in the museum will
be accessible in more simplified form using T A P I R technology. The app picks
up a sound, inaudible to the human ear, that gives access to information about
an object or about the room. The user has automatic access to that information
without making any adjustments.
The Paris 1900 exhibition app is organised in three phases:
- Introduction to the exhibition and its themes through three types of content:
interviews with the curators, a trailer presenting the scenography of the exhibition and a slideshow of the works on display.
- A visitor guide on the smartphone, comprising a tour through 27 points offering
audio explanations, as well as written commentaries and images to illustrate the
points made.
- At the end of the visit, the visitor can use the guide in other rooms of the Petit
Palais to discover items related to the exhibition in the museum’s permanent
collections.
The Paris 1900 exhibition app is part of an overall policy on the part of Paris Musées to make the latest and most useful information technology of contemporary
cultural mediation available to visitors.
In addition to the equipment already on the websites of all the museums that
the City of Paris is responsible for, the City is committed to a policy of using digital technology to bring the permanent collections and the rich and varied programme of exhibitions to a broader public. We make a particularly special effort
to ensure the comfort of the visitor and the quality of the cultural mediation.
In 2014, the latest technological applications will be made available to the public,
in order to give everyone the opportunity to discover, in their own time and at
their own pace, all fourteen of the City of Paris’s museums.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
P ARTNE RS
Organised with the kind co-operation of
The Musée d’Orsay and the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris
With support from
La Cinématèque Française,
Crédit Municipal de Paris,
La Compagnie de Phalsbourg
With participation of
Le Train Bleu
La Tour Eiffel
La RA TP
René François Xavier Prinet
The Balcony, 1905-1906.
Oil on canvas, 161,2 x 191,7 cm
© Musée des Beaux-arts de Caen. Martine Seyve photographe
© A D A GP, Paris 2014
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
Musée des Arts décoratifs
There are 30 pieces from the Musée des Arts décoratif
Located in the Palais du Louvre, in the heart of Paris, the Arts Décoratifs is a
private organisation consisting of a specialist library, teaching space, and two
prestigious museums: the Musée Nissim de Camondo and the Musée des Arts
décoratifs.
Alexandre Charpentier,
Music stand, 1901,
Wood, 122 x 44,5 x 44 cm.
© Paris, Les Arts décoratifs.
The Musée des Arts décoratifs covers 10 000 sq. metres and has a display of 6,000
objects in its permanent collections. It is one of the most important museums in
France and reflects the craftsmanship, the evolution of styles, technical innovations and the creativity of artists who design the objects used in everyday life. It
is the only establishment capable of paying due tribute to those illustrious artists
who are synonymous with the history of French taste: Boulle, Sèvres, Aubusson,
Christofle, Lalique, Guimard, Mallet Stevens, Le Corbusier, Perriand, Starck, and
the Bouroullec brothers. Every trend is represented within a chronological and
thematic visitor trail, from Gothic to Louis X V I, and from French Empire to Art
Nouveau, Art Deco, and modern designer styles.
The museum also possesses one of the world’s most exceptional and complete
fashion and textile collections, ranging from the 18th century to contemporary
creators. Between 10 and 15 exhibitions are organised each year by Les Arts Décoratifs and displayed in various spaces within the museum.
The Art-Nouveau department has 386 works from its collections on display in the
permanent galleries of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. For the most part they were
acquired by the organisation in the early days of the movement, at the end of the
19th century.
The thirty pieces from the reserves of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on display in
the Paris 1900 exhibition are evidence of the depth of the museum’s Art Nouveau
collections. They include such prestigious works as the Alexandre Charpentier
music stand, the table and stool that Alfons Mucha designed for Georges Fouquet’s jewellery boutique, Paul Jouve’s bas-reliefs for the entrance gate of the
1900 Exposition universelle, works by Falize, jewellery by Henri Vever, and a dress
designed by the couturier Charles Fredéric Worth.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
The Cinématèque française
Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque française, imagined it as a kind of
‘Louvre for the cinema’, an institution that would be responsible for preserving
films.
The cultural assets it has amassed amount to one of the finest collections in the
world of what the French call the Seventh Art. Apart from the thousands of films
in its keeping, there are scripts, photographs, posters, cameras, manuscripts,
designers’ drawings, models, costumes, and storyboards. It is a ‘world memorybank’, widely accessible in the Musée du cinéma and the Film Library of the Cinémathèque française, but also through many loans both in France and abroad.
For Paris 1900, the City of entairtanment, the Cinémathèque Française has lent
some of its treasures to the Petit Palais. There are two original prints of Georges
Méliès’s famous film A Trip to the Moon (1902); artwork for the poster of Pathé
Frères’ A la conquête du monde; Eugène Pirou’s film Bedtime for the Bride; and
a famous Lumière Cinematograph camera.
In 2014, the exhibition Le Musée imaginaire d’Henri Langlois (The Imaginary Museum of Henri Langlois) will pay tribute to the man Jean Cocteau dubbed ‘the
dragon who guards our treasures’ – another opportunity to discover the history of
the cinema and the arts in Paris in the 1900s and beyond.
Le Musée imaginaire d’Henri Langlois, an Exhibition
9 April–5 August 2014
La Cinémathèque française-Musée du Cinéma
51, rue de Bercy- 75012 Paris
C I N EM ATH EQU E.F R
Jean-Christophe Mikhaïloff
Director of Communication, external relations and development
[email protected]
Elodie Dufour
Press relations
[email protected]
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
The Eiffel Tower
SOME KEY FIGURES
Height (with aerials): 324m
Total weight: 10 100 tonnes
Weight of the metallic
framework: 7300 tonnes
Number of rivets: 2 500 000
Number of metal pieces:
18 038
Distance between the
pillars: 100m (footprint:
125m x 125m)
Height of the storeys:
First: 57 m
Second: 115 m
Third: 276 m
Lighting: 336 projectors
(sodium lamps)
Number of aerials: 120
Sparkling lights: 20,000
bulbs (5000 on each side)
sparkle for 5 minutes every
hour on the hour from nightfall until 1:00 am.
Paint: 60 tonnes every time
it is repainted.
Since its construction, the
Eiffel Tower has been
repainted every 7 years.
19th repainting begun:
Autumn 2008.
Time taken: approximately
18 months.
The Eiffel Tower is 150 years old. It was built by Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 Exposi¬tion
universelle, which celebrated the centenary of the French Revolution. Its construction
in 2 years, 2 months and 5 days was a remarkable technical and architectural achievement. It was an immediate and immense success.
As soon as it opened for the 1889 Exposition universelle, visitors were able to take a lift
to the various floors. But the faltering performance of the technology led Gustave Eiffel
to modernise the lifts for the Exposition universelle in 1900.
The hydraulic elevators of the Eiffel Tower were a tremendous technical achievement
for their time. Nobody had ever worked out how to deal with such heights and loads
before. They were located in the East and West pillars of the tower and, from 1899 on,
made it possible for hundreds of thousands of visitors to rise in total safety 116 metres
(380 ft) above the ground and take in the whole of Paris.
This historical equipment, carefully preserved and modernised in 1986 and still functioning, is an eloquent testament to the breadth of Gustave Eiffel’s vision and to the
achievement it represented at the time.
The Tower itself was originally planned to last only 20 years but it was saved because
of scientific experiments that Eiffel backed, particularly early radio transmissions and
telecommunications. There were, for example, radio signals from the Tower to the
Pantheon in 1898, a military radio station in 1903, the first public radio transmission in
1925, then television and, more recently, D T T V.
Over the decades there have been all kinds of activities, wonderful illuminations and
prestigious visitors. Since the 80s, the Eiffel Tower has been renovated, restored and
fitted out to receive an ever-increasing number of visitors.
It has been the stage for numerous international events – special lighting effects, the
centenary of the Tower, the firework display for the year 2000, repainting campaigns,
sparkling lights, the Tower bathed in red light for the Chinese New Year in 2004, and in
the South African colours for the France-South African season in 2013.
The Eiffel Tower is on every tourist’s list. It receives 7 million visitors a year, 85% of
whom are foreign, making it one of the most visited monuments in the world.
THE EIFFEL TOWER OPERATING COMPANY
The Eiffel Tower belongs to the City of Paris. The operating company (S E T E) was elected by the Paris City Council at the end of 2005 to maintain and run the Eiffel Tower
for ten years. S E T E is a limited public-private company in which the city of Paris has a
59.9% shareholding. The remaining capital is held by Dexia Crédit Local, Eiffage, Safidi
S A (E D F group), Ufipar (L V M H group) and Unibail Participations, whose stake is 8%
each with 0.01% held by the Paris Tourism and Congress Office. In 2013 the registered
turnover was 73 million euros.
The operating company’s mandate is to look after and maintain the monument and its
facilities, to monitor the quality of services and security of visitors, to improve reception standards, access to the structure and management of the flow of tours, to draft
a plan for the renewal and modernisation of areas and facilities, to develop activities
adding to the reputation, prestige and tourist and cultural activities of Paris, and to protect and promote use of the Tower’s image.
Over 600 people are responsible for running the Eiffel Tower each day. Half of them are
employed by S E T E, the other half by concessionaries (souvenir sales points, buffets and
restaurants, telescopes, behind-the-scenes tours of the Eiffel Tower) and civil service
sub-tenants (police, fire brigade, the Post Office, and the Meteorological Office).
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
Le Train Bleu, the Gare de
Paris-Lyon station buffet
The Gare de Lyon was one of the enormous town planning projects for the 1900 Exposition that saw the creation, amongst other things, of the Grand Palais, the Petit
Palais, and the Pont Alexandre I I I. From the outside, it
is a relatively discreet reminder of the Belle Époque;
but inside, the rooms of the restaurant of the Buffet
are among the best preserved and the most striking
examples of the style of 1900.
The rooms are vast, smothered in carvings, gilt and
enormous paintings. Le Train Bleu was opened on 7
April 1901 by French President Emile Loubet. In spite
of the abundance of decoration, there is nevertheless a
wonderful sense of harmony. Everything is intact and all
the freshness and vivacity of the period is still tangible
down to such small details as the seats and the coat
hangers, which reflect the finest style of the period.
The first thing that strikes you when you enter is the
paintings with their bright colours. In fact the paintings
were very carefully cleaned in 1992. This was sensible
since, the station no longer being full of the smoke from
the locomotives, they were likely to stay clean. There
are 41 paintings in all and they depict places on the
route of the railway as well as events from 1900. They
have a museum quality to them and can be looked at in
that spirit.
The painting by Billotte, over the double staircase that
curves down to the station concourse, depicts the Pont
Alexandre III and the two Palais of the 1900 Exposition
and is reminiscent of St Mark’s Square in Venice. . René
Billotte, who was born in Tarbes in 1846, was a pupil of
Eugène Fromentin. In this painting he has successfully
married realism with a highly evocative imaginative
quality.
The three ceilings in the grand dining room are by different painters. Paris is by François Flameng (1856-1923)
(a pupil of Jean-Paul Laurens) who also did paintings
for the Sorbonne and the Opéra-Comique. Lyon is by
Debufe and Marseille by Saint-Pierre. It is surprising
how similar the styles of painters were at that time; it
meant they were able to work separately on a vast decorative scale like this without any lack of harmony.
At the end of the grand dining room, the main painting
depicts the Theatre at Orange. It is by Albert Maignan
(1845-1908), born in Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, a history
painter who had achieved fame with La Mort de Carpeaux in 1892.
Maignan’s painting transports us directly to the Roman
theatre in Orange and the figures retain all their vitality
and sense of movement. These wonderful portraits are
of Derville, Président of the P.L.M. railway company
Noblemaire, the Director General, the great actresses
Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane and Madame Bartet and the
playwright Edmond Rostand.
Villefranche and Monaco are by Frédéric Montenard
(1849-1926) descendant of an old Provencal family and
a pupil of Puvis de Chavannes. He was an influential
figure in the art world and founded the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He was a fine painter of Provencal scenes and landscapes. His painting of the Arènes
d’Arles is in the Petit Palais (1904).
In the gilded room there is a ceiling (Nice, la Bataille
des Fleurs) by Henri Gervex (1852-1929), a painter who,
at the time, was very famous. He was a friend of Renoir
but soon reverted to a classical style. He also painted a
ceiling in the Hotel de Ville.
St-Honorat and Marseille, le Vieux Port in the gilded
room are by the painter Olive (1848-1936), who was widely renowned for his marine landscapes.
The P.L.M railway company also served the Alps. A painting by Eugène Burnand (1850-1921) depicts Mont-Blanc.
Burnand was a specialist in the difficult genre of alpine
landscape painting and famous for his Pa¬norama des
Alpes Bernoises which toured the world, visiting Antwerp, Chicago, Geneva and Paris.
All these paintings, taken together immerse the visitor, as the creators of the décor intended, in an exact
and luminous evocation of the landscapes on the route
of the railway. The atmosphere is happy and cheerful.
Some may find it over-exuberant, but everyone, passer
by, tourist or Parisian eventually succumbs to its charms
before they return to the street.
It is no accident that Coco Chanel, Brigitte Bardot, Jean
Cocteau, Colette, Dali, Jean Gabin, Marcel Pagnol and
many others were regular customers. Luc Besson was
inspired to shoot a scene from Nikita there; Nicole Garcia shot a scene from Place Ven¬dome and Pierre Jolivet did the same in Filles Uniques.
In the exhibition Paris 1900, the City of entairtanment, there are two sketches for the ceiling of the
Train Bleu (gilded room). One is by Gervex – Bataille
de fleurs à Nice – and the other by Maignan – Vendanges en Bourgogne.
The two sketches are in the first section of the exhibition: Paris, vitrine du monde (Paris, showcase of
the world), in the sub-section Urbanisme, ensemble
«Gare».
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
The exhibition app, using
TAPIR technology
The Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology (K A I S T) is the top science and technology university in South
Korea. A research group in the university has for several years been working on a
new technology they call ‘Theoretically Audible, but Practically Inaudible Range’
(T A P I R). It is based on the transmission of sounds outside the hearing range of
humans (between 20 and 22kHz) but recognizable to machines.
* Woon Seung Yeo. and Keunhyoung Kim. and Seunghun Kim. and Jeong-seob Lee. "T A P I R Sound as a
New Medium for Music." Leonardo Music Journal 22.1 (2012): 49-51.
One of the applications of this technology is a museum visit app. Over the last few
years, museum visit audio-visual aids have exploited a number of technological
developments. The content has at various points been accessible via a device with
a keyboard, then a touch screen, then via a number, use of a Q R code and also
an N F C tag. These technically efficient innovations are there to simplify life for
visitors, so that they get access in the simplest possible manner to the content
T A P I R, which is adapted to Smartphone apps for museum visiting, makes it even
simpler as the recognition of a sound by a machine launches the content associated with that sound.
The Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science
and Technology (K A I S T) was keen to collaborate with Paris Musées so that the
museums of the City of Paris could take free advantage of their new research.
This collaboration puts Paris Musées and the Petit Palais at the cutting edge of
innovation, providing visitors with a new digital product and a special visit experience.
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Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
THE P ETIT P ALAI S
The Petit Palais was built for the Exposition universelle in 1900 by the architect
Charles Girault. In 1902 it became the Musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.
It has a very fine collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and ob¬jets d’art
dating from the Classical era to 1914.
© L’Affiche-Dominique Milherou
There is an exceptionally fine collection of Greek vases and a large number of Flemish and Dutch paintings from the 17th century, focused around Rembrandt’s Selfportrait with a Dog. The magnificent collection of French paintings from the 18th
and 19th centuries includes major works by Fragonard, Greuze, David, Géricault,
Delacroix, Courbet, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne and Vuillard. The
museum has a fine collection of sculpture, including works by Carpeaux, Carriès
and Dalou. The decorative arts collection is particularly rich in works from the
Renaissance and works from the 1900s. There is glassware by Gallé, jewellery by
Fouquet and Lalique, and also the dining room designed by Guimard for his private town house. The museum also has a fine collection of prints and drawings,
which includes complete series of engravings by Dürer, Rembrandt, and Callot,
and a rare collection of Northen European drawings.
The programme of temporary exhibitions has been reconceived to concentrate
more on the periods covered by the museum’s extensive collections. In addition to
the two principal temporary exhibition spaces on the ground floor and on the first
floor, special shows and exhibitions extend the trail into the permanent galleries.
A café-restaurant opening onto the courtyard garden and a bookshop are available to add to the pleasure of a visit.
Do not forget to consult the programme for the auditorium (concerts, screenings,
literary events, and lectures) on the museum website.
The museum is open to the public every day from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm except
Mondays and French public holidays.
Late opening on Thursdays until 8.00 pm for temporary exhibitions.
Entry to the permanent collections and the museum garden is free.
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
© L’Affiche-Dominique Milherou
25
Paris 1900, the City of entertainment - 2 April – 17 August 2014
PR A C TIC AL INFO RM A TI O N
Paris 1900,
the city of entertainment
Exhibition at the Petit Palais
2 April - 17 August 2014
O P E N I N G HO URS
Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Late opening Thursday until 8.00 pm
Closed on Mondays and French public holidays
A D M I SSI O N C HARGES
Free entry to the permanent collections
Charges for temporary exhibitions:
Full price: 11 euros
Reduced price: 8 euros
Half-price: 5,50 euros
Free up to and including age 13
Audio Guide : English - French
Price : 5 euros
ME DIA R EL ATIONS
Mathilde Beaujard
Tél : 01 53 43 40 14
[email protected]
C O MMUNICATIONS M A NAG ER
Anne Le Floch
Tél : 01 53 43 40 21
[email protected]
P E T IT P A L A IS
Musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris
Avenue Winston Churchill - 75008 Paris
Tel: 01 53 43 40 00
Accessible to handicapped poeple.
Transports
Metro Station: Champs-Élysées Clémenceau
Metro Station:
Bus : 28, 42, 72, 73, 83, 93
Activities
It is necessary to reserve for all activities (children,
familes, or adults) apart from lecture-tours, at least
72 hours in advance. This can only be done by
e-mail to [email protected]
Programmes are available at the reception desk.
Charges for activities are in addition to the exhibition admission charge.
Café Restaurant « le Jardin du Petit Palais »
Open from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm
Bookshop-Boutique
Open from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Auditorium
Information about the programme is available at the
reception desk
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
NEW !
Discrover the exhibition from your Smartphone with
the «Paris 1900» app. You can upload it for free
on the App Store or Google Play in English and in
French.
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