Paris, 1900: La Ville Spectacle, 2

Continuing the Paris, 1900 exhibition at the Petit Palais...

More Mucha...

Still more...more than anywhere we've seen of his Parisian
work

Lalique

Mucha up closer

A Mucha-designed bust; La Nature

Spoon-set, by the exiled Prince Bojidar Karaeorgevitch

Rodin's Amor et Psyche; lots of Rodin, also his hey-day

Rodin's Eve Fairfax, 1905; at this point, obviously, we have
moved beyond the 1900 world fair and to the city that
presented it...

Albert Maignan's striking La Muse verte (the glass of green
absinthe on the table)

One of several Monets of the period

And Renoirs

Renoir's portrait of Berthe Moriset and her
daughter

Paul Troubetzkoy, Mother and Child

And no end of Mucha, here illustrating a magazine cover

Paris, 1900: La Ville Spectacle, 1

The Paris, 1900 exhibition had been going on at the Petit Palais the whole three months we were in Paris, and we saved it for nearly last in order to savor it fittingly. The Belle Epoch was Paris at its most glamorous and famous, and creative, and if you love the place, this exhibit was for you. I took probably 300 photos and am now painfully reducing them to a mere 3 posts--well, there will be some out-takes, too. It was one of the very best special exhibitions we have seen, perhaps the best.

The main poster one sees all around town until (August 17th);
Toulouse-Lautrec would have been proud

Entrance to the exhibit; most of the buildings and structures
associated with the Paris, 1900 world fair are now gone, but
the entrance depicted here is some indication of size of the
thing

Fragment of one of the many items done for the Paris, 1900 world exhibition by
Alfons Mucha, then very much in his hey-day; in the 2014 exhibition, we'll see
more of Mucha than any other artist

Detail

And our boy Hector Guimard also is well-represented; the Metro opened and
most of Guimard's Metro entrances were finished for the 1900 exhibition

One of many posters from 1900

Ditto

Ditto again

And again

Depiction of the many buildings and pavilions erected for the 1900 exhibition

And another

A Mucha table

Beautiful screen

Unmistakably Guimard

Ditto; incredible

Le Petit Palais

Although we've walked by or near both the Petit and Grand Palaces many times, we've never visited them. This year, the Paris 1900: La Ville Spectacle exhibit--one of the best ever of any sort we've seen--drew us into the Petit Palais, and after several hours savoring the extraordinary collection of Muchas, Guimards, Laliques, Rodins, Toulouse-Lautrecs, and others, we took just a little time to explore the Petit Palais. It was built as an exposition hall for the 1900 Paris expo--a world fair, sort of--and is now one of the city's 14 city museums.

Street view of the Petit Palais

Entry

Half the grand hall

Other half

Gorgeous floor

Even in the little elevator

The ceiling frescoes are eye-catching; and reminded me of
nothing so much as Mucha's Slav Epic paintings, done decades
later...style, scale, patriotic/heroic subject...hmmm

Thus

And thus

And thus

Glorification of French art is one of the subjects

Thus

Looking out to the jardin where we had a pique-nique

Thus

Cupola from the garden

Great grill work

Thus

Le Petit Palais' collection of art is major and would put any lesser city on the
world-class list (not to mention the building); L'hermitte, Les Halles, 1895;

Steinlen's 14 juillet

Courbet's 1866 Le Sommeil (The Sleep); his 1866 Origin of the World was not 
publicly exhibited until 1988; the greatest of realists, hero to Manet and then 
the Impressionists, anarchist and a leader of the Commune, he penned his own
epitaph as he left for exile in Switzerland: "He belonged to no scholl, to no
church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the
regime of liberty"; gotta' like this guy 

Emile Galle Vase, 1898; should have been in the Paris 1900
exhibit

Across the street, the Grand Palais...next time