Musée d'Orsay
27 September 2016 - 16 January 2017
Jean - Auguste - Dominique Ingres, Madame Moitessier, 1856, oil on canvas, 120 x 92.1 cm © The National Gallery, London, Dist. RMN - Grand Palais / National Gallery Photographic Department
The ostentation of the “ fête impériale ” and France’s humiliating defeat in 1870 by Prussia, have long tarnished the reputation of the Second Empire, suspected of having been a time purely of amusements, scandals and vices, as described by Zola in his novels written during the Third Republic.
James Tissot (1836-1902), Le Cercle de la Rue Royale, 1868, Huile sur toile, Paris, musée d'Orsay, © Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
A place of official recognition and of scandal, the Painting and Sculpture Salon was both an aesthetic battle ground and a huge market for the new middle class who flocked there in great numbers. In 1863 Napoleon III, confrontedby the protests of artists rejected by the jury, created a “Salon des Refusé s” alongside the official Salon, an act of significant liberalisation.
Napoleón III
With paintings hung at several different levels, as was customary in the 19th century, the exhibitiondemonstrates the startling difference between the two Salons with
Cabanel’s Birth of Venus
and Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass.
During the 1855 and 1867 Universal Exhibitions in Paris the Empireshone brightly . Here the excellence of the French art industry and the unbridled eclecticism of the sources of inspiration to which the creators turned were affirmed . The exhibition presents beautiful objects produced by the Imperial M anufacture of Sèvres, cabinetmakers Fourdinois and Diehl, goldsmiths Christofle and Froment - Meurice and the bronze founder Barbedienne.
Publication – Museum catalogue, joint publication Musée d’Orsay / Skira, hardback , approx. 320 pages,
Publication – Museum catalogue, joint publication Musée d’Orsay / Skira, hardback , approx. 320 pages,