Portière du Char de Triomphe (Portière of the Triumphal Chariot), late seventeenth century This tapestry, made to hang over a door as a draught excluder, depicts a triumphal chariot face-on, showing the front of the carriage body and the wheels. It bears a large cartouche featuring…
Les Tresseuses de paille (Women weaving straw) Vaud-born Ernest Biéler first visited the Valais village of Savièse in 1884, moving there to settle in 1900. From 1906 on, he became involved in Art Nouveau circles, developing a new style he…
Paysage aux Ormonts (Ormonts landscape) Alfred Chavannes trained as an artist with Alexandre Calame in Geneva, then Oswald Achenbach in Düsseldorf. He returned to Switzerland in 1874, building a career locally as a landscape painter. His views of…
Blackfriars Bridge (easterly breeze) Blackfriars Bridge spans the Thames a few hundred metres from what is now Tate Modern. The Belgian artist Émile Claus chose a view from the Victoria Embankment, looking towards Tower Bridge. Its two…
Soulaud (Drunkard). Colour proofs for Le Mirliton, issue 123, 18 August 1893 Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen met the performers at the legendary Chat Noir cabaret soon after he came to Paris in the early 1880s, and soon became the star illustrator of its eponymous magazine. When the Chat Noir…
Le Saint Pleur. Adoubement du damoisel (Le Saint Pleur. Dubbing the young squire) Eugène Grasset’s career in illustration took off in 1883 with the publication of Histoire des Quatre Fils Aymon, much admired by book collectors for its outstanding aesthetics. It was also unusually printed in chromotypography using…
Portrait d’Élie Gagnebin (Portrait of Élie Gagnebin) Jean Clerc excelled at portraiture, and modelling proved the technique that suited him best. As the spiritual heir to Charles Despiau’s naturalism, but with a more emotive, excitable temperament all his own, Clerc truly captured…
Programme pour le théâtre de l’Œuvre (Programme for the Théâtre de l’Œuvre) The avant-garde Parisian Théâtre de l’Œuvre was established in 1893 by the actor Lugné-Poe, the writer Camille Mauclair and the artist Édouard Vuillard. All three were overtly critical of France’s government-backed theatres and the illusionism…
La Sculpture (Sculpture) The June 1898 special issue of the avant-garde review La Plume was a homage to the sculptor Alexandre Falguière. The review held an exhibition of his work in the foyer of the Nouveau-Cirque, a popular…
Portrait de Jean-Jacques Marquis (Portrait of Jean-Jacques Marquis) This portrait is painted in the realist tradition of bourgeois portraiture initiated by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and his Portrait of Monsieur Bertin (1832, now in the Louvre). The sitter is the Vaud pastor Jean-Jacques Marquis (1799-1863),…