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Louis Comfort Tiffany
Window detail with a typical
motif of peacock
feathers. |
TIFFANY AND ART NOUVEAU
The name of Louis Comfort Tiffany has become synonymous with Art Nouveau
style in the US. The designer was inspired by the shapes and colours of
French Art Nouveau, although the simple forms of his glassware items
were more stylized and abstract than French glass products of the same
period, which featured more natural, organic shapes. Tiffany's trademark
design classic, the leaded-glass lamp, encapsulated his particular
vision of modern style. First created in the 1880s, following the
invention of the electric light bulb, it was produced by the company in
coloured glass on a bronze stand. The shade was made of a lead framework
filled with glass pieces in flower and animal shapes - a scaled-down
adaptation of Tiffany's stained-glass windows. The designer's links with
the symbolic heart of the Art Nouveau movement -Siegfried Bing's shop in
Paris -were first forged as early as the 1870s, when Bing supplied him
with Oriental objets. In 1895, Bing asked Tiffany to contribute ten
stained-glass windows for the shop:
Edouard Vuillard,
Pierre Bonnard,
Paul Serusier, and
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, were among the artists to
contribute designs.
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Louis Comfort Tiffany
born Feb. 18, 1848, New York, N.Y.,
U.S.
died Jan. 17, 1933, New York, N.Y.
American painter, craftsman, philanthropist, decorator, and designer,
internationally recognized as one of the greatest forces of the Art
Nouveau style, who made significant contributions to the art of
glassmaking.
The son of the famous jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany, Louis studied under
the American painters George Inness and Samuel Colman and also trained
as a painter of narrative subjects in Paris. That he was also influenced
by a visit to Morocco is evident in some of his major works. Returning
to the United States, he became a recognized painter and an associate of
the National Academy of Design, New York City; later he reacted against
the Academy's conservatism by organizing, in 1877, with such artists as
John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Society of American
Artists.
Tiffany's experiments with stained glass, begun in 1875, led to the
establishment, three years later, of his own glassmaking factory at
Corona in Queens, New York City. By the 1890s he was a leading glass
producer, experimenting with unique means of colouring. He became
internationally famous for the glass that he named “Favrile,” a
neologism from the Latin faber (“craftsman”). Favrile glass, iridescent
and freely shaped, was sometimes combined with bronzelikealloys and
other metals; such examples, some signed “L.C. Tiffany” or “L.C.T.,”
enjoyed widespread popularity from 1890 to 1915 and were revived again
in the 1960s. His Favrile glass was admired abroad, especially in
central Europe, where it created a new fashion.
Having established a decorating firm known as Tiffany Glassand
Decorating Company, which served wealthy New Yorkers, Tiffany was
commissioned by President Chester A. Arthur to redecorate the reception
rooms at the White House, Washington, D.C., for which he created the
great stained-glass screen in the entrance hall. He designed the chapel
for the World's Columbian Exposition (1893) in Chicago and the high
altar in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City.
Overwhelmed by the glass display of the brilliant French Art Nouveau
designer Émile Gallé at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, Tiffany became
interested in blown glass. From 1896 to 1900 he produced a vast amount
of exquisite Favrile glass, many pieces achieving mysterious and
impressionistic effects; his innovations made him a leader of the Art
Nouveau movement.
Tiffany's firm was reorganized as Tiffany Studios in 1900, after which
he ventured into lamps, jewelry, pottery, and bibelots. In 1911 he
created one of his major achievements—a gargantuan glass curtain for the
Palacio deBellas Artes, Mexico City. Like his father, Louis was a
chevalier of the Legion of Honour; he also became an honorary member of
the National Society of Fine Arts (Paris)and of the Imperial Society of
Fine Arts (Tokyo). In 1919 he established the Louis Comfort Tiffany
Foundation for Art Students at his luxurious and celebrated Long Island
estate (which he had designed in total), which in 1946 was sold to
provide scholarship funds.
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 Louis Comfort Tiffany
Windows |
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 Louis Comfort Tiffany
Lamps |
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Rene Lalique, gold necklace, 1900.
Private Collection, Parma.
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Art Nouveau in France
In Paris, the floral exuberance of works by Belgian architect
Victor Horta was interpreted in unique fashion by
Hector Guimard
(1867-1942). In his design of the entrances to the Metro stations in
about 1900, he gave an urban dimension to the floral genre of
decoration that had until then only been used for interiors. Using
iron and enamelled steel, he sculpted signs, railings, and lampposts
in organic forms, with lamps shaped like succulent orchids.
Otto
Wagner and Joseph Olbrich must have had such ideas in mind when they
were commissioned to design the underground in Vienna. The abundance
of floral and vegetal decoration is not as visually overwhelming in
this case but is nonetheless characterized by a lightness and
freshness.
The main concern of French Art Nouveau, however, was for the objet
d'art, innovated at the Ecole de Nancy and created with great
refinement and a skill that is hard to find elsewhere. The
traditional glass production of this French town was dramatically
changed by the designer Emile Galle (1846-1904), who utilized his
knowledge of Oriental glasswork after taking over his father's
glassworks in 1874. He also incorporated his interest in plants and
insects in a unique style of decoration that made use of some
original techniques. In his search for special effects of light and
mistiness, Galle experimented with the addition of pieces of metal,
enamel, and pigments in order to obtain changing and translucent
backgrounds. He painted, carved, and created reliefs of dragonflies,
spiders, flowers, and delicate landscapes on his soft-blue-coloured
glass known as clair de lime and on cameo glass. These magical
images were often accompanied by lines of poetry by his Symbolist
friends, "solidifying the verses of Baudelaire and Verlaine", as
van
de Velde said. The success of his experiments encouraged other
artisans to breathe new life into the art of glasswork, including
the brothers August and Antonin Daum, who perfected opaque
pate-de-verre
for boxes, vases, and small figures, and Rene Lalique (1860-1945),
who was the first to set up large-scale production of precious
perfume bottles. Lalique is more famous for his jewellery. Using
semiprecious stones, glass, enamel, mother-of-pearl, and even horn
(not for its intrinsic value but for its colour), his beautiful
jewels represented natural subjects such as dragonflies. scarabs,
snakes, orchids, and mistletoe. His range of soft colours typified
the Art Nouveau palette.
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Rene Lalique
Broche, email, opalen, diamanten, 1900
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Rene Lalique
(b Ay, Marne, 6 April 1860;
d Paris, 1945).
French jeweller, glassmaker and designer. He began
his studies at the Lycée Turgot near Vincennes and
after his father’s death (1876) he was apprenticed
to the Parisian jeweller Louis Aucoq, where he
learnt to mount precious stones. Unable to further
his training in France, he went to London to study
at Sydenham College, which specialized in the
graphic arts. On his return to Paris in 1880, he
found employment as a jewellery designer creating
models for such firms as Cartier and Boucheron. His
compositions began to acquire a reputation and in
1885 he took over the workshop of Jules d’Estape in
the Rue du 4 Septembre, Paris. He rejected the
current trend for diamonds in grand settings and
instead used such gemstones as bloodstones,
tourmalines, cornelians and chrysoberyls together
with plique à jour enamelling and inexpensive
metals for his creations. His jewellery, which was
in the Art Nouveau style, included hair-combs,
collars, brooches, necklaces and buckles (e.g.
water-nymph buckle, c. 1899–1901; Lisbon, Mus.
Gulbenkian), and he also branched out into
metalwork, producing gold boxes, inkwells and
daggers. His favourite motifs included flowers and
insects—poppies and anemones, and dragonflies and
scarabs. His international reputation was
established at the Exposition Universelle in 1887 in
Paris and by securing such patrons as the actress
Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1933).
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Hector Guimard
born March 10, 1867, Lyon, Fr.
died May 20, 1942, New York, N.Y., U.S.
architect, decorator, and furniture designer, probably the
best-known French representative of Art Nouveau.
Guimard studied and later taught at the School of Decorative Arts
and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (“School of Fine Arts”) in Paris.
Although much of his work is more engineering than architecture, he
considered himself an architecte d'art. His Castel Béranger
apartment building at 16 rue La Fontaine, Passy, Paris (1894–98),
was one of the first Art Nouveau edifices outside Belgium, where the
style originated. Several entrance structures (1898–1901) for the
Paris Métro (subway), of cast iron in plantlike forms, are his
best-known works. The Place de la Bastille station suggests Chinese
pagoda architecture as well as Art Nouveau. The elevations and
decorative ironwork of his apartment houses at 17–21 and 60 rue La
Fontaine (1911) are tasteful and restrained. More bizarre, perhaps
because its setting permitted a freer treatment, is the Castel
Henriette in Sèvres(1903). Guimard also designed an Art Nouveau
synagogue, at 10 rue Pavée, Paris (1913).
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Hector Guimard, Metro station of the Place de I'Etoile,
Paris,
1899.
This structure has since been demolished.
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Hector Guimard
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Hector Guimard
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Emile Galle, mushroom lampstand,
1900.
Musee de I'Ecole, Nancy. |
Emile Galle
born May 8, 1846, Nancy, Fr.
died Sept. 23, 1904, Nancy
celebrated French designer and pioneer in technical innovations in
glass. He was a leading initiator of the Art Nouveau style and of the
modern renaissance of French art glass.
The son of a successful faience and furniture producer, Gallé studied
philosophy, botany, and drawing, later learning glassmaking at
Meisenthal, Fr. After the Franco-German War (1870–71), he went to work
in his father's factory at Nancy. He first made clear glass, lightly
tinted and decorated with enamel and engraving, but he soon developed
the use of deeply coloured, almost opaque glasses in heavy masses, often
layered in several thicknesses and carved or etched to form plant
motifs. His glass was a great success at the Paris Exhibition of 1878,
and he became known as a spirited designer working in contemporary
revival styles.
Gallé's strikingly original work made a great impression when it was
exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Over the next decade his
glass, reflecting the prevailing interest in Japanese art, became
internationally known and imitated.It contributed largely to the free,
asymmetric naturalism and symbolistic overtones of Art Nouveau. He
employed wheel cutting, acid etching, casing (i.e., layers of various
glass), and special effects such as metallic foils and air bubbles,
calling his experiments marqueterie de verre (“marquetry of glass”). At
Nancy he led the revival of craftsmanship and thesubsequent
dissemination of crafted glass by way of mass production. At the height
of its productivity, during the late 19th century, his workshop employed
nearly 300 associates. He attracted numerous artisans, including the Art
Nouveau glassmaker Eugène Rousseau. After Gallé's death his glass
enterprise continued production until 1913.
With Gallé as its creative force, a form of naturalism, predominantly
floristic, developed that was later identified with The School at Nancy,
Provincial Alliance of Art Industries, established in 1901. His study of
botany was the source for his natural designs, which represented leaves,
ethereal flowers, vines, and fruits. His furniture designs, based on the
Rococo period, continued the French tradition of emphasizing
constructive points organically (e.g., corners of armoires finished in
the shape of stalks or tree branches) and employing inlay and carving
that were essentially floral in style. Perhaps his most characteristic
concept was his meubles parlants (“talking furniture”), which
incorporated in its decoration inlaid quotations from leading
contemporary Symbolist authors such as Maurice Maeterlinck and Paul
Verlaine. Both his glass and furniture were signed, sometimes most
imaginatively. He collaborated with many colleagues, most notably the
Art Nouveau furniture designer Louis Majorelle.
L. de Fourcaud's Émile Gallé (1903) preceded Gallé's own book Écrits
pour l'art 1884–89 (“Writings on Art 1884–89”), which was posthumously
published in 1908.
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Emile Galle, table,
1904
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Chat Noir
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Theophile-Alexandre
Steinlen
(b Lausanne, 10 Nov 1859; d Paris, 13 Dec
1923).
French illustrator, printmaker, painter and sculptor, of
Swiss birth. After studying at the University at Lausanne
and working as an apprentice designer in a textile factory
in Mulhouse, Steinlen arrived in Paris in 1881 and quickly
established himself in Montmartre, where he lived and worked
for the rest of his life. In 1883 the illustrator Adolphe
Willette introduced him to the avant-garde literary and
artistic environment of the Chat Noir cabaret which had been
founded in 1881 by another Swiss expatriot, Rodolphe Salis.
Steinlen soon became an illustrator of its satirical and
humorous journal, Chat noir, and an artistic
collaborator with writers such as Emile Zola, poets such as
Jean Richepin, composers such as Paul Delmet, artists such
as Toulouse-Lautrec and, most important, the singer and
songwriter Aristide Bruant, all of whom he encountered at
the Chat Noir. Bruant’s lyrics incorporate the argot of the
poor, the worker, the rogue, the pimp and the prostitute,
for whom Steinlen’s empathy had been awakened on reading
Zola’s novel L’Assommoir (1877). Steinlen became the
principal illustrator for Bruant’s journal Le Mirliton
(1885–96) and for the various books containing his songs and
monologues, including the two volumes of Dans la rue
(1888–95).
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Lait Pur
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Motocycles Comiot
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Le Petit Sou Socialist Magazine
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Compagnie Francaise
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Cocorico
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Song of the Tundra
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Clinique Cheron
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Exposition des Artistes Animaliers
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A la Bodiniere
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Le Reve
1891
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Vernet-Les-Bains
1896
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Poster Advertising Mothu and DoriaIn Impressionist Scenes
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A Couple Waiting for a Bus
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A Street Scene
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A Street Scene with Flower Vendors
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Arthur Mackmurdo
Title page, 1883
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The Liberty Style
Just as the term "Art Nouveau" is linked to a store of the same name
opened in Paris in 1895 by Siegfried Bing. the "Liberty" store in
England came to be associated with its own particular style of art.
Opened in London in 1875 by Arthur Lazenby Liberty, initially for
the sale of Oriental fabrics, the shop's merchandise soon came to be
characterized by a distinct style based on naturalistic patterns,
exploring and developing the ideas of
William Morris. In 1882,
Arthur Mackmurdo (1851- 1943), Art Nouveau pioneer and designer of
stylized, slender furniture, founded the co-operative organization,
the Century Guild. Inspired by the ideas of Morris and John Ruskin,
the group produced furniture, carpets, wallpaper, and metalwork,
aiming to promote and establish decorative art in the same way as
William Morris' own company had set out to do.
Mackmurdo
also turned
his talents to graphic design and typography. At the time, there
were numerous publications that adopted Art Nouveau graphics,
exploiting the expressive power of the flat lines without shadows
and the clear, contrasting areas of colour. In his title page for
Wren 's City Churches, published in 1883.
Mackmurdo
presented an
original mixture of typography and ornamentation, employing the same
undulating motif of meandering lines growing one out of the other
that had adorned the back of his famous chair of 1881. In 1884, he
started his own periodical at the Century Guild, the highly original
and influential Hobby Horse, which aimed to embrace all the arts,
including literature and music.
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Arthur
Mackmurdo
(b London, 12 Dec 1851; d Wickham Bishops,
Essex, 15 March 1942).
English architect and social reformer. He was an important figure in the
Arts and Crafts Movement. He trained as an architect first
with T. Chatfield Clarke (1825–95) and then with the Gothic
Revivalist James Brooks. He was greatly influenced by John
Ruskin (they travelled to Italy together in 1874),
particularly on social and economic issues. Mackmurdo
believed that his work should be socially as well as
artistically significant. In design he valued tradition but
sought a contemporary relevance, and he promoted the unity
of the arts, with architecture as the central discipline. By
1884 he had moved away from the Gothic Revival style and
adopted an eclectic use of Renaissance sources. Some of his
designs have been described as proto-Art Nouveau and are
thought to have influenced the emergence of this style in
architecture and the applied arts in Britain and Europe in
the 1890s and 1900s. His pattern designs for wallpaper and
textiles incorporated swirling organic motifs (e.g.
Cromer Bird, cretonne, c. 1884), while for
three-dimensional and architectural work he often used a
simplified version of classicism derived from English
18th-century sources. Brooklyn, a small, flat-roofed house (c.
1886; Private Road, Enfield, London), was designed in an
austere and simple rationalized classical style in which the
logic of constructional methods was emphasized in a way that
heralds the work of architects such as C. F. A. Voysey.
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Arthur Mackmurdo, frontispiece for Wren's City Churches, 1883.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
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