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Lot Essay
Jean Béraud's images of Parisian life earned him the high praise of being "Le Boilly de fin de siecle" from his contemporary Roger Ballu, (Le Salon illustré, July, 1889). No stranger to the elite world he portrayed, Béraud's pictures chronicle the customs and fashions of his era with minute detail. Modern Paris provided an endless range of subjects for a new generation of artists, and Jean Béraud's entire career was spent capturing what he saw around him. Béraud was indeed the perfect flaneur, "a passionate spectator whom we might liken to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself." (V. Steele, Paris Fashion - A Cultural History, New York 1988, p. 90). Béraud's Paris and its inhabitants were always captured with the accuracy of a camera lens.
The subject of life on the grands boulevards was a favorite of Béraud and the present picture is set on the Champs-Élysées. Baron Haussman had conceived of the neighborhood around the Champs-Élysées as the epicenter of luxurious living and shopping. The wide, tree-lined avenue was resonate with high society, as evidenced by the elegantly-dressed gentleman and his fashionable companion.
Béraud was a close friend of Edouard Manet, and frequented the same cafés, restaurants and theatres as Degas, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. He shared with the Impressionists a spontaneity of brushwork and interest in the naturalistic effects of the play of light and shadow across the boulevard and upon the buildings in the background, all of which are clearly evident in the present picture.
It has been suggested by Patrick Offenstadt that the setting of Scène de rue Parisienne appears to be close to the Rond-Point of the Champs-Élysées. Patrick Offenstadt has also indicated that the elderly gentleman could be King Leopold II of Belgium, apparently based upon the figure's distinctive beard.
fig. 1 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, circa 1928.
The subject of life on the grands boulevards was a favorite of Béraud and the present picture is set on the Champs-Élysées. Baron Haussman had conceived of the neighborhood around the Champs-Élysées as the epicenter of luxurious living and shopping. The wide, tree-lined avenue was resonate with high society, as evidenced by the elegantly-dressed gentleman and his fashionable companion.
Béraud was a close friend of Edouard Manet, and frequented the same cafés, restaurants and theatres as Degas, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. He shared with the Impressionists a spontaneity of brushwork and interest in the naturalistic effects of the play of light and shadow across the boulevard and upon the buildings in the background, all of which are clearly evident in the present picture.
It has been suggested by Patrick Offenstadt that the setting of Scène de rue Parisienne appears to be close to the Rond-Point of the Champs-Élysées. Patrick Offenstadt has also indicated that the elderly gentleman could be King Leopold II of Belgium, apparently based upon the figure's distinctive beard.
fig. 1 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, circa 1928.