Lot Essay
It has been said that the artist and engraver Paul Gavarni embodied the esprit parisien of the mid 19th Century. It can also be said that he passed on this spirit to his only son Pierre whose work encompasses the end of that same century and the begining of the next. Here is the Paris of the Belle Epoque where the euphoria of the leisure class at the end of the 1870's will remain unabated until the first call of the battlefield in 1914 breaks an unheralded era of peace.
The name Gavarni comes up again and again in the journals of his close friends Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who were equally preoccupied with the importance of the vie moderne--a modernity that was urban and specifically Parisian.
...ce sont des boulevards, avec les enchevêtrements des milliers de voitures, la bousculade des trottoirs, les populations tassées au haut des tramways et omnibus, le défilé à pied ou en voiture de cette innombrable humanité d'ombres chinoises...la vie d'un Babylone (Goncourt: Journal Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire II--1866-1886 p. 1076)
In this painting, Pierre Gavarni, an artist passionately curious about science and such new inventions as photography and how it applied to the depiction of a galloping horse, with his doux et tranquille air de somnambule (Ibid. p. 838), has perfectly depicted contemporary Paris in her Sunday best. He has chosen the richest and most prestigious address for his painting; the Allée de Bois (now Avenue Foch) that runs from the Bois du Boulogne to the Arc de Triomphe. Here, the tree lined walkways run along a backdrop of elegant mansions where on Sunday afternoon one was likely to meet the international bourgeoisie of princes and millionaires and spectators, all eager to see and be seen in the Bois, at the races or in the theaters. Gavarni paints the south-west side of the Arc de Triomphe, showing the sculptural facade Resistance by Etex. The gleaming red and black phaeton-mail coach in the foreground ensured daily transport between the very smart Crillon Hotel and the Hotel des Réservoirs in Versailles. This 10 kilometer Paris/Versailles journey was considered the exploit to be undertaken by the first automobile enthusiasts as well. The yellow model in the painting is quite possibly the very popular de Dion Bouton.
Gavarni manages to harmonize divergent elements of turn of the century Paris, suspended as it were between the traditions of the past as embodied in the horse and carriage driving away from the viewer and the advance of a modern age characterised by that most modern of inventions--the automobile.
The name Gavarni comes up again and again in the journals of his close friends Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who were equally preoccupied with the importance of the vie moderne--a modernity that was urban and specifically Parisian.
...ce sont des boulevards, avec les enchevêtrements des milliers de voitures, la bousculade des trottoirs, les populations tassées au haut des tramways et omnibus, le défilé à pied ou en voiture de cette innombrable humanité d'ombres chinoises...la vie d'un Babylone (Goncourt: Journal Mémoires de la Vie Littéraire II--1866-1886 p. 1076)
In this painting, Pierre Gavarni, an artist passionately curious about science and such new inventions as photography and how it applied to the depiction of a galloping horse, with his doux et tranquille air de somnambule (Ibid. p. 838), has perfectly depicted contemporary Paris in her Sunday best. He has chosen the richest and most prestigious address for his painting; the Allée de Bois (now Avenue Foch) that runs from the Bois du Boulogne to the Arc de Triomphe. Here, the tree lined walkways run along a backdrop of elegant mansions where on Sunday afternoon one was likely to meet the international bourgeoisie of princes and millionaires and spectators, all eager to see and be seen in the Bois, at the races or in the theaters. Gavarni paints the south-west side of the Arc de Triomphe, showing the sculptural facade Resistance by Etex. The gleaming red and black phaeton-mail coach in the foreground ensured daily transport between the very smart Crillon Hotel and the Hotel des Réservoirs in Versailles. This 10 kilometer Paris/Versailles journey was considered the exploit to be undertaken by the first automobile enthusiasts as well. The yellow model in the painting is quite possibly the very popular de Dion Bouton.
Gavarni manages to harmonize divergent elements of turn of the century Paris, suspended as it were between the traditions of the past as embodied in the horse and carriage driving away from the viewer and the advance of a modern age characterised by that most modern of inventions--the automobile.