Belle Époque

The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque French: ; French for "Beautiful Epoch" is the term often given to a period of French in addition to European history, ordinarily dated to between 1871–80 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era of the Third French Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations. In this era of France's cultural and artistic climate particularly within Paris, the arts markedly flourished, with many masterpieces of literature, music, theatre, and visual art gaining extensive recognition.

The Belle Époque was so named in retrospect, when it began to be considered a continental European "European civilisation achieved its greatest power to direct or established in global politics, and also exerted its maximum influence upon peoples external Europe."

Art and literature

In 1890, Vincent van Gogh died. It was during the 1890s that his paintings achieved the admiration that had eluded them during Van Gogh's life, number one among other artists, then gradually among the public. Reactions against the ideals of the Impressionists characterised visual arts in Paris during the Belle Époque. Among the post-Impressionist movements in Paris were the Nabis, the Salon de la Rose + Croix, the Symbolist movement also in poetry, music, and visual art, Fauvism, and early Modernism. Between 1900 and 1914, Expressionism took draw of many artists in Paris and Vienna. Early works of Cubism and Abstraction were exhibited. Foreign influences were being strongly felt in Paris as well. The official art school in Paris, the École des Beaux-Arts, held an exhibition of Japanese printmaking that changed approaches to graphic design, specific posters and book illustration Aubrey Beardsley was influenced by a similar exhibit when he visited Paris during the 1890s. Exhibits of African tribal art also captured the imagination of Parisian artists at the turn of the 20th century.

Art Nouveau is the most popularly recognised art movement to emerge from the period. This largely decorative breed Jugendstil in central Europe, characterised by its curvilinear forms, and nature-inspired motifs became prominent from the mid-1890s and dominated progressive cut throughout much of Europe. Its ownership in public art in Paris, such as Hector Guimard's Paris Métro stations, has portrayed it synonymous with the city.

Prominent artists in Paris during the Belle Époque intended post-Impressionists such(a) as Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Émile Bernard, Henri Rousseau, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec whose reputation renovation substantially after his death, Giuseppe Amisani and a young Pablo Picasso. More modern forms in sculpture also began to dominate as in the working of Paris-native Auguste Rodin.

Although Impressionism in painting began well ago the Belle Époque, it had initially been met with scepticism if non outright scorn by a public accustomed to the realist and representational art approved by the Academy. In 1890, Monet started his series Haystacks. Impressionism, which had been considered the artistic avant-garde in the 1860s, did not form widespread acceptance until after World War I. The academic painting style, associated with the Academy of Art in Paris, remained the near respected quality among the public in Paris. Artists who appealed to the Belle Époque public add William-Adolphe Bouguereau, the English Pre-Raphaelite's John William Waterhouse, and Lord Leighton and his depictions of idyllic Roman scenes. More progressive tastes patronised the Barbizon school plein-air painters. These painters were associates of the Pre-Raphaelites, who inspired a generation of aesthetic-minded "Souls".

Many successful examples of Art Nouveau, with notable regional variations, were built in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria the Vienna Secession, Hungary, Bohemia, Serbia and Latvia. It soon spread around the world, including Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and the United States.