PARIS
AT A WATERSHED
Christophe CharLe
Oui, c’est vrai,
un Paris anglaisé, mais qui a,
Dieu merci ! pour ne pas
lui ressembler, deux choses :
la beauté comparative
de son climat et l’absence
de charbon de terre…
viCtor hugo, dans gonCourt éd. 1957, p. 664-665.
20
fig. 4
of the century; and the rise to power of a
o hark back to Paris in the 1870s, at a
Auguste Victor Deroy,
government elected in controversial circumstime when plans were laid for the first
Panorama des incendies
tances owing to enemy occupation and the
exhibition of the group that came to be
de Paris par la Commune,
après 1871. Lithographie
Prussians forcing the nation to come to a
known, in 1874, as “the impressionists,”
coloriée, 57,4 × 79,9 cm
humiliating peace. One section of the Paris
is to find oneself confronted with
Paris, musée Carnavalet,
population rejected this new direction and
contradictory images. This was a watershed
Histoire de Paris
proclaimed its independence after the
moment between two epochs, as if the history
Communards took control of the city. There followed a
of France were wavering between two possible courses: a
relentless civil war fought by the regular army against the
return to the past, with projects to restore the monarchy
federate troops of the Paris National Guard. It ended,
and establish a new “moral order”—including, most
against the glow of blazing fires at major monuments
notably, the imposition of intransigent Catholicism—or the
possibility of boldly facing up to the future, examining the
fig. 1021, with massacres and summary executions, terrific
collective conscience in order to determine exactly what
repression of the insurgents by the war councils, thousands
had led the country to the disaster of 1870–71.
of condemnations, exile for numerous outlaws, and—worst
of all—the mass deportation to New Caledonia of a whole
stuCK in the past
militant generation. The city, which in 1867 had invited all
Paris, as a city, as the capital, and as a historic place of
nations to peaceful competition fig. 1018, was turned into a
remembrance, was central to this disruption of the time
field of ruins created by hatred and discord, and gave “to
sequence that in point of fact pervades the entire ninethe world the spectacle of a city unhinged heading for its
teenth century. 1 Only recently transformed as never before
downfall, as in ancient times Sodom and Babylon,” as
following twenty years of major building work, the city was
Émile Zola wrote in a Russian periodical in June 1878. 3
brutally subjected, in the space of less than a year—from
This dramatic turn of events occurred just three years
September 1870 to May 1871—to every conceivable histobefore the 1874 impressionist exhibition. And yet, for all
rical cataclysm: a war lost inside a month, thereby leading
the destruction and the death toll, for all the humiliation
to a revolutionary day—the Fourth of September—on
of defeat and the political uncertainty, the battered city of
which the regime of Napoleon III made way for the
Paris, in ruins, in mourning, and hit by an economic slump
Republic; two sieges of the city, one by the Prussians, the
and financial squeeze caused by the payment of an indemother by the French army; enemy bombardments of the
nity of five billion francs to the victor, appears to have
neighborhoods on the south side; bloody battles at the city
bounced back very quickly. When we thumb through the
gates in a fruitless campaign to raise the Siege; the enlistnewspapers of 1873 or 1874, nothing much seems to have
ment of workers into the National Guard; 2 widespread
changed compared with what we might have read in the
starvation during one of the harshest and longest winters
same pages back in 1867 or 1868. The fashionable dailies
T
21
a spurious image put out by the bourgeois city, with its
were reporting on the same rituals as in the days of the
fashionable western districts, attempting to erase its harSecond Empire: high-society receptions, first nights at the
rowing past with a return to the heady days of imperial
boulevard theaters, the opening of the Salon art exhibition
splendor as if nothing had happened, notwithstanding the
in May, the horse-racing season, the elections to the
fact that the Tuileries, the Palais d’Orsay, and the Hôtel de
Académie Française along with the usual verbal jousting,
Ville figs. 1022, 1021 still lay in ruins as a reminder to the men
or the solemn reopening of the magistrature in the fall. The
only obvious change, namely the increasingly long-winded
and women of Paris of what they had been through. Many
and impassioned parliamentary debates, filled entire
intellectuals and artists had lost all patience with this shacolumns in the place of news from the literary and art
dow theater, these political quarrels endlessly rehearsing
world. Political uncertainty remained prevalent: although
the monarchy’s century-old war on the republic. The man
officially a republic, France still had no constitution (the
in the street had other concerns: reviving business and
constitutional laws were not voted upon until 1875). The
industry, and mending the devastation and scars left by the
conservative majority that had governed France since 1871
civil war, as well as paying off the funds borrowed by the
had dreams of a restoration, but it was increasingly split
city hall to finance its makeover.
into factions unable to come to an agreement. The official
Emerging from the “terrible year,” 4 Paris suffered
pretender, the Comte de Chambord, a descendant of the
supreme humiliation at the hands of the official governBourbons, single-handedly ruined his chances of acceding
ment following its victory over the communalist insurrecto the throne by rejecting the tricolor flag, a revolutionary
tion: the capital was “decapitalized.” The Assemblée
symbol in his eyes. Most of all, the government came under
Nationale and the provisional government stayed on at
threat from an increasingly influential repuVersailles, old capital of the monarchy, for
fig. 6 Alphonse Liébert,
blican movement. Its voter base was no lon- « L’Hôtel de ville incendié », fear of having to return to sit in Paris, the
ger restricted to the capital or the other large
cradle of the Republic and only recently up in
Les ruines de Paris
et de ses environs,
cities and, with each by-election held during
arms. As a further security measure, the state
1870-1871, 1872
those years, was gradually spreading across Tirage sur papier albuminé, of siege was not lifted in the Seine and Seinethe country.
et-Oise départements until 1876, which gave
22,5 x 31 cm (vol.)
Paris, Bibliothèque
This right-minded press, however, prethe executive the right to scrutinize the press
nationale de France,
sented a misleading picture as it sought to
in particular, and any gatherings or demonsdépartement des Estampes
move on from still-recent tragic events. It was
trations liable to disturb public order. Such
et de la photographie
22
city population to head out of town for the suburbs or the
newly annexed communes: Les Batignolles, Montmartre,
La Chapelle, La Villette, Belleville, Charonne, Gentilly,
Montrouge, Vaugirard, Grenelle, and Passy, for instance.
the new paris
Having set their sights on bringing Napoleon I’s urban
And yet Napoleon III’s fallen Empire had done its utmost
projects to fruition and showing Europe how Paris was “the
to avoid being held to ransom by these insurrections that
world’s most beautiful city,” the two modernizers also
were a regular feature of all nineteenth-century regimes,
wanted to see the capital catch up with her great rival,
and that either posed a serious threat or caused them to
London. The conveniences of modern living—gas lighting,
self-destruct. 5 In order to eradicate the trouble-making at
drains, fountains, mains water, urban furniture, building
source, during the 1850s and 1860s the emperor and his
renovations, city parks and squares, hospitals—were
prefect, Baron Haussmann, had embarked upon a program
intended to improve daily life for everybody, bring down
to overhaul the city radically. In the old inner-city quarters,
death and morbidity rates, facilitate the circulation of
where most often the riots would start and the barricades
people and goods through the establishment of new covebe set up, they bulldozed their way through, building boured markets, train stations, and omnibus routes, and
levards and new streets. They crisscrossed the worensure a more even distribution of public facilities. The
king-class neighborhoods on the north, east, and south
worst polluters—abattoirs, gas plants, garbage dumps, and
sides with new avenues. In addition, they interspersed
hazardous industries—were all relegated to outlying areas
them with army barracks so as to ensure a capability of surin the new arrondissements or nearby suburbs (Ivry, Saintveillance and prompt intervention at any and all strategic
Denis) cat. 062. As an attractive, healthier,
spots. In the fight against epidemics, which
fig. 6 Alphonse Liébert,
were linked with overcrowding and insalu- « L’Hôtel de ville incendié », greener place, the new Paris sought to draw
brious working-class homes, in 1860 they
visitors from the rest of France and from
Les ruines de Paris
et de ses environs,
doubled the city’s official surface area. This
around the world, for them to go on a spen1870-1871, 1872
step was needed in order to accommodate a Tirage sur papier albuminé, ding spree and through taxes on consumer
population that had itself almost doubled
items pay off the government loans stigma22,5 x 31 cm (vol.)
Paris, Bibliothèque
over the same period of time. Owing to a lack
tized by the Republican opposition. 6 Grand
nationale de France,
of available housing and also rent hikes, the
hotels (the Hôtel du Louvre), large departdépartement des Estampes
demolitions forced one section of the innerment stores (Au Bon Marché, Le Printemps),
et de la photographie
symbolic and punitive measures made for an oppressive
atmosphere, particularly in working-class neighborhoods.
23
extensively reconfigured Right Bank; between
the downtown neighborhoods and outlying
areas incorporated too recently to have shaken
off their country look; between the different
classes who lived in these places, receiving unequal service and disservice. Unquestionably, the
aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the middle
classes enjoyed a higher standard of living than
a generation earlier: they settled comfortably
with more space and quiet in the west end of
town and the central shopping district, in
dressed-stone buildings with their wrought-iron
balconies and luxurious entrances, and, for the
wealthiest, their small hôtels particuliers along the
green belt down by the Boulevard Malesherbes,
the Avenue du Bois (the present-day Avenue
Foch), the Parc Monceau, or Passy. To the north,
east, or south, where the watchword for speculators and investors had been economy, housing
was either cramped or ramshackle: brick and
rubble stone or planks and sheet metal were
used instead of stone and zinc, and it was never
more comfortable than strictly necessary. The
lavatory was in the backyard, and running water
was available only on the landing or from a
standpipe. Such frugality was the way to ensure
property owners a minimum revenue from rent,
despite the limited disposable income of their
working-class tenants now rehoused away from
the city center. For the poorest and the most
insecure, even this was still unaffordable, so the
furnished accommodation demolished in the city center
and the Latin Quarter reappeared in neighborhoods such
as Les Gobelins, Montmartre, Plaisance, and Belleville,
while shantytowns sprang up once more in “la Zone” 9 at
the gates of Paris. Steam engines continued to spit out their
coal dust into the backyards of the industrial developments
of the eleventh and thirteenth arrondissements, for Paris
was still a city in which factories, workshops, and precarious housing were all jumbled together. It was not by
chance that the map of the front lines established during
the “Bloody Week” of May 1871 10 coincided—depending
on the scale of local resistance to the Versailles troops—
with the social boundaries of Paris, where Haussmann’s
transformations had merely papered over the cracks. 11
neo-Gothic (Sainte-Clotilde) or neo-Byzantine churches
(Saint-Augustin) fig. 1016, new theaters (including the
Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de la Gaîté), and a
spanking opera house gradually rose up out of the ground
along the new avenues. 7 On the Champs-Élysées and
elsewhere, café concerts became commonplace, launching
new popular artistes, one of whom, the singer Thérésa
(Emma Valadon), would be immortalized by Edgar Degas
fig. 1023.
The gamble appeared to have paid off on the occasion of
the Exposition Universelle of 1867, despite the war that had
been fought only recently between Prussia and Austria. It
had outdone the London exhibition of 1862 in terms of both
attendance figures and attractions. La Vie parisienne (1866)
artists in two minds
by Offenbach, Meilhac, and Halévy, an opera buffa showWriters and artists were very much in two minds regarding
case that poked fun at all the foreigners who would be
this new Paris. On his return from exile in the fall of 1870,
flocking to sample the pleasures of the city of luxury and
Victor Hugo, that arch-critic of “Napoleon the
love, captured a new and lasting image of the
fig. 6 Alphonse Liébert,
capital that has come down almost to our own « L’Hôtel de ville incendié », Little,” nonetheless willingly granted that the
new city built by his adversary had some
day (significantly, the piece was revived as
Les ruines de Paris
et de ses environs,
merits, all the while clinging to his soft spot
early as 1873). 8
1870-1871, 1872
Beyond the brand-new white stone facades Tirage sur papier albuminé, for the old Paris of his younger days, the city
he immortalized in Notre-Dame de Paris
and the blare of light music, the transformed
22,5 x 31 cm (vol.)
Paris, Bibliothèque
(sometimes called The Hunchback of Notrecity continued to offer glimpses of sharp
nationale de France,
Dame, 1831) and especially in Les Misérables
contrasts: between the Left Bank, less affecdépartement des Estampes
(1862):
ted by the upheavals of renovation, and the
et de la photographie
24
fig. 4
like what it was even in Gustave Courbet’s
When I asked him if he felt at home again in
Auguste Victor Deroy,
day, if we are to believe Zola, who lived an
Paris, he replied roughly to this effect: “. . . But
Panorama des incendies
impoverished youth there:
don’t imagine . . . that I’m condemning everyde Paris par la Commune,
après 1871. Lithographie
thing that has been done in Paris in my absence:
coloriée, 57,4 × 79,9 cm
Without any shadow of doubt, the demolition of
Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle have been
Paris, musée Carnavalet,
the old houses and the opening of new streets and
beautifully restored, and there are undeniably
Histoire de Paris
new boulevards have transformed the look of the
some fine new houses. . . . As a matter of personal
Latin Quarter. The Boulevard Saint-Michel, and the
taste, I prefer my old streets . . .” And answering somebody who
Boulevard Saint-Germain, which cuts across it, give it light,
spoke of great arteries, he said: “Yes, the Empire did nothing
air, and extra liveliness. Only a few backstreets have survived
to provide a defense against foreigners; everything it did was
as they were before. The cafés have become as spacious and
designed to provide a defense against the population. 12
luxurious as the restaurants on the Boulevard des Italiens. 14
This exchange between Victor Hugo and Edmond de
Haussmann and Napoleon III saw themselves as harbinGoncourt, two great admirers of heritage with fond memogers of progress. Paris was to be the magnum opus of the
ries of a bygone era, certainly encapsulates the uncertainty
reign, a city as a work of art but nonetheless a functional
of many literary figures, caught between an attachment to
one, linked to France and Europe via a star-shaped railroad
the “old” Paris and the attractions of the new. As early as
system. In the field of architecture, they were more conser1866, for the purposes of preserving some trace of the vanivative. They sacrificed a number of old structures but they
shed city, George Haussmann himself came up with the
restored or showcased the more venerable examples
idea for a museum of Paris’s history, the Musée Carnavalet,
(Notre-Dame, the Île de la Cité, the Sainte-Chapelle); the
ordering the purchase of the Hôtel du Marais in which to
quadrangle of the Louvre was cleared of its dilapidated
house it. The ancient could also appear out of the modern,
buildings and the new wing on the Rue de Rivoli linked up
and in 1872 the archaeological remains of the amphitheater
with the Tuileries in a pastiche of the classical styles of
of Roman Lutetia, discovered in 1870 during engineering
royal palaces. Even when building from scratch, the Empire
work on the Rue Monge, were excavated. 13
tended to revert to a mixture of old styles, as with the new
Meanwhile, the neighboring Latin Quarter was nothing
25
widened: Édouard Béliard, Guillaumin, Pissarro, Cézanne,
Monet, and Sisley were all obliged to live for the time being
away from the capital or on its outskirts. 17 Living out of
town while awaiting recognition, however long it took,
made all kinds of sense: it saved on household expenses,
allowed for friendly mutual support while working outdoors, and offered the attraction of country landscapes in
the Île-de-France area, where painters would tirelessly
explore a myriad shades, as strikingly evidenced in several
paintings on show at the group’s maiden exhibition in April
1874 on the Boulevard des Capucines: The Seine at PortMarly cat. 019, for instance, Orchard in Bloom, Louveciennes
cat. 133, Poppy Field cat. 071, or House of the Hanged Man,
Auvers-sur-Oise cat. 072. Guillaumin, who made ends meet
by working as a ditch-digger with the highways department, offers a landscape scarred by industry in the
newborn suburbs cat. 062; and Monet for once turns away
from the countryside to provide a daring bird’s-eye view of
the Boulevard des Capucines cat. 033, as seen from Nadar’s
studio, where the exhibition would be held. The more
Parisian of the impressionists offer interior scenes or evoke
their favorite haunts of the leisured classes: Degas’s The
Dance Class cat. 053 and At the Races in the Countryside
cat. 010; Berthe Morisot’s The Cradle cat. 064 and The Mother
and Sister of the Artist cat. 018; and Renoir’s The Loge cat. 039
and The Parisienne cat. 017. With such gentle pictures,
whether consciously or unconsciously, both groups were
seeking to get away from a nightmarish, traumatic past that
had left an enduring mark on Paris and an entire generation.
opera house by Charles Garnier, which combined the
baroque and the classical fig. 1017. In its handling of the
“fine arts,” the Bonapartist state in 1863 could tolerate a
“Salon des Refusés” while steadfastly upholding the aesthetic order handed down via the École des Beaux-Arts and
its competitions, or the official Salon and its medals, in the
face of increasing anti-establishment activity among the
younger generations. 15 Rejecting a petition by artists in
April 1872, the Republic would not hear of repeating the
experiment. 16 This is what forced the innovators to seek
out alternatives, such as the founding of the Société
Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Graveurs, Sculpteurs, etc.,
the joint-stock company of painters, engravers, and sculptors that was behind the 1874 “impressionist” exhibition.
How did the artists involved in this act of dissidence
against the established aesthetic order react to the transformation of Paris? In a broad variety of ways, for reasons
as much to do with biography as history: hailing from the
provinces (Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Armand
Guillaumin, Eugène Boudin) or abroad (Camille Pissarro,
Alfred Sisley), many of the impressionists-to-be came to
Paris before 1870 to learn their trade, just like the majority
of educated French youth, drawn irresistibly to the capital
of art and literature, much as described in a Balzac novel
as something deeply ingrained in the French cultural and
social way of life. Neither did they escape the consequences of the transformation of Paris: the new painting
was known for a time as the “Batignolles school” (with
reference to one of the newly annexed towns) because
these beginners had to take refuge in the cheaper quarters
in the northwest. Likewise, cafés on the city’s outskirts
(Café Guerbois, Grande Rue des Batignolles, Nouvelle
Athènes, Place Pigalle) had taken over from the cafés on
the boulevards or in the Latin Quarter as venues for getting
together and conversation for the same reason. These establishments were friendlier to young people and mixed age
groups, and there was no standing on ceremony, whereas
the downtown boulevards were primarily where already
established artists, chroniclers, and writers liked to be
seen.
Of course, there are a few exceptions to this socio-geographical determinism. Non-conformism was not the preserve of artists who lacked a lower middle-class background. A number who had come into money (Edgar
Degas, Henri Rouart, Giuseppe De Nittis, Berthe Morisot,
and, later, Gustave Caillebotte) also belonged to the collective that gradually emerged from these encounters and
successive group exhibitions. Even though they too had
difficulty making a name for themselves whenever they
strayed off the beaten track, they at least had a supportive
family and other resources to fall back on in order to preserve their standing in the bourgeois city. Degas, Auguste
Renoir, and Eugène Boudin remained faithful to the old
artists’ quarter, the one known in the Romantic period as
the “Nouvelle Athènes” (New Athens), in the ninth arrondissement; meanwhile, Berthe Morisot lived in Passy.
During the difficult period that followed the FrancoPrussian War, the gap between these figures and less welloff artists, or those who were less fortunate in their sales,
1 Charle 2011 and 2021.
2 Workers who enlisted were guaranteed a minimum wage at a time of
massive unemployment following the Siege.
3 Zola 2003b, p. 711. See also Fournier 2007.
4 L’Année terrible is the title of a collection of poems by Victor Hugo (Hugo
1872) about the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and the tragic loss
of his son.
5 Such uprisings include the end of the Restoration and the July 1830
revolution; the toppling of the July Monarchy during the days of
revolution in February 1848; the workers’ revolt in Paris in June 1848
during the Second Republic; the end of the Second Empire and a return
to the Republic on September 4, 1870; and the uprising of the Commune
of Paris on March 18, 1871 against the Thiers government.
6 See Ferry 1868.
7 See the present catalogue, pp. XX–XX.
8 Yon 2000, pp. 331–38. The closing chorus (quoted on p. 335) was “Never
mind what comes after / Here is life in Paris!”
9 The “non aedificandi” (no building) zone consisted of a miles-long belt
just outside the fortifications that circled the capital. No permanent
structures could be built there, so that the army’s sightlines over the city
walls would not be blocked, but one result was the proliferation on this
strip of land of temporary facilities for the poorest of the poor such as
could be readily demolished.
10 May 21–28, 1871.
11 Rougerie 1971.
12 Goncourt 1957, pp. 664–65 (Monday November 7, 1870), trans. Baldrick
1978, pp. 178–79.
13 Van Damme 2012.
14 Zola 2003a, p. 696.
15 See the present catalogue, p. XX.
16 A Salon des Refusés did, however, go ahead in 1873; see the present
catalogue, p. XX.
17 The artists’ addresses were listed in the catalogue of the 1874 Société
Anonyme exhibition (Paris 1874a and 1874b) [Paris 1874 = Société
Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc., Première
exposition 1874: Catalogue, exh. cat., 35 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris,
April 15–May 15, 1874. Paris: Imprimerie Alcan-Lévy, 1874.] and in the
directory Annuaire des Beaux-Arts et des arts décoratifs (Paris, 1879), both
browsable online at Gallica.fr.
26