Cena de Baile (Scène du Bal) - Jean Béraud
Paris - França
Coleção privada
OST - 27x35
During his years spent exhaustively sketching a variety of
characters and fashionable spaces from a hansom cab, Jean Béraud recorded
countless quotidian scenes of bustling grands boulevards, parks,
markets and theatres. In addition to crowded public spaces, Béraud also painted
private apartments and salons. The artist was known
in society as a perfect gentleman who was always impeccably dressed; he was, as
Marcel Proust described, “a charming creature, sought in vain, by every social
circle” (quoted in Patrick Offenstadt, Jean Béraud 1849-1935, The Belle Époque: A
Dream of Times Gone By, Catalogue Raisonné, Cologne, 1999, p. 7).
His social calendar was always full with invitations from Paris’ most
fashionable set, which allowed him to attend private balls, concerts and
gatherings.
As an invited guest, Béraud had special access to these grand
events, where the chic attendees were illuminated by gaslights in expansive,
mirrored ballrooms. The artist observed and recorded the spectacle of
these luxurious interiors, the latest fashions for women created by the
visionary Charles Worth, and a full spectrum of high society in works such as
his ambitious, frieze-like Une soirée (1878, Musée
d’Orsay, Paris). The figures in Une soirée can be
identified as members of the social elite, so it is possible that it is based
on an evening in the artist’s exciting social life. In addition to capturing
the splendor of music-filled, glittering parties, as depicted in Une
soirée, Béraud was also drawn, as Offenstadt remarks, “to observe
what is happening around the spectacle and behind the scenes; to investigate
like a journalist, and not to be content with what immediately strikes the
eye...Whether the assembly is calm or agitated, [the artist] detects the
insistent glances and roguish airs. Mutual attraction finds expression in words
and glances; Béraud records the lovers who stand apart from the crowd in a
salon, amid the hubbub of a ball” (Offenstadt, p. 173).
In Scène du bal, Béraud is
situated in the home’s petit salon while the
colorful ball, full of dancing and spirited conversations is seen through the
doorway. Though equally as stylish as the ballroom with its contemporary
Barbizon paintings in gilt frames and marble sculptures, this space is the
perfect setting for a peek into Parisian high society, where guests can
converse with more ease. The group of elegantly dressed, animated men by the
fireplace are locked in conversation or debate, while a man and a woman share a
quieter exchange nearer to the doorway.
Béraud's keen eye for style extends beyond women's fashion
in Scène du bal. The artist has given pride of place
to a group of men around the fireplace dressed in suits. Men’s evening wear was
seldom depicted in Impressionist scenes of modern Paris because it was
considered uninteresting and monotonous, merely a neutral background to
showcase the brilliance, exquisiteness and meticulous detail of women’s fashion
(Gloria Groom, “Spaces of Modernity,” in Impressionism, Fashion
& Modernity, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 2012, p. 183). Here
the female guest’s pink gown adorned with lace and red flowers punctuates a
long line of uniform black and white. An 1870s Paris guidebook for men noted
that the man is “the lining of the jewelry box against which the eternal
diamond stands out…He allows her to sing the symphony of white, pink, and
green, as a solo” (Guide sentimental de l’étranger dans Paris, pp.
83-4, quoted in Philippe Thiébaut, “An Ideal of Virile Urbanity,” Impressionism,
Fashion & Modernity, exh. cat., p. 137).
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