Collection: Belle Époque

The Belle Époque covers the period of relative European peace, prosperity, and cultural confidence between the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It is the social and economic frame for late Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Art Nouveau, the Parisian poster, and the great expansion of the illustrated press, theatre, and department store culture across western Europe.

Paris was the period's capital and gave it most of its visual signature. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, and Alphonse Mucha defined the lithographic poster tradition. Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Maurice Denis, and the wider Nabis circle developed an intimate domestic painting in parallel. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and the surviving Impressionists continued working into the period; Henri Rousseau brought a self-taught primitivist register; the young Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse arrived in Paris in its closing decade.

The Universal Expositions of 1889 and 1900, the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Métro entrances designed by Hector Guimard, and the great department store catalogues all belong to the same cultural moment. Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Jean-Louis Forain produced the period's most influential satirical illustration.