Victor Prouvé, Flowers, Sketch

Sketch for the ceiling of the Dining Room of the Hôtel de Ville de Paris – Right side panel 1891-92, Blue ink Art Deco wooden frame with stylized flower motifs The Third Republic uses art to spread its ideas and values – patriotism, renewed prosperity, history and its republican motto: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity by calling upon a vast policy of grand decorations. Thus, public buildings, such as town halls are decorated by vast iconographic programs with an educational scope. By choosing spaces to decorate among the most symbolic of republican civic life: wedding halls, function rooms, sometimes staircases leading to them, the themes quickly become systematized. We find there the exaltation of family and work, history and commitment to Republican France, and the celebration of a regional identity through territorial industrial activity. The commissions gradually shaped a mixture of allegory and naturalism, thus creating a new secular gospel. To this end, the public authorities established competitions and commissions in 1878-79 in order to enlist French artists in this vast ambition. Victor Prouvé, master of Nancy Art Nouveau, would therefore, like his contemporaries, participate in it. This movement would bring him recognition from his peers and ensure him a fixed income. The artist received excellent results in the competition for the dining room of the Paris City Hall, as evidenced by our sketch Les Fleurs, the third panel of a bucolic triptych composed of Fruits and Ambrosia. (Ill.1). Bearer of a poetry full of charm, the Arcadian compositions produced by Prouvé nevertheless received contrasting criticism, oscillating between the delight of the form and the immorality of the content. "Young men and women will see this as a legal authorization for flirting and mothers as an encouragement to destroy fruit trees," Louis Flandrin warned in the newspaper La Quinzaine in May 1897. The symbolic correlation between flirting and picking refers for the critic to the founding sin of Adam and Eve, whereas Prouvé invites a different interpretation, that of "the poem of conjugal love and filial joys." Incredibly lively and modern, our beautiful sketch with its thrilling line captivates with its bluish tone, testifying to the joyful virtuosity of its creator. Ill. 1. Victor Prouvé, Sketch for the dining room of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris: Fruits – Ambrosia – Flowers (ceiling), between 1891 and 1892, oil on canvas, 78.5 x 136 cm, Petit Palais, Museum of Fine Arts of the Old City of Paris, PPP4217. Bibliography: Collective, Blandine OTTER, Victor Prouvé, the Master of Art Nouveau in Issy, French Museum of Playing Cards, 2022