Box: Decorated in the Persian Taste

Lucien Falize (French, Paris 1839–1897 Paris) - Alexis Falize (French, 1811–98) - Trilobed Box - ca. 1875 - Gold and enamel - 15/16 × 2 3/4 × 1 15/16 in. (2.4 × 7 × 5 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkThe Metropolitan Museum of Art has simply titled this lovely work “Box”. What follows is the MET’s description of the piece. 

“Made by the illustrious Parisian firm Falize, this trilobed box is decorated in the Persian taste with flowers and foliage enameled in deep red, green, dark and turquoise blue, and yellow on a white ground. The gold-rimmed lid is decorated with ogee-shaped lappets on a matte ground and edged with beading that recalls the eighteenth-century French tradition of finely crafted gold boxes. Alexis Falize (1811–1898) began his career as an anonymous supplier of jewelry to retailers such as Boucheron and Tiffany's. Falize's firm, founded in 1838, followed the nineteenth-century fashion for the various revival styles as well as drawing inspiration from Near Eastern and Japanese sources. In 1867, Falize exhibited Japanese-inspired enameled jewelry to great success at the Exposition Universelle, Paris. Falize's son Lucien (1839–1897), who was one of the first to apply plant forms to jewelry design, foreshadowing the Art Nouveau style, continued his father's business. The firm's impressive displays at the 1878 and 1889 Expositions Universelles received great international acclaim. Throughout the second half of the century, Falize collaborated with such artists as the enameller Antoine Tard, Germain Bapst, Emmanuel Fremiet, and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.”

Armor of Infante Luis, Prince of Asturias

Armor of Infante Luis, Prince of Asturias - 1712 - Signature probably refers to Jean Drouart (French) - Steel, gold, brass, silk, cotton, metallic yarn, paper - H. 28 in. (71.1 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)This extraordinary royal armor (designed for a child) is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The MET is closed right now, due to the COVID-19 crisis. But once it reopens, you’ll definitely want to check this out. Below is the museum’s description of the piece. 

“Possibly the last royal armor made in Europe, this is believed to have been presented to the five-year-old Infante Luis (1707–1724), prince of Asturias, by his great-grandfather Louis XIV of France (1638–1715, reigned from 1643). Luis was the first Spanish-born Bourbon heir to the throne of Spain and ruled briefly as Luis I in 1724. The armor is signed and dated on the backplate Drouar Ordinaire du Roi aux Heaume à Paris 1712 (Drouar, armorer-in-ordinary to the king, at the sign of the helm, in Paris, 1712). The signature probably refers to Jean Drouart (died before October 1715), a royal armorer. Drouart was one of the last practicing armorers active in France by 1712. Remarkable for the state of its preservation, the armor retains its lustrous blue and gold surfaces and nearly all the original red silk lining. The gilt rivet heads are of heraldic design—the lion of León, the castle of Castile, and the fleur-de-lis of France—representing the dynastic claims to which Luis was heir.”

Les Nabis: Art and Design

Georges Lacombe - The Ages of Life - 1894 - Egg tempera on canvas - Petit Palais - Geneva, Switzerland (click photo for larger image)Les Nabis was a movement that developed from around 1891 to 1899. It was established by a group  of Post-Impressionists artists and illustrators in Paris. They became very influential in the field of graphic art. Their emphasis on design was shared by the parallel Art Nouveau movement. Both groups also had close ties to the Symbolist painters. They maintained that a work of art reflects an artist’s synthesis of nature into personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols.

French painter Georges Lacombe (1868-1916) was a member of the group. Born into a family with artistic inclinations, Georges’ talents flourished. In 1892, while studying at the Académie Julian, he met artists Émile Bernard and Paul Sérusier. Shortly thereafter, he became a member of Les Nabis.

Honoré Daumier: An Artist of Commentary

Honoré Daumier - The Third-Class Carriage - 1863-65 - Oil on canvas - 25 3/4 x 35 1/2 in. (65.4 x 90.2 cm) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (click photo for larger image)Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was a French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings, though hardly known during his lifetime, helped introduce techniques of Impressionism into modern art.

His work and his often controversial social and political critique is said to have impacted his contemporaries, as well as such artists as Édouard Manet and Henri Matisse. In his day, Charles Baudelaire referred to Daumier as "one of the most important men, not only... in caricature, but also in modern art…”.

Jean Clouet: Delicacy and Depth of Characterization

Jean Clouet - Guillaume Budé - ca. 1536 - Oil on Wood - 15 5/8 x 13 1/2 in. (39.7 x 34.3 cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (click photo for larger image)Although he lived in France for most of his life, records show that Jean Clouet (c. 1485-1541) was not French by origin and was never naturalized. He was one of the chief painters to Francis I as early as 1516 and was appointed groom of the chamber from 1523 forward. As such, he enjoyed the salary and social position granted to the most prominent poets and scholars of the time. In the early 1520s he lived in Tours and from 1529 in Paris. He painted chiefly portraits, but, at least iIn the earlier part of his career, he produced religious subjects.

“Painter to King Francis I, Jean Clouet played a key role in establishing the Renaissance portraiture tradition in France, yet this is his only extant painted portrait. It depicts Guillaume Budé, librarian to Francis I and the leading humanist of sixteenth-century France…. Budé’s fingers hold his page, as if interrupted. With the quill in his right hand, he has written in Greek, ‘While it seems to be good to get what one desires, the greatest good is not to desire what one does not need’ (Joannes Stobaeus, 3.5.18).” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC)