La fabrique du Romantisme — Charles Nodier et les Voyages pittoresques

Exhibition

Drawing, print, painting

La fabrique du Romantisme
Charles Nodier et les Voyages pittoresques

Past: October 11, 2014 → January 18, 2015

A patron of the world of arts and letters, Charles Nodier (1780–1844) was one of Romanticism’s leading figures. This essayist and novelist regenerated the art and literature of the 1820–1830s at his Salon de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, from 1824 on the meeting point for the young guard of painters and writers. A venue for interchange, creativity and socialising, the salon was a vital step in the initiation of the Romantics. This intellectual community included Dumas, Vigny, David d’Angers, Devéria, Delacroix and Boulanger and from its very beginning was the circle that set the tone for the development of Romanticism.

Nodier was above all the creator, along with Baron Taylor, of the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France, a monumental engraved work describing the provinces of France in twenty-four volumes. This ambitious attempt at a historical, descriptive and picturesque anthology brought together the best of the contemporary landscape painters from Bonington to Isabey.

The exhibition presents this nineteenth-century publishing monument through a hundred works: the collections of texts, drawings and watercolours and the rich corpus of painting inspired by this formidable book of images. Thus it offers a new perception of 19th-century France, with its mix of interests in imposing natural landscapes, the until then unknown remnants of the medieval troubadour past, and even archaeology, all of them part of the cause taken up by the Romantic writers and painters.

Its influence on the decorative art, the theatre and opera made Nodier’s venture the matrix of a picturesque, medieval vision that would pervade the entire artistic output of the first half of the century and set people thinking about the need to protect historical monuments.

  • Opening Friday, October 10, 2014 4 PM → 8:30 PM
Musée de la Vie Romantique Museum
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Hôtel Scheffer-Renan
16, rue Chaptal

75009 Paris

T. 01 55 31 95 67

Liège
Pigalle
Saint-George

Opening hours

Every day except Monday, 10 AM – 6 PM
Closed on Mondays and bank holidays.

Admission fee

Full rate €6.00 — Concessions €4.00

14-26 ans : 3,5 euros. Accès gratuit dans les collections permanentes.

The artists

  • Eugène Devéria
  • Achille Devéria
  • Prosper Barbot
  • Alexande Evariste Fragonnard
  • Jean Pierre Dantan
  • Richard Parkes Bonnington