Page 27 - Gallery 19c Volume 3_Les Types de Paris_digital_Neat

C I T Y O F L I G H T S A N D D A R K

Picturing “Types” in 19th century Urban and Suburban Paris

E M I LY M . W E E K S , P h D

In 1866, Pierre Larousse (1817–1875) published the on this grand thoroughfare of luxury [. . .] If you want
first volume of his 20,700 page, 15-volume Grand to understand the throbbing pulse of the city, it is
dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. Part dictionary, these vast arteries that should be interrogated, arteries
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part short-entry encyclopedia, this obsessive venture where the crowd flocks or becomes scarce with dizzy
symbolized what had become the defining preoccupation rapidity [. . .] [O]ne can say that the thrill of Paris is
of 19th-century French society—the cataloguing and there. The Boulevard, is not the heart of the city; it is its
compartmentalization of the world at large. Though consciousness; it is the point of observation that one must
evident in all aspects of French life, from department adopt if one wants to know when the city is joyous or
store displays to ethnography, colonialist policies, when she suffers.”– E. de Saulnat and A.P. Martial, eds.,
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and psychiatric practices, nowhere was this impulse Les Boulevards de Paris, Paris, 1877, pp. viii-ix
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expressed more powerfully than in the visual arts. In
The rapid topographical transition in Paris from
addition to illustrated publications such as Raffaëlli’s
panoramic Types de Paris (1889), discussed at length in street to boulevard — a result of the ambitious urban
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planning programs carried out by Baron Georges-
the previous essay and the foundation of Gallery 19C’s
inaugural exhibition, the Salons in particular between Eugène Haussmann (1809–1891) in the 1850s and
‘60s — became in nineteenth-century French painting
1850 and 1900 were filled with pictures that sought to 5
organize the increasing chaos of modern Parisian life a subject unto itself. With their wide expanses,
strategic vistas, and opportunities for self-display,
through thematic groupings, stereotypes, and clichés.
Five of the most important of these themes or “types,” these busy thoroughfares were reimagined as theaters
of modern life, drawing Parisians out of their homes
inspired by the Gallery’s rich and comprehensive 6
collection, will be discussed in this essay, both for the and into the public eye. Artists’ renditions of these
cosmopolitan spaces presented the boulevard as a
variations within these modes of representation and for
their role and function in society from the 19th-century microcosm of the city, of which they themselves were
an integral yet objective part. Working from their
until today.
carriages, balconies, or from photographs taken on the
spot, Jean Béraud (1849–1935), Johan Jongkind (1819–
ON THE BOULEV ARD / IN THE S TREET 1891), and Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894) famously
sketched the sights and soul of this new environment,
“The Boulevard is to Paris what the lifeline is to the hand in all its glittering and gritty glory (cat. nos. 4, 6 and
in the art of palm reading. Everything is accentuated 14; fig. 1). 7

24 Jean Béraud: Place Ensoleillée 25