Acquisition · La Verrerie, decorative panel by Georges de Feure

Georges de Feure was a painter, decorator, illustrator, and designer of furniture, jewelry, fabrics and a great many other items emblematic of Parisian Art Nouveau. Up until 2015, there were very few of his works in Musée d’Orsay’s collections, which do not include any objects designed by this prolific artist. However, the Museum already housed two small paintings by the artist, representative of the two extremes of his career: an early work, L’Abîme (The Abyss), a symbolist composition exhibited at the Salon de la Rose+Croix in 1894, and a late work, a Dutch landscape Ville en Hollande (Town in Holland), purchased by the State in 1922.

Acquisition of two of the Bing pavilion’s decorative panels in 2015, thanks to the support of the Société des Amis des Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie (SAMO), partially filled the gap by illustrating the artist’s activity as a decorator. The pair had a third partner, a stained-glass project, from the same provenance. It was therefore important to complete the set by addition of this third panel, so bringing together the only three panels from the pavilion currently known to exist.

The series bears rare, direct witness to the ephemeral architecture of the “L’Art Nouveau Bing” pavilion, which crystallized a decisive moment in French decorative arts. Beyond the Bing pavilion alone, de Feure’s decorative works complement Mucha’s decorations for Bosnia-Herzegovina’s pavilion, conserved at Musée d’Orsay, so adding to the collection of items to do with the 1900 Universal Exhibition’s ephemeral architecture.

Author

• Élise Dubreuil, Decorative Arts Curator