Architecture display

The 19th century was the most extravagant in terms of public monuments, particularly during the Third Republic (1870-1940), prompting the historian Maurice Agulhon to call it "the century of the urban statue".
Monuments commemorating great men or important historical events, memorials to the dead, which proliferated after the slaughter of the First World War in 1914-1918, designs for the tombs of famous figures and the wealthy bourgeoisie, who commissioned many of them, designs for the great cemeteries of Paris and for crematoria - these were some of the many projects undertaken by architects such as Jean-Camille Formigé, Hector Guimard and Émile Gallé.

The role of the commemorative monument was to give structure to the urban environment, to provide a point of reference, a feature for a square, a street corner, an entrance to a park or a cemetery or to draw the eye towards the vanishing point of a view. These drawings are evidence of one of the projects frequently carried out by 19th century architects in collaboration with sculptors.