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Georges de Feure

Magazine Antiques, March, 2005 by Ian Millman

Today it is generally accepted that art nouveau, the celebrated international stylistic movement in the decorative arts, owes its name to a Parisian gallery opened in 1895 by Siegfried Bing, a renowned dealer in oriental art. However, it is less well known that, following the resounding success of his pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 (see Fig. 2), Bing dismissed the burgeoning number of creations appearing on the market as "crude imitations, shaped without regard to the most elementary rules of logic and given the name of 'Art Nouveau'." He published this clarification in the Architectural Record for American art lovers, who were avid for information about what was happening in the Old World.

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Full of enthusiasm for what he had seen during a visit to the United States in 1894, Bing had transformed his gallery of oriental art to present a panoply of virtually every form of artistic expression from the industrialized world that corresponded to his criteria of modernity and had given it, in all innocence, the name L'Art Nouveau. He explained: "L'Art Nouveau at the time of its creation did not aspire in anyway to the honor of becoming a generic term. It was simply the name of an establishment ... nothing but a title, a name, or if you like, a sign." (2)

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It was the name almost as much as the choice of objects and the manner in which they were exhibited that unleashed a spate of virulent criticism. It was felt that the public had been tricked into believing that they were going to see something new whereas in fact many of the artists already had established reputations, and a considerable number of the works had been exhibited before. Furthermore, the absence of the traditional hierarchical distinctions between the arts had resulted in confusion, while the great diversity of styles and forms of expression was nothing more than incoherence. Most significantly, Bing's internationalism was taken as an affront to the supremacy of French taste. (3) In his article in the Architectural Record, Bing conceded that there was some basis for these criticisms:

Soon, however, disillusion came. The productions gathered together in my
establishment had a chaotic appearance. Many were faulty in
conception.... It was evident that the future of this new born movement
was in great danger. The only way to save it was to make it follow a
fixed direction, carefully marked out. (4)

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The extravagance and impracticality that had characterized many of the original "ill-assorted things" in his gallery had jeopardized his attempt to revitalize the decorative arts in France. The guiding principles were to be sobriety and good sense, while the fundamental rules were that each article should be strictly adapted to its proper purpose and that harmonies should be sought in line and color: He continued:

there was only one way in which these theories could be put into
practice--namely, by having the article made under my personal
direction, and by securing the assistance of such artists as seemed best
disposed to carry out my ideas. (5)

In transforming his gallery on the rue de Provence into the "meeting ground for all ardent young spirits anxious to manifest the modernness of their tendencies," (6) Bing had somewhat let his enthusiasm override his business acumen. Now, having decided to play a more decisive role in the decorative arts by manufacturing and distributing his own models, given the hostility to his earlier international eclecticism, he knew that he would stand little chance of success if he did not offer the public something characteristically French.

To his American readers, Bing explained that the decorative arts had been brought to a "standstill for nearly a hundred years." (7) In the wake of the French Revolution the guilds had been abolished. Thus the accumulated knowledge and experience of one generation of master craftsmen were no longer passed on to the next for them to build on. The natural evolution of style had been lost, and during the nineteenth century designers had simply plundered the past rather than building on this heritage. Bing intended to confront the long-established furniture manufacturers, who simply repeated the past, and to shape French taste by offering a French style that was genuinely modern yet respected traditional values and virtues. The guiding ethic of this program for his designers was to:

thoroughly impregnate oneself anew with the old French tradition; try to
pick up the thread of that tradition, with all its grace, elegance,
sound logic and purity, and give it new developments, just as if the
thread had not been broken for nearly a century; strive to realize what
our distant predecessors would do if they were alive today. (8)

To put this program into practice, he transformed part of his premises on the rue de Provence and the adjoining rue Chauchat into workshops and recruited the artists he felt were best disposed to put his ideas into practice: Eugene Gaillard (1862-1933); Edward or Edouard Colonna (born Eduard Klonne; 1862-1948), and Georges de Feure (pseudonym of Georges Van Sluyters; Fig. 1).