Second Empire style

The Napoleon III or Second Empire style drew its inspiration from several different periods and styles, which were often combined within the same building or interior. The interior of the Opéra Garnier by Charles Garnier combined architectural elements of the French Renaissance, Palladian architecture, and French Baroque, while achieving coherence and harmony throughout. The Lions Gate of the Louvre Palace by Hector Lefuel is a Louis-Napoléon interpretation of French Renaissance architecture; few visitors to the Louvre realise it is a 19th-century addition to the building.^[1]

Another characteristic of the Napoleon III style is the adaptation of building design to its function and to the properties of the materials used.^{[more detail needed]} Examples include the Gare du Nord railway station by Jacques Ignace Hittorff, the Church of Saint Augustine by Victor Baltard, and particularly the iron-framed structures of the market of Les Halles and the reading room of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, both also by Victor Baltard.^[2]

A basic principle of Napoleon III interior decoration was to leave no surface undecorated. Another principle was polychromy — an abundance of colour achieved through coloured marble, malachite, onyx, porphyry, mosaics, and silver- or gold-plated bronze. Wood panelling was often encrusted with rare and exotic woods, or darkened to resemble ebony.^[3] The façade of the Opéra Garnier employed seventeen different coloured materials, including various marbles, stones, and bronze.^[4]

• 
  The Palais Garnier in Paris
• 
  The grand stairway of the Paris Opera, designed by Charles Garnier, in the style he called simply "Napoleon III"
• 
  The interior of one of the giant glass and iron pavilions of Les Halles designed by Victor Baltard (1853–1870)
• 
  The reading room of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Richelieu site (1854–1875), designed by Henri Labrouste
• 
  The Grand Salon of the apartments of the minister of state, currently known as the Napoleon III Apartments, in the Louvre Palace, Paris (1859–1860), designed by Hector Lefuel and decorated with paintings by Charles-Raphaël Maréchal^[5]
• 
  The Church of Saint Augustine (1860–1871), designed by architect Victor Baltard, had a revolutionary iron frame, but an eclectic Neo-Renaissance exterior
• 
  The Gare du Nord, designed to be one of the new gateways to Paris, with an iron framework combined with allegorical statues of French cities
• 
  The main building of St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago, Illinois, designed by Canadian architect Toussaint Menard, is a classic example of the style. It is one of the five extant public buildings in Chicago that predate the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Second Empire is an architectural style that was most popular in the latter half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. It takes its name from the architectural elements in vogue during the era of the Second French Empire.^[6] As the Second Empire style evolved from its 17th-century Renaissance foundations, it acquired a blend of earlier European styles, most notably the Baroque, often combined with mansard roofs and low, square-based domes.^[7]

The style spread rapidly and evolved as Baroque Revival architecture throughout Europe and across the Atlantic. Its suitability for large-scale application made it widely used in the design of municipal and corporate buildings. In the United States, where one of the leading architects working in the style was Alfred B. Mullett, buildings in the style were often closer to their 17th-century roots than European examples.^[8]

The dominant architectural tendency of the Second Empire was eclecticism, drawing liberally from the Gothic style, Renaissance style, and the styles dominant during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. The combination was derided by Émile Zola as "the opulent bastard child of all the styles".^[9] The finest example was the Opéra Garnier, begun in 1862 but not completed until 1875. The architect was Charles Garnier (1825–1898), who won the competition for the design at the age of thirty-seven. When the Empress Eugénie asked Garnier what the style of the building was called, he replied simply: "Napoleon III." At the time it was the largest opera house in the world, but much of the interior space was devoted to purely decorative purposes: grand stairways, vast foyers for promenading, and large private boxes. Another example was the Mairie, or city hall, of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, built in 1855–1861 in a neo-Gothic style by the architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff (1792–1867).^[10]

The Industrial Revolution was beginning to demand a new kind of architecture: bigger, stronger, and less expensive. The new age of railways and the enormous increase in travel it brought required new train stations, large hotels, exposition halls, and department stores in Paris. While the exteriors of most Second Empire monumental buildings usually remained eclectic, a revolution was taking place inside; following the model of The Crystal Palace in London (1851), Parisian architects began to use cast iron frames and walls of glass in their buildings.^[11]

The most dramatic use of iron and glass was in the new central market of Paris, Les Halles (1853–1870), an ensemble of huge iron and glass pavilions designed by Victor Baltard (1805–1874) and Félix Callet (1792–1854). Jacques Ignace Hittorff also made extensive use of iron and glass in the interior of the new Gare du Nord train station (1842–1865), though the façade was purely neoclassical, decorated with classical statues representing the cities served by the railway. Baltard also used a steel frame in constructing the largest new church built in Paris during the Empire, the Church of Saint Augustine (1860–1871). While the structure was supported by cast iron columns, the façade remained eclectic. Henri Labrouste (1801–1875) also used iron and glass to create a dramatic cathedral-like reading room for the National Library, Richelieu site (1854–1875).^[10]

The Second Empire also saw the completion or restoration of several architectural treasures: the Nouveau Louvre project realised a longstanding ambition of rationalising the Louvre Palace, the famed stained glass windows and structure of the Sainte-Chapelle were restored by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame underwent extensive restoration. In the case of the Louvre in particular, the restorations were sometimes more imaginative than precisely historical.

• 
  The salon of the Empress Eugénie at the Tuileries Palace
• 
  Chest in Napoleon III style, with polychrome floral decoration
• 
  The chair for intimate conversations called le confident
• 
  The "Indiscreet", a chair for three persons
• 
  A crapaud armchair with fringe hiding the legs, from the apartment of Victor Hugo
• 
  Rococo Revival jardinière with putti and flower sprays, set in a metal frame

Comfort was the first priority of Second Empire furniture. Chairs were elaborately upholstered with fringes, tassels, and expensive fabrics. Tapestry work on furniture was very much in fashion. The structure of chairs and sofas was usually entirely concealed by the upholstery or ornamented with copper, shell, or other decorative elements. Novel and exotic new materials, such as bamboo, papier-mâché, and rattan, were used for the first time in European furniture, along with polychrome wood and wood painted with black lacquer. The upholstered pouffe, or footstool, appeared, along with the angle sofa and unusual chairs designed for intimate conversations between two persons (le confident) or three people (l'indiscret). The crapaud (or toad) armchair was low, with a thickly padded back and arms, and a fringe that concealed the legs.

The French Renaissance and the Henry II style were popular influences on chests and cabinets, buffets and credences, which were massive and built like small cathedrals, decorated with columns, frontons, cartouches, mascarons, and carved angels and chimeras. They were usually constructed of walnut or oak, or sometimes of pear wood stained to resemble ebony.^[14]

Another popular influence was the Louis XVI style, or French neoclassicism, which was the preferred style of the Empress Eugénie. Her rooms at the Tuileries Palace and other palaces were decorated in this manner.

• 
  The Avenue de l'Opéra painted by Camille Pissarro (1898)
• 
  Boulevard Haussmann, with the classic Haussmann-style apartment buildings (1870)
• 
  The Fontaine Saint-Michel by Gabriel Davioud (1856–61)
• 
  Mairie of the 19th arrondissement in Paris, by Gabriel Davioud
• 
  New city hall of the 1st arrondissement (1855–60) (left) and new bell tower (1862) matching the Gothic Church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois

The Napoleon III style is inseparable from the renovation of Paris under Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the Emperor's Prefect of the Seine between 1852 and 1870. The buildings of the renovation display a singularity of purpose and design, a consistency of urban planning that was unusual for the period. Numerous public edifices — railway stations, the tribunal de commerce de Paris, and the Palais Garnier — were constructed in the style. The major buildings, including the Opera House and the Church of Saint Augustine, were designed to serve as the focal points of the new avenues and to be visible from a great distance.

Napoleon III also built monumental fountains to decorate the heart of the city; his Paris city architect, Gabriel Davioud, designed the polychrome Fontaine Saint-Michel (officially the Fontaine de la Paix) at the head of Haussmann's new Boulevard Saint-Michel. Davioud's other major Napoleon III works included the two theatres at the Place du Châtelet, as well as the ornamental fence of Parc Monceau and the kiosks and temples of the Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes, and other Paris parks.

The expansion of the city limits by Napoleon III and Haussmann's new boulevards called for the construction of a variety of new public buildings, including the new tribunal de commerce (1861–67), influenced by the French Renaissance style, by Théodore Ballu; and the new city hall of the 1st arrondissement by Jacques Ignace Hittorff (1855–60), combining Renaissance and Gothic styles. The new city hall was located beside the Gothic church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Between the two structures, the architect Théodore Ballu constructed a Gothic bell tower (1862) to link the two buildings.^[15]

New types of architecture connected with economic expansion — railway stations, hotels, office buildings, department stores, and exposition halls — came to occupy the centre of Paris, which had previously been largely residential. To improve traffic circulation and bring light and air to the city centre, Napoleon's Prefect of the Seine cleared the overcrowded neighbourhoods at the heart of the city and built a network of grand boulevards. The expanded use of new building materials, especially iron frames, allowed the construction of far larger buildings for commerce and industry.^[16]

Another aspect of the Napoleon III style was the restoration of historical monuments that had been badly damaged during the French Revolution or were threatened with destruction by the growth of cities. This programme was largely carried out by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose neo-Gothic design for a new Paris Opera had come in second to that of Garnier. The restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, begun in 1845, continued for twenty-five years. Some of its additions departed from the originals. Viollet-le-Duc restored the flèche, or spirelet, of the cathedral — which had been partially destroyed and desecrated during the French Revolution — in a slightly different style, and added gargoyles to the façade that had not originally been present.

In 1855, he completed the restoration, begun in 1845, of the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, and in 1862 declared it a national historical monument. He also initiated restoration programmes for the medieval walls of the Cité de Carcassonne and other sites. Viollet-le-Duc's restorations were criticised in the late 20th century for sometimes pursuing the spirit of the original work rather than strict historical accuracy — for example, using a type of Gothic tower cap from northern France for the walls of Carcassonne, rather than a design from that region — but in Carcassonne and elsewhere the structures would have been destroyed entirely without the intervention of Napoleon III and Viollet-le-Duc.

• 
  The Bois de Boulogne, built between 1852 and 1858, was designed to give a place for relaxation and recreation to all classes of Parisians.
• 
  The monumental gates of the Parc Monceau designed by the city architect Gabriel Davioud
• 
  The Temple of Love on Lac Daumesnil in the Bois de Vincennes (1865)

Napoleon III appointed Georges-Eugène Haussmann as his new Prefect of the Seine in 1853 and commissioned him to build new parks on the edges of the city, modelled on Hyde Park in London, which he had frequented during his years in exile. Haussmann assembled a remarkable team: Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand, the city's first Director of the new Service of Promenades and Plantations; Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, the city's first gardener-in-chief; Eugène Belgrand, a hydraulic engineer who rebuilt the city's sewers and water supply and provided the water needed for the parks; and Gabriel Davioud, the city's chief architect, who designed chalets, temples, grottos, follies, fences, gates, lodges, lampposts, and other park structures.^[17]

Over the course of seventeen years, Napoleon III, Haussmann, and Alphand created 1,835 hectares of new parks and gardens and planted more than six hundred thousand trees — the greatest expansion of Paris green space before or since.^[17] They built four major parks in the north, south, east, and west of the city, replanted and renovated the historic parks, and added dozens of small squares and gardens, so that no one lived more than ten minutes from a park or square. In addition, they planted tens of thousands of trees along the new boulevards that Haussmann created, extending from the centre to the outer neighbourhoods. The parks of Paris provided entertainment and relaxation for all classes of Parisians throughout the Second Empire.^[17]

The Napoleon III approach to landscape design for urban parks proved highly influential outside France. The American landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted kept a map of the Bois de Boulogne on the wall of his office. Both Central Park in New York City and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco reflect the influence of the Napoleon III parks.

• 
  The Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel, purchased by Napoleon III at the Paris Salon of 1863; now in the Musée d'Orsay
• 
  The Turkish Bath by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1862), the Louvre
• 
  Campagne de France 1814 by Ernest Meissonier (1864), Musée d'Orsay

Napoleon III's taste in painting was quite traditional, favouring the academic style cultivated in the Académie des Beaux-Arts. His preferred artists included Alexandre Cabanel, Ernest Meissonier, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who received important state commissions. Ingres, near the end of his life, remained an important figure in both portrait and history painting.

During the Second Empire, the Paris Salon was the most important annual event for painters, engravers, and sculptors. It was held every two years until 1861, and annually thereafter, in the Palais de l'Industrie, a gigantic exhibition hall built for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855. The Salon awarded medals according to the traditional hierarchy of genres, and a Salon medal assured an artist of commissions from wealthy patrons or from the French government. Painters devoted considerable effort and intrigue to winning jury approval to exhibit at the Salon and to secure favourable placement within the galleries.^[18]

The Paris Salon was directed by Count Émilien de Nieuwerkerke, the Superintendent of Fine Arts, who was known for his conservative tastes and his scorn for the new school of Realist painters led by Gustave Courbet. In 1863, the Salon jury refused all submissions by avant-garde artists, including works by Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Johan Jongkind. The artists and their supporters complained, and the complaints reached Napoleon III. His office issued a statement: "Numerous complaints have come to the Emperor on the subject of the works of art which were refused by the jury of the Exposition. His Majesty, wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints, has decided that the works of art which were refused should be displayed in another part of the Palace of Industry."^[19]

Following Napoleon's decree, an exhibition of the refused paintings — the Salon des Refusés — was held in another part of the Palace of Industry. More than a thousand visitors a day came to see works now regarded as landmarks, including Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe and James McNeill Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl.^[20] The journalist Émile Zola reported that visitors crowded into the galleries where the rejected paintings hung, and that the rooms were filled with laughter and mocking comments. While the works were ridiculed by many critics and visitors, the avant-garde became known for the first time to the French public and took its place alongside the more traditional Salon style.^[21]

The government of Napoleon III also commissioned artists to produce decorative works for public buildings. Ingres was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the main salon of the Hôtel de Ville, Paris with The Apotheosis of Napoleon, the Emperor's uncle. The painting was destroyed in 1871 when the building was set alight by the Paris Commune. Napoleon III named Ingres a Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur. In 1862 Ingres was awarded the title of Senator and made a member of the Imperial Council on Public Instruction.^[22]

Eugène Delacroix also received important official commissions. From 1857 to 1861 he worked on frescoes for the Chapelle des Anges at the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, including "The Battle of Jacob with the Angel", "Saint Michael Slaying the Dragon", and "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple".^[23]

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot began his career with academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts, but gradually began to paint more freely, expressing emotion through his landscapes. His motto was "never lose that first impression which we feel." He made sketches in the forests around Paris and then reworked them into finished paintings in his studio. He had exhibited at the Salon as early as 1827, but did not achieve widespread recognition until 1855, during the Second Empire.^[24]

• 
  Gustave Courbet's Young Ladies Beside the Seine (Summer) (1856) caused a scandal at the Paris Salon, much to the delight of the artist
• 
  Luncheon on the Grass by Édouard Manet also caused a scandal at the Paris Salon of 1863 and helped make Manet famous
• 
  Claude Monet exhibited a portrait of his future wife Camille Doncieux at the Paris Salon of 1866 under the title Woman in a Green Dress
• 
  La Grenouillère by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir studied art in Paris in 1862 and showed this painting at the Paris Salon of 1869.
• 
  Paul Cézanne produced a portrait of Paul Alexis reading to Cézanne's friend Émile Zola in 1869–70
• 
  A portrait of Édouard Manet and his wife by Edgar Degas (1868–69)
• 
  The Wine Press by Puvis de Chavannes

While the academic painters dominated the Salon, new artists and new movements rose to prominence under Napoleon III. Gustave Courbet (1819–1872) was the leader of the realist school during the Second Empire, depicting the lives of ordinary people and rural subjects alongside landscapes. He delighted in scandal and condemned the art establishment, the Academy of Fine Arts, and Napoleon III. In 1855, when his submissions to the Salon were rejected, he mounted his own exhibition of forty paintings in a nearby building. In 1870, Napoleon III proposed awarding the Legion of Honour to Courbet, but Courbet disdainfully rejected the offer.

The term Impressionist was not coined until 1874, but during the Second Empire all the major Impressionist painters were at work in Paris, developing their own personal styles. Claude Monet exhibited two of his paintings — a landscape and a portrait of his future wife Camille Doncieux — at the Paris Salon of 1866.

A major decorative painter whose career was launched under Napoleon III was Puvis de Chavannes. He became celebrated in the Belle Époque for his murals in the Paris Panthéon, the Sorbonne, and the Hôtel de Ville, Paris.

Edgar Degas (1834–1917), the son of a banker, trained in academic painting at the École des Beaux-Arts and travelled to Italy to study the Renaissance masters. In 1868, he began to frequent the Café Guerbois, where he met Manet, Monet, Renoir, and other artists of a newer, more naturalistic school, and began to develop his own distinctive style.^[25]

• 
  The Seasons Turning the Celestial Sphere for the Fontaine de l'Observatoire by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1868, National Museum, Warsaw
• 
  Valenciennes Defending the Arts of Peace with the Arts of War, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1869, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes
• 
  La Danse (The Dance), for the façade of the Opéra Garnier (installed 1869)
• 
  Ugolino and His Sons, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1857–60, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Le Triomphe de Flore (The Triumph of Flora) by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. South façade of the Pavillon de Flore, Louvre Palace, Paris

The most prominent sculptor of the reign of Napoleon III was Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who contributed to the decoration of several landmarks, including the façade of the Opéra Garnier and the new additions to the Louvre. His style complemented the historical styles of the period while remaining sufficiently original and bold to stand on its own. Born in Valenciennes, Nord, the son of a mason, he received his early training under François Rude.^[26] Carpeaux entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854. Moving to Rome, he studied the works of Michelangelo, Donatello, and Verrocchio. His years in Rome (1854–1861) cultivated a taste for movement and spontaneity that he fused with the great principles of Baroque art, leading him to seek subjects from real life and to break with the classical tradition.

His sculpture La Danse for the façade of the Paris Opera (1869) caused a scandal upon its installation owing to the flamboyant poses of the nude figures.^[27]

A young sculptor, Auguste Rodin, attempted to establish himself in the profession during the Second Empire without success; he applied three times to the École des Beaux-Arts and was rejected on each occasion.

• 
  Jacques Offenbach by Nadar (1860s)
• 
  Hortense Schneider as la Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867)
• 
  The old Paris Opera on Rue Pelletier (1864)
• 
  Charles Gounod (1859)
• 
  Georges Bizet (c. 1860)

• Beaux-Arts architecture – Neoclassical architectural style
• Paris during the Second Empire