Evolution of Parisian Women Through Art

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Creator
  • Zhytkova, Lizaveta
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Center for European Studies
Abstract
  • Surrounded by the Tuileries gardens, the Champs Élysées, and the Seine River, the Place de la Concorde has maintained its status as one of Paris’s major public squares since its construction in the late eighteenth century. It is marked by a tumultuous history, first serving as a monument to the then ruling Louis XV and subsequently transforming into a site of mass guillotine executions during the French Revolution. As a public space, the Place de la Concorde has witnessed dynamic shifts in Parisian society throughout the past two centuries and has been the subject of numerous artists. French painter Jean Béraud, renowned for depicting the life of Paris during the Belle Époque, portrays a woman in the square at the end of the nineteenth century in his 1885 work titled Parisian on the Place de la Concorde (Figure 1). Seven decades later, Russian-French artist and early modernist Marc Chagall portrayed a man, woman, and child overlooking the square in his vibrant color lithograph Place de la Concorde (Figure 2). Béraud’s painting, oscillating between impressionist and Salon-style techniques, offers a glimpse of the emerging dominance Parisian women began to enjoy in public spaces during the Belle Époque. Chagall’s lithograph, distinct in its vivid coloring and expressive sketching, presents individuals living in a post-war Paris, categorized by reconstruction and an influx of migrants. Thus, Béraud’s and Chagall’s diverse depictions of the Place de la Concorde and its frequenters implicate the viewer in Paris’s evolution as a city that underwent “an unparalleled period of contentment and pleasures” during the 1880s, followed by a post-war period of modernization seventy years later.
Date of publication
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DOI
Resource type
  • Article
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Journal title
  • North Carolina Journal of European Studies
Journal volume
  • 1
Journal issue
  • 1
Page start
  • 34
Page end
  • 38
Language
  • English

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