Elegant on the Champs Élysées in snowy weather

Description of the artwork

This delicate gouache watercolour is one of a series of Parisian scenes that Jean Béraud devoted to the social life of the capital in the 1880s and 1890s. Through these scenes captured on the spot, the artist affirms his role as an attentive chronicler of Haussmannian Paris, whose elegance and seasonal rhythms he captures with almost journalistic precision.

The composition unfolds on the Champs-Élysées roundabout, smeared white by a recent snowfall. In the foreground, a young woman walks briskly towards Avenue d'Antin (now Avenue Franklin-D. Roosevelt), leaning slightly against the wind, her muff raised to her face to protect herself from the cold. The liveliness of her movement and the tension perceptible in the tilt of her body lend the scene an immediate, almost cinematic sense of movement. Her red hat, bright against the muted palette of winter browns and greys, becomes the focal point of the composition.
Around her, the perspective opens up widely: street lamps punctuate the space, leading the eye towards the blurred silhouettes of pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages animating the background. On the horizon stands the Palais de l'Industrie, a remnant of the 1855 Universal Exhibition, recognisable by its large glass roof, with the rotunda known as the ‘Panorama’ to its right, providing access to the ‘Galerie des Machines’, a vast 1,200-metre-long exhibition space that hosts the prestigious annual Salon along the Seine.

The snow, deposited in fine, light touches on the ground and street lamps, unifies the scene in a cold and slightly misty atmosphere. Through subtle use of gouache to enhance the watercolour, Béraud manages to convey the wet reflections on the pavement and the powdery lightness of a winter outdoors.
Far from any theatrical anecdote, the artist favours direct observation and spontaneity. This female figure, captured in the moment of a stroll, embodies the modern elegance that Béraud likes to represent: active, urban, and inserted into the incessant flow of a capital city that is always on the move.

Origin

Private Collection, Switzerland

Literature

Patrick Offenstadt, Jean Béraud. The Belle Epoque: A Dream of Times Gone By, Cologne and Bonn, 1999, reproduced p. 142, no. 130