Berwick St James Art Appreciation

Paintings of the Belle Epoque

The Belle Epoque was a period of French and European history, generally regarded as that period between 1871and the outbreak of the 1st World War in 1914. Occurring during the era of the III French Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, relative regional peace, economic prosperity, technological and scientific innovation and a flourishing of the arts. From the first tender shoots of Impressionism with Monet and Pissarro etc to the Post-Impressionism of Gauguin, Cezanne and Van Gogh to the birth of Cubism with Braque and Picasso and the move away from representational towards abstraction in painting, it eventually led to what we now regard as Modern Art. However, here we remain in the realms of representational art, with the Naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage and his many followers, Marie Bashkirtseff, Fritz von Uhde, Helene Schjerbeck, James Guthrie, John Lavery, Tom Roberts and Joaquin Sorolla. Also represented will be the towering figures of British portraiture, Singer Sargent and William Orpen and the eclectic work of Felix Vallotton; something for everybody!