Introduction

In 1900, artist Émile Gallé (1846-1904) displayed an array of designed objects at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, an event designed to celebrate France’s artistic, technological, and imperial achievements. His second time participating in an Exposition Universelle, Gallé showed a diverse range of pieces fabricated in glass, earthenware, and wood, in various locations throughout the fair.[1] He was given the opportunity to show a “Retrospective Collection” of his works in the Centennial Exposition of French Art. Housed in the newly-built Grand Palais (Figures 1-2), the flagship building for the exposition, this show featured paintings, sculptures, and works of decorative art. Gallé’s designs were also featured in two furniture exhibits in pavilions along the Esplanade des Invalides. One of these focused on contemporary furniture; the other was a retrospective of nineteenth-century furniture, in which Gallé again was allowed a group of works comprising what the artist called “first examples of Modernist Marquetry with country effects and natural products taken from wood and the local flora.”[2] While we do not know all of the works that Gallé displayed, some examples of his “modernist marquetry” may have included his Africa bookcase (ca. 1900, Figure 3) or his Bananier sellette (1900, Figure 4), a small table inspired by and named after the banana tree.

One of the works that Gallé showed at the exposition was a large decorative partition made from carved wood and studded with semi-precious stones, entitled Bois des Îles.[3] This work straddled the boundaries between furniture and artwork: it was made of carved wood, like a piece of furniture, but was largely non-functional and fundamentally decorative in purpose. In this, it is symbolic of the way Gallé presented himself as both a maker of furniture and as an artist in his various displays at the Exposition Universelle. This move to present himself as both artist and craftsman reflected larger shifts at the fin de siècle in the status of the decorative arts. Expositions Universelles emphasized the decorative arts as a way to promote and celebrate the French national identity and revitalize its economy. By exhibiting his works at the exposition that promoted the same ideas as the government and exposition organizers, Gallé was also elevating his own status as both a fine artist and a craftsman.

Moreover, this symbolic object signaled the importance of bois des îles to Gallé’s career. Translated literally to “island wood,” the term bois des îles was used colloquially to refer to varieties of wood and wood veneer that originated outside of France. Most often, these materials were obtained by means of the colonial wood trade, which was a highly profitable portion of the French economy.[4] Gallé frequently employed bois des îles; though we cannot always identify the precise origin or variety of the woods he used, we know that he owned a diverse collection comprising over six hundred different types of bois des îles from which he drew to fabricate his designs. [5] He also explicitly invoked the vegetation and locations from which bois des îles were cultivated in the titles he used for some of his works, such as La Fleur d’Acajou (The Cashew Flower), a reference to the cashew tree that was cultivated in the Caribbean, Africa, and South America.[6] Importantly, two of these sites where cashew trees were harvested and exported were locations in which France had extensive colonial holdings.

Figure 1: Grand Palais, Exposition Universelle de 1900, 1900. Photograph. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Figure 2: Le Grand Palais des Beaux Arts, 1900. Photograph. From Volume Annexe du Catalogue Genéral Officiel, Exposition Internationale Universelle, Paris 1900, 20.

Figure 3: Émile Gallé, Africa Bookcase, ca. 1900. Tropical hardwood. From Alastair Duncan and Georges de Bartha, Gallé Furniture (Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club: 2012), 71.

Figure 4: Émile Gallé, Bananier Sellette, 1900. Cashew wood, marquetry in various woods. 105 x 48 x 48 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Gallé’s decision to foreground these bois des îles in his display was, I argue, calculated to align his art with the way that the 1900 Exposition Universelle represented France and its empire. In particular, Gallé connected the process of making his furniture—in which blocks of raw wood were transformed into complex, highly detailed objects—with the ideology of the mission civilatrice (civilizing mission), which positioned French colonialism as a beneficial process of shaping the “pristine” nature and “primitive” peoples indigenous to those locations. By employing woods that were obtained through the infrastructure of colonialism, furthermore, Gallé emphasized the artistic and economic benefits that the colonies provided to the French nation. Promoting the French civilizing mission was one part of Gallé’s overarching tendency to express his views on socio-political issues through his work, often emphasizing his patriotism and nationalist ideals.

In connecting Gallé’s displays of bois des îles with the French civilizing mission, my capstone contributes to revisionist accounts that emphasize the political meanings of Gallé’s art. Until recently, scholarship on Gallé only highlighted his stylistic contributions to the Art Nouveau movement, stressing the connection between natural forms and Gallé’s ornamental style.[7] Debora Silverman departed from this methodology by relating Gallé’s art to the socio-political meanings of Art Nouveau in her book, Art Nouveau in Fin-De-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style. Silverman argued that between 1889 and 1900, there was a fundamental shift that resulted in the development of Art Nouveau.[8] This new style, she argued, was a revival of French Rococo, a quintessentially French artistic movement. Thus, Silverman positioned Art Nouveau as a promotion of a nationalist initiative that could revive the French economy. Moreover, Silverman classified Art Nouveau as a deeply psychological style, engaging with the internal world of nerves and a fascination with nature. This interest in psychology represented a larger trend of Art Nouveau’s engagement with contemporary cultural and intellectual currents, and reflected a distinctly modern interest in domestic and psychological interiority. Silverman argued that Art Nouveau artists employed new ideas about psychology to create a vitality to the decorative line that was manifested in these organic, natural forms. She associated Gallé with these larger developments in Art Nouveau, connecting him with the revitalization of decorative arts and a display of psychological complexity. Though Silverman discussed the prominence of Art Nouveau at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, she did not analyze Gallé’s displays there.[9]

In her monograph on Gallé, Jessica Dandona also emphasized the importance of politics to Gallé’s artistic identity and the symbolism of his furniture designs. In her book, Nature and the Nation in Fin-de-Siècle France: The Art of Émile Gallé and the École de Nancy, she argued that Gallé was a profoundly political artist. Thus, Dandona argued, Gallé wanted his work to be understood in this way. Gallé and other art reformers viewed decorative arts as having the ability to “communicate profound truths.”[10] Her chapter, “Carved into the flesh of France: Gallé and the Franco-Prussian War” cites Gallé’s table Le Rhin as an example of Gallé’s political and emotional expression through his work.[11] As a “museum table,” Gallé made it clear that this table was not meant to be used, and was in fact, a symbolic piece meant to communicate political ideas to his viewers. This shows that Gallé understood the power that comes with displaying a work of art, especially on an international stage at a universal exposition focused on defining national identities. In her chapter, “Clear Water: Japonisme, Nature and the Formation of a National Style,” Dandona argued that Gallé viewed the influence of Japonisme as a foundational component of “Frenchness” in art. Gallé viewed the adoption of Japanese influences as a way to revitalize French art and re-establish “France’s preeminence in the global marketplace” after having been eclipsed by German mass production.[12] Dandona showed that Gallé’s career was focused on painting himself as a patriotic French figure who created works meant to be read symbolically, however she did not consider Gallé’s use of bois des îles and their connection to the 1900 Exposition Universelle’s messaging about French colonialism.