Art Nouveau – an international style

During the final decades of the 19th century, many artists and designers were filled with a passionate urge to revolutionise the tired historicism associated with traditional architecture and design. The Art Nouveau style emerged in several countries under different names and with distinctive, nonetheless broadly similar, traits.

The modify in 'gustation' was interpreted in various countries in a variety of means: an inclusion of natural forms (including flowers, leaves, animals and insects), an emphasis on the fluidity of line, geometric shapes or asymmetrical compositions, and the integration of construction and decoration. Although Brussels, Paris and Munich were its epicentres, Art Nouveau tin exist seen as a thoroughly 'international' move.

French republic

Aristide Bruant dans son Cabaret, poster, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893, French republic. Museum no. Eastward.226-1921. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Considered the first new decorative mode of the modern age, Fine art Nouveau was an exotic and decadently modern departure from the French historical tradition. The popularity of the term 'Fine art Nouveau' was said to stem from the Parisian gallery of influential art dealer Siegfried Samuel Bing, called the 'Maison de L'Art Nouveau'. Other gimmicky terms for the style in French republic were Manner Jules Verne, Le Way Métro, Art belle époque, and Art fin de siècle, and even Le Style moderne or Le Fashion nouille (Noodle style).

In 19th century Paris, vibrant convention-defying posters, such equally those designed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, captured the public imagination. However it was the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle that brought the sweeping and innovative mode of Art Nouveau to the world at large. From the elegant glassware of Emile Gallé to the svelte forms of cabinet-maker Louis Majorelle, the Paris exposition (and its afterwards offshoots in Glasgow and Turin) displayed the whiplash curves and organic motifs that became forever entwined with the ascension of Art Nouveau, stimulating the New Art craze both in France and beyond.

Cabinet, Louis Majorelle, about 1900, French republic. Museum no. 1999:1 to four-1900. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Belgium

In the 1880s the term 'Fine art Nouveau' was used in the Belgian journal 50'Art Moderne to describe the piece of work of 'Les Vingt' – a grouping of 20 painters and sculptors who sought reform through fine art. Les Vingt advocated for the dissolution of the boundary separating the fine arts of painting and sculpture with the so-chosen lesser decorative arts.

2 Belgian architect-designers who successfully unified the fine and applied arts were Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde. Horta'south masterpieces, such as the Hôtel Tassel and Hôtel Eetvelde, are total works of art. From the buildings' iron banisters to the stained glass canopies to the door handles – everything resonates with organic decoration.

Van de Velde had, arguably, an fifty-fifty greater influence. He wrote articles about the new way in Belgian, German and French periodicals, and was artistically trained in both Flemish and French vernacular styles. Van de Velde idolised British designer William Morris and the theories of the Arts and crafts Movement. Early in his career he moved to Berlin to join the Deutscher Werkbund, an association of craftsmen that promoted German design. Similar to Horta's approach, in Van de Velde's designs, everything from the framework of a building to the article of furniture and textiles was a plausible target for ornamentation. Even the silverware adopted these designs, as can be seen in the sweeping, inventive lines of the cutlery made for the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1902.

Spoon, fork and knife, Henry van de Velde, about 1902, Germany. Museum no. M.29-1993. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Poster advertising Tropon, Henri Van de Velde, 1898, Kingdom of belgium. Museum no. CIRC.992-1967. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Van de Velde also created publicity and packaging for the German food manufacturer Tropon, moving from realism to more abstract forms, with an emphasis on pattern. I of his early posters – an advertisement for egg whites – illustrates the graceful withal structural elements of Art Nouveau. His blueprint evokes the shapes and colours of the egg, as well as the trademark of the manufacturer, iii sparrows. The advert was issued past the German language art magazine Pan in 1898. Fifty-fifty with its sweeping curves and exaggerated, undulating lines, the poster is adjusted for the German taste, which was a more than geometric, symmetrical version of Art Nouveau.

Analogy for Pan magazine, designed by Josef Sattler, printed by Chaix, 1895, France. Museum no. E.3099-1938. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Frg and Austria-hungary

In Deutschland, Art Nouveau was known every bit Jugendstil, (Youth Style), popularised past the mag Die Jugend, founded in Munich in 1896. One of the founders of the German motility, architect and designer Baronial Endell, claimed that designers of his generation stood "at the inception of an entirely new art – the fine art of using forms that, although they signify nothing, correspond null and retrieve zero, tin can move the human soul... profoundly and irresistibly". Equally the co-founder of the literary magazine Pan, the illustrations by him and others, such as Joseph Sattler, exemplify the two-dimensional and graphical qualities that came to represent Jugendstil.

Affiche advertizement the 27th Secession exhibition, Rudolf Jettmar, 1903, Republic of austria. Museum no. E.285-1982. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In Austria, Art Nouveau was start popularised past artists of the Vienna Secession movement, and was known equally Sezessionstil. The Secessionists, avant-garde artists who rejected the conservative and traditional academic art establishment, included artist Gustav Klimt, architect Josef Maria Olbrich, and the founders of the Vienna Workshops, Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

The Secessionist style was extremely influential and can be seen in the architecture, furniture, posters, household goods and fabrics of the fourth dimension. Rudolf Jettmar's 1903 affiche for a Secessionist exhibition shows Olbrich'southward Vienna Secession building standing defiant and proud as the classical arts are driven off. Other highlights in our collections – Moser's bookplate and Hoffmann'south silver fruit basket and adjustable armchair – besides illustrate the unique combination of geometrical precision (influenced by the Scottish schoolhouse and Charles Rennie Mackintosh) and curvaceous, expressive lines of Austrian Art Nouveau.

Silver fruit handbasket, designed past Josef Hoffmann, fabricated past Wiener Werkstätte, 1904, Austria. Museum no. Yard.twoscore-1972. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

United kingdom

In Britain, Art Nouveau's flame burned bright for a few brief years at the start of the 20th century. The manner was largely indebted to two inspirational and advanced predecessors: the Arts and Crafts Motility and Aestheticism.

At the heart of the Craft Movement lay a concern for the role of the craftsman also as nostalgia for rural life and local traditions – concepts that announced throughout the literature, music and fine art of the period. Inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, it advocated a revival of traditional handicrafts, a render to a simpler way of life and an improvement in the pattern of ordinary domestic objects.

Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh melded the typical characteristics of Arts and Crafts blueprint (including: emphasising the natural qualities of materials, applying organic flora and fauna patterns, stripping superfluous ornament, and using traditional edifice and manufacturing techniques) with the artistic freedom of Art Nouveau. His instantly recognisable approach made him a British icon. Many of his designs, often executed or inspired by his wife and fellow artist and designer – Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, such as the lampshade console and fireplace for homes and businesses in Glasgow – show a articulate affinity for the natural earth. Mackintosh'south dominant contribution to Art Nouveau, however, was to apply an orderliness to the artful based on severe merely eccentric geometry.

Fireplace, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, almost 1904, Scotland. Museum no. CIRC.244-1963. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

As the craft guilds sprouted up across Great britain, led by luminaries such as the Mackintoshes and A. H. Mackmurdo, a second forerunner to Art Nouveau – Aestheticism – was gaining momentum. The philosophy of 'fine art for art'south sake' emphasised the importance of art above everything else and the pleasure to be found in beautiful things. Artful design, with its outlandish motifs – corrupt peacock feathers, bold sunflowers, Classical Greek cameos and japonisme (the study of Japanese art) – reached its zenith in the works of J. M. Whistler, Edward Burne-Jones, and the Movement's leading personality, the poet and writer Oscar Wilde. After Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality in 1895, the Aesthetic Movement lost its popularity, but not without influencing practitioners of Art Nouveau such every bit Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Victor Horta.

Peacock Garden wallpaper, designed by Walter Crane, manufactured by Jeffrey & Co., 1889, England. Museum no. E.1762-1914. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

By the turn of the century, the Arts and crafts Move in United kingdom was on the wane, and the Aesthetic Movement had all only died out. Just the mental attitude that handcrafted rather than mass-produced art should play a part in interior pattern remained, as did the influential naturalistic patterns passed on past William Morris and his followers.

Further Afield

In Spain, Fine art Joven was function of the Modernista movement, whose foremost proponent was the architect Antoni Gaudí. In Italy it was Arte Nuova, Stile Floreale or Stile Liberty, named after the famous London store Liberty & Co. In America the move was called the Tiffany mode due to its connectedness with the Art Nouveau glassmaker and jeweller, Louis Condolement Tiffany. Other champions of the movement included Czech lithographer and designer Alphonse Mucha, Danish ceramics and silver designer Thorvald Bindesbøll and Leon Bakst, the Russian theatre designer for the Ballets Russes. Simply as the shadow of the First World War loomed over Europe, the popularity of Art Nouveau began to shrink. In its place, the stark undertone of Modernism began to stir.

Tamara Karsavina as the Firebird in Mikhail Fokine'due south ballet 50'Oiseau de feu, Adrian Paul Allinson, nigh 1918. Museum no. S.59-1988. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London