Mid 19th century Paris had turned into a filthy and chaotic city, uncontrollably grown with a population of more than one million inhabitants. It was hardly the capital that made France proud. This all changed when Napoleon III took control of the country. His uncle Napoleon Bonaparte already dreamt big about modernising Paris but didn’t get far. In the meantime the situation had also worsened with epidemics wiping out large parts of the city.
In Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann the Emperor found a passionate city reformer. Haussmann set about the biggest urban renovation project Europe had seen since the Great Fire of London in 1666. In mere decades Haussmann created the Paris we know today. This New Paris became the source of inspiration for many artists as is now presented in the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague.
Haussmann set himself three goals: ‘assainissement, circulation et embellisement’. Improving the hygienic situation in Paris was his priority and he created a sewer system of more than 500 km. To avoid public urination decorative ‘pissiors’ were placed throughout the city, which were photographed by Charles de Marville and can be seen in a separate room in the exhibition.
These urinals were not only for the dandies who strolled the newly paved streets, but also for the workers who built the new city. Sadly, this new city was not theirs. By demolishing the old Paris, the working class was forced to live in the outskirts of the city. No wonder they needed a bathroom by the time they had walked miles from their homes to the building site! Honoré Daumier’s caricatures in the first room of the exhibition clearly show the effects of this gentrification.
The embellishment of the new Paris is depicted by the modern painters, the ones we now call Impressionists. It was Claude Monet who, in 1867, placed his canvas facing the modern city when he asked permission to paint from a balcony of the Louvre. He literally turned his back on the old masters inside the museum, creating three beautiful cityscapes which are placed in the heart of the exhibition.
In one of the cabinets and in the large room at the end, you find the works of Berthe Morisot, the second name in the subtitle of the exhibition. As a woman, she was limited in her choice of subjects but that didn’t make her less important. On the contrary, at the time she was referred to as one the ‘Trois Grandes Dames de l’impressionnisme’, laying the foundations of the movement together with Claude Monet. The second great woman painter was Mary Cassatt, born in the US. She was instrumental in paving the way for the impressionists in her home country. Marie Bracquemond was the third, but her work is not present in the exhibition.
The exhibition (surcharge required) is a wonderful documentary of life in Paris in the last quarter of the 19th century. There are rooms dedicated to the upheaval of the Commune in 1871, to the first Impressionist Exhibition organised in Nader’s studio in 1874 as well as to the effects of the colonisation efforts of France.
Even though Haussmann tore the heart out of Paris by demolishing the medieval city, he created what we now consider one of the most romantic cities in Europe. Wendy Fossen 15th February 2025
New Paris: from Monet to Morisot continues at Kunstmuseum in The Hague until 9th June
