“Salon des Cent”
Here is a beautiful piece from Paul Berthon.
“Salon des Cent” is a color lithograph print by the French Art Nouveau artist, Paul Berthon, from 1897. Many regard Berthon as one of the central artists within the Art Nouveau movement.
In this piece, Berthon depicts a blond woman in Grecian-inspired dress looking at the viewer. Her blue eyes, the same color as the background, are striking. She is adorned with jewelry. She has bracelets on her wrist, a snake band on her arm, and a tiara on her brow. She is holding several nepenthes (meat-eating plants), an anthurium, and a lily. She is flanked on her other side by an anthurium and several three-petaled flowers.
Berthon created this as the official poster for the seventeenth exhibition of the Salon des Cent artists. The exhibition took place at La Plume, the esteemed art and literary journal in Paris at the time which also had a gallery space. As the 1890s progressed and advances in lithography were made, La Plume began devoting more magazine space to the art of the poster.
The Salon des Cent was an art exhibition that began in 1894 and continued until 1900. It was created to represent 100 artists who were selected by La Plume. Inclusion in the exhibition was prestigious, and it came with great monetary possibilities. Artists were able to sell lithograph prints of their work directly to the public at the venue. Art posters became collector items. This exhibition was not juried, allowing members to display whatever works they desired, as long as there was space available.
Besides Berthon, Salon des Cent represented artists such as Eugène Grasset, Alphonse Mucha, Georges de Feure, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, and Gustave Moreau.
Lithographs of “Salon des Cent” are currently in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, in the United States, among other places.
For more on Paul Berthon, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
A lovely and very interesting image. I may be wrong, but I don’t think the model is holding or flanked by any irises. The yellow flowers in the second version look like anthuriums, a tropical plant with a heart-shaped spathe (modified leaf) surrounding the elevated, tubular flower spike. The purple plants are insect-eating nepenthes, i.e. pitcher plants.
I don’t recognize the plant at lower right. It looks like a trillium before it sets a bud, but I don’t know if the species was well-known in Art Nouveau circles, nor do I know what it might meaning it may have carried.
The other three flowers, though, bring to my mind the theme of the changing relationship of masculine and feminine energies at this time. The classic lily, flower of the Virgin Mary, typically represents chastity and spiritual purity; the anthuriums with their swollen phallic protuberances embody the masculine in the sexual/sensual dynamic; and the carnivorous pitcher plants that lure their prey with their beauty and sweet fragrances only to trap, dissolve, and devour it may symbolize the peril hiding in the heart (not to mention the juicy bowl-like organs) of an irresistible seductress.
If I may drastically oversimplify, women began to be more liberated and independent in the late 19th century. A new awareness of the existence of the unconscious and our many, often secret and contradictory, selves also captured the sophisticated public’s imagination. The idea that women might have inner lives and outer agenda of their own was a threatening and socially destabilizing premise. The French term “femme fatale” dates from the late 19th century, in fact, although the archetype goes back to the beginning.
Many male Art Nouveau artists depicted women as dangerously capable of enticing men to their doom using their phony-innocent wiles. Think of all those snaky, entangling locks on the heads of Mucha’s women, for one. Or the serpent bracelet (“Hello, Eve”) and enormous eyes of Berthon’s model here. It was thought that Renaissance women used berries from the highly poisonous belladonna plant to make themselves more attractive by dilating their pupils. “Belladonna” means “beautiful woman” in Italian, after all. For what it’s worth, I see all these ideas touched upon in this beautiful, layered Berthon print. I hadn’t heard of this artist before, so I especially appreciate meeting him now. Thank you, DDoA!
Thank you, Jozie! Your comments are always so insightful! It’s funny, I was trying to parse out what types of flowers were depicted and I have irises, so I suppose that immediately jumped to mind. But I do see what you mean about the nepenthes, as it has that interesting lid which resembles the one in the picture. And you are spot on about the anthurium plant. I will update the write up.
The art nouveau women were absolutely more powerful, while retaining their femininity. I always saw it as a celebration of their more strengthened roles in society, but seeing such beauty accompanied by a meat-eating plant does suggests more of a femme fatale type character, and one to beware. I love your comment about the snake armband suggesting Eve to the viewer. I went on a little deep dive to see if I could learn more about it, and I read that serpent themed jewelry was found in ancient Greek and Roman contexts, which I sort of recall. Then in the 1840s, Prince Albert used a snake on his engagement ring to Queen Victoria, with the snake symbolizing eternal love, which caused a boom to snake themed jewelry during Victorian times. Snakes are twirly in form and found in nature, which feature all the aesthetic qualities of the art nouveau style. I’m grateful to have inherited a snake armband from my great aunt, and I believe it dates to the 1940s. Now I want to learn more about it. So much to think about!