The École de Nancy Museum Presents the Art Nouveau Works of Jacques Gruber

Written by Pierre Trouffaut Saturday, 07 April 2012 22:12

Nancy, France.- The École de Nancy Museum is proud to present "Jacques Gruber and Art Nouveau: A Decorative Path", on view at the Galeries Poirel from September 16th through January 22nd 2012. The museum has assembed more than 150 of Gruber's works, including posters and paintings, decorative pieces and furniture, but pride of place goes to the magnificent stained-glass works for which Gruber became most famous. Works have come from museums and private collectors in the Nancy area (where Gruber lived and worked), but also from major museum collections further afield, including Musée d'Orsay, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Royal Art and History in Brussels.

Jacques Gruber was born in Sundhouse on February 25th 1870, but the family moved to Nancy after the Franco-Prussian War, and it was there that he studied, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nancy. A grant from the city of Nancy allowed him to travel to Paris and study under Gustave Moreau. However, in 1893, he returned to Nancy as a teacher of composition in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nancy and as an artist-decorator at the local Daum factory. A prolific artist, he also designed furniture for Majorelle and book covers for René Wiener. In 1897 he founded his own workshop and began to specialise in the stained glass for which he would become most famous. A founder of the art-nouveau "School of Nancy", he regularly contributed paintings to exhibitions, and continued to provide commercial designs for furniture, stoneware and printing. It is for his stained glass that he is most widely known, and his work is featured in private homes and public building throughout Nancy, including a number of spectacular windows at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Gruber moved to Paris in 1914 and enjoying a prosperous period for artistic renewal the Art Deco period. The exhibition shows the breadth and diversity of the work of Jacques Gruber from the beginning of his career until the outbreak of the First World War.

The École de Nancy museum is located in the former property of Jean-Baptiste Eugène Corbin, the most important patron and collector of École de Nancy artwork. The garden, a pleasant oasis of fountains and flowerbeds, was completely restored in 1998 and offers a variety of plants designed by Nancy horticulturists and École de Nancy contemporaries such as Félix Crousse and Victor Lemoine. Furthermore, the garden houses three emblematic École de Nancy and Art Nouveau monuments, the oak door, created in 1897 by Eugène Vallin on the request of Emile Gallé for his workshop, located on avenue de la Garenne in Nancy, the funerary monument, erected in 1901 at the Preville cemetery in Nancy, is the work of the architect Girard and Parisian sculptor Pierre Roche and the pavilion aquarium, attributed to the architect Lucien Weissenburger. The door and the window fanlights are decorated with Jacques Gruber's stained glass. The museum is dedicated solely to the works of the École de Nancy, founded in 1901 by Émile Gallé, Victor Prouvé, Louis Majorelle, Antonin Daum and Eugène Vallin. Inside the house, the furniture, the objets d'art, the glasswork, the ceramics and the fabric attest the diversity of the techniques employed by the École de Nancy artists. The unique and prestigious objects throughout the museum are the realizations of a virtuous technique as well as widely produced and diffused works of art. The small wood inlaid furniture, the acid engraved glass and the series of ceramics are representative of “Art for all.” The museum does not represent a strict recreation of the 1900s décor, but instead tries to reproduce the atmosphere and ambiance of the period by placing the artwork in an appropriate context.  The space is arranged to encourage and promote unrestricted browsing and to immediately introduce the visitor to the intimate work of Nancy artists. An extensive collection of over 400 glass and ceramic works by Emile Gallé are also housed within the museum. Several of Gallé’s most exemplary furniture, including Les Parfums d'autrefois ("The Scents of the Past"), Le Rhin ("the Rhine") table and the Aube et Crépuscule ("Dawn and Twilight”) bed are equally presented. Louis Majorelle’s elegant furniture production can be admired throughout the museum, specifically in the grand piano decorated with pinecone motifs and Victor Prouve’s marquetry design. Another well represented artist, Prouvé contributed to the production and realization of the extraordinary Masson dining room. Carried out in 1904 by Charles Masson, brother-in-law of Eugène Corbin, the dining room affirms Vallin’s virtuosity and demonstrates École de Nancy’s originality in its search for the unity of art.  Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.ecole-de-nancy.com

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~