Belle Époque

Exhibited

Rennes Musées des Beaux-Arts; Paris, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, André Devambez (1867-1944), Vertiges de l'imagination, 2022, no. 72.

Catalogue note

This painting offers a high, oblique view over the Boulevard Montmartre, seen from an elevated interior vantage point that transforms the boulevard into a dense choreography of light, movement, and urban sociability. Structured diagonally by the broad carriageway and flanked by cafés, theatres, shops, and apartment façades, the scene is animated by illuminated windows, signage, and street lighting that create a shimmering dusk-like atmosphere.

Rather than depicting a single dramatic incident, it presents the boulevard as a living organism in which motorised omnibuses, smaller vehicles, and pedestrians move in a steady rhythm of everyday leisure and circulation. Closely related in composition to La Charge (1901–1902) in the Musée d’Orsay (fig. 1), this quieter nocturnal vision replaces confrontation with observation, capturing early twentieth-century Paris as an electrified, modern city in constant but measured motion.

The artist responsible for this scene, André Devambez, was particularly attuned to such elevated perspectives and urban spectacles. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Devambez developed a highly distinctive visual language that combined academic precision with an imaginative rethinking of viewpoint and scale. He was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1890 yet soon diverged from the grand historical narratives traditionally associated with academic painting. Instead, he became fascinated by contemporary life—crowds, demonstrations, aviation, technological innovation, and the visual disorientation produced by modernity.

Devambez’s frequent use of elevated or plunging viewpoints reflects both a technical curiosity and a conceptual interest in how modern life alters perception. Whether depicting Parisian boulevards, airborne figures, or fantastical scenes inspired by literature, he consistently explored the tension between control and chaos, order and flux. In works such as this boulevard view, his training as a draughtsman and illustrator is evident in the clarity of structure, while his sensitivity to atmosphere aligns him with broader currents of early twentieth-century urban imagery.

Seen in this light, the painting is not merely a topographical record but a meditation on Paris at a moment of transition. It captures a city confident in its technologies and pleasures, observed by an artist uniquely equipped to translate the experience of looking down—both literally and metaphorically—on the modern crowd.

This note was written by Elsa Dikkes.