16 september - 17 january 2010, Musee du Luxembourg
Louis Comfort Tiffany is born in 1848. His father, Charles Tiffany,
founder of the dynasty, the great human
family, already sells luxury objects of all kinds, crystal, china,
silverware, clocks, lamps and jewelry that soon will the already
famousg. Wear a ring, a necklace, Tiffany necklace is proof of good
taste. The third child of Charles and Harriet Olivia Lewis, Louis
Comfort
spends his early years with the New-Ork jet-set of that time. He learns
in the best schools, and when, 17 years old, he left the
Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, New Jersey in 1865, the
Civil War has just ended. The unit is made, the conquest of the West is
finished, trains now cross the country from coast to coast and back,
and from north to south with the regularity of good work horses, a new
era begins : business era. The major corporations are activated, oil,
copper, steel, sugar, engineering, industry, railways, food, trade,
finance. Famous families are already known, Morgan, Whitney,
Guggenheim, Bruce Widener, Astor, Frick,
Havemeyer, Rockefeller built empires.
Tiffany's father moved the shop from its beginnings in lower Manhattan
to live on Fifth Avenue. A native of Connecticut, Charles started at
the age of 15 years as a salesman in his father's shop. Ten years
later, a loan of 1000 dollars in his pocket, he creates his own
boutique in New York. Success-Now. The success seems easy in
those days. They import jewelry from Europe, make themselves, and soon
gathered the largest collection of gemstones with culminating purchase
of diamonds from Queen Marie-Antoinette and part of the crown jewels of
France. The young Louis sees this splendor with interest, but takes its
time to choose his path. Soon he shows a little talent. A student of
George Inness, landscape painter, and Samuel Colman, founder of the
League of watercolor, his nature is to painting bucolic and
orientalist. Taste that worsened in Paris under the leadership of Leon
Charles Bailly which he studied for two years (1868-1869). In London,
where his father has just opened a branch, he is seduced by
Japanese art, but finds especially Pre-Raphaelites Burne-Jones and
William Morris, who preach the fusion of fine arts with applied arts
and industrial-inspired Middle Ages. He continues to paint
succesfully. Returning to the United States, he exhibited his
paintings in Philadelphia, then to Paris for the Universal Exhibition
of 1878. His father arranged for him a small studio. The public
who see the treasures of the "largest jeweler in the world" is a
circuit in the Annex son who, at age 30, did not disdain the support of
Dad. But Louis already knows he will never be a great painter, he is
not innovative enough. The Century turn out without him. The
Impressionists prance ahead and will soon face classic. Van Gogh is
about to die, Toulouse-Lautrec
already haunts the taverns, Gauguin dreams about the Marquesas,
Cézanne has opened up new worlds, beasts about to spit their
rage , crushing all pure colors out of their tubes ... And then, two
young men named Braque and Picasso will appear around "Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon ... While paintings and watercolors by Louis Comfort
Tiffany'm charming with their trees and nice houses ... not enough to
revolutionize the world of art! It will therefore continue to paint his
entire life but only for him. Nevertheless, he wants to create art for
the public, integrating art into
everyday life and the built environment, proving that decorative arts
are on the same level as the paintings. His encounter with the glass
has long been upset. He
feels a shock in front of the medieval rose windows of Chartres
Cathedral. He wrote about it: "The old glass, as used in the
windows of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, particularly fascinated me. These
windows are for me the embodiment of perfect beauty. " So, he will
decorator designer. Back to
New York, he created his company, Louis C. Tiffany and Company
Associated Artists, which employs many chemists and physicists creators
glass specialists. He founded his own glass factory in Long Island and
patented his process of a glass "Favrile" (handmade), kind of prism
of light that diffuses the colors of the rainbow sky.
He decorated homes in eastern richly paved with glazed tiles, ceramics
glittering panels of colored glass. Also the dining room of the
pageantry of White House. Behold famous. Rich, he was already. Orders
from affluent congregations who
want to "revamp" their churches and chapels. And also from
the-billionaires. In visiting the residence Havemeyer, the sugar
magnate, the French dealer and gallery owner
Samuel Bing was dazzled. He spends an exclusive contract with Louis
Tiffany to distribute its drinks in Europe. Following a period of
intense production, including the series of vases Tiffany "Favrile
glass. His exhibition at the Salon in December 1895 organized by Bing
is considered the "Manifesto of the Art Nouveau": its blown glass,
vases and windows designed by the fashionable painters, Bonnard,
Serusier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard and Vallotton him bring the
dedication that he hoped European. French museums rush and bought
almost everything. Bing, who has a sense of Commerce, organizes
exhibitions of works by
Tiffany usually exhibited in his gallery aptly called "Art Nouveau". He
lends to museums or foreign companies. They will operate well
throughout Europe, London, Vienna, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, St.
Petersburg, Zurich ... In 1900 the Tiffany rating has nothing to envy
to those of renowned painters of the time. It became fashionable. Soon
all self-respecting billionaire, during a visit to Paris, must go for a
walk in the gallery of Mr. Bing and out of the mud with his or her
Tiffany lamp in hand, not without having previously jettisoned a small
fortune to acquire. This is the first time in American art requires the
old Europe. We raced, it ignites, we talk about it "the most
extravagant and most exquisitely beautiful objects ever produced by the
hand of man"! Up to him, America will cease to watch the Old World over
the ocean,
for fashion, aesthetics, art, cooking and good manners. With him in the
late twentieth century, national identity is emerging. Charles, the
father very patient and very caring who despaired of his
heir so little attention lately by the firm Tiffany, died in 1902.
Louis took his chair. It will differ from the paternal idea by creating
a new concept: the
jewel sublimate without gold or precious stones, the jewelry handmade
with simple materials less noble and becomes more artistically
valuable. If the market window is limited, the everyday objects and
decorative is infinite and vases, lamps, table utensils, toiletries
products in addition to traditional Tiffany. He endorsed the idea of
Wales embellish each home a work of art. Tiffany Studios used its
theater to its glory. It gives such a party by
reviving Egyptian queen Cleopatra in front 300 guests. Then during his
68 years a masquerade modestly entitled
"Quest for beauty in the midst of a retrospective of his works. His
travels are interspersed with long stays in his big house on Long
Island for that He has taken a compulsive passion. It is a kind
of palaces of the
Thousand and One Nights to the extent of his imagination. It will
the last twenty years of his life to play the landscapers.
He died January 17, 1933, to 84 years. The Tiffany Studios
Corporation
391 Madison Avenue in 1938 will disappear. The crisis that has swept
America also won the firm with her. In any event his art has already
surpassed the Formica arrives. After long disgrace, its objects have
now returned in full light. Proof: Barbra Streisand, Brad Pitt and
others are takers and collect. The world is now mad Tiffany.