Understanding Visual Language II: Haussmannisation & the Avant Garde of 19th century Paris

In the middle of the 19th century, under the first President of the French Republic, Napoleon III, major public works were undertaken in Paris. The city transformed under urbanist, Baron Haussmann, who destroyed much of the medieval city. From the baron’s name, the term Haussmannization, which is defined as “the creative destruction of something for the betterment of society.” Artists responded to the time and a new visual language emerged.

Manet le dejeuner sur l'herbe, exhibited in the 1863 (rejected by the Paris Salon)

Camile Pisarro, Boulevard Monmatre, 1897

Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, 1873

Degas’s Ballet dancers

Henri Toulouse Lautrec, At the Moulin Rouge, 1892