Harris Lindsay − Works of Art

This model was used, from 1900, in the Dining Room of Siegfried ‘Samuel’ Bing’s famous gallery, L’Art Nouveau, which was established in 1895 in Paris, and which introduced the term ‘Art Nouveau’.(1)  The chair also featured prominently in Gaillard’s Dining Room, with paintings by José-Maria Sert, one of Bing’s six model rooms, which made up his Pavillon de l’Art Nouveau at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900.(2)

A number of European museums acquired these chairs directly from Bing in 1900, including the Kunstindustrimuseum, Copenhagen,(3) the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg,(4) and the Museum für Kunsthandwerk, Frankfurt. Other examples are in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,[5] and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,(6) whose chair was acquired from the same source, and at the same time, as this present chair was acquired by its previous owners. Slight variants are in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne,(7) and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.(8)

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Footnotes

1.  A major exhibition devoted to Bing, L’Art Nouveau: La Maison Bing, was staged in Amsterdam, Munich, Barcelona and Paris, 2005-2006, accompanied by the book The Origins of L’Art Nouveau, The Bing Empire, ed. Gabriel P. Weisberg, Edwin Becker and Évelyne Possémé, 2004.

2.  See The Studio, Volume 20, p. 175. Also Weisberg, Becker and Possémé, op. cit., fig. 231, p. 203.

3.  Mus. no. 1009. See Charlotte Christensen, 1900 – The Year of Art Nouveau, The Danish Museum of Art & Design and the Paris World Exhibition, 2008, no. A78

4.  The Origins of L’Art Nouveau, The Bing Empire, ed. Gabriel P. Weisberg, Edwin Becker and Évelyne Possémé, 2004, no. 230, pp. 202-203. (This book was published to accompany the exhibition L’Art Nouveau: La Maison Bing, Amsterdam, Munich, Barcelona and Paris, 2005-2006.)

5.  Accession no. 94.34. Originally acquired in 1900 from Bing’s Maison de l’Art Nouveau.

6.  Accession no. 1989.144.

7.  Inv. no. Ov 106. See Edla Colsman, Möbel, Gotik bis Jugendstil (a catalogue of the collections in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Cologne), 1999, no. 252, pp. 470-471.

8.  See Edith Mannoni and Chantal Bizot, Mobilier 1900-1925, n.d., p. 38.