“Truth and Beauty” – Furniture by Emile Gallé “What noble nuances Gallé elicits from the heart of the oak, what harmonious contrast of tones when a leaf stands out from the color of the trunk.” With these poetic words he praises the artisan Émile Gallé (1846-1904) at the time, Marcel Proust was imessed by the empathy and taste with which the artist designed his furniture.
The function of the furniture ultimately played a rather subordinate role for Gallé. For him, these were, first and foremost, signifiers for his natural theories, which were characterized by symbolism. An aspect that is further supported by the fact that he often supplemented the pictorial marquetry of his furniture with quotations from poems by writer friends.
In the last decade of the 19th century, ideas emerged in France about a furniture art that would break away from the copying of historical models that had been so successfully cultivated here.However, what emerged now remained virtually untouched by the English, German or Austrian reform movements with their rather constructively clear and simple furniture.
The proximity to the precious, valuable furniture of the 18th century should ultimately remain noticeable in the creations of Art Nouveau furniture art.
Emile Gallé, who founded the Ecole de Nancy in 1901 – one of the centers of Art Nouveau alongside Paris – is now rightly considered the most striking figure of this movement. He ultimately influenced an entire generation of young artists and provided the impetus for a renewal of industrial art. Not only glass art but also furniture owes much to its influence on the new decorative style. The importance of his work was already known during Gallé’s lifetime and many of his exhibits were purchased for the Museé des Arts Décoratifs and the Museé Luxembourg, among others.
In 1885, Gallé was to begin producing luxurious furniture in addition to his factory, which was famous for glass work, and for this purpose he was to engage a number of experienced cabinetmakers, marquetry specialists and wood sculptors. For Emile Gallé, there was no contradiction between the longing for the original, elementary idea of nature expressed in his furniture and a form of production that used the most modern production machines.
For Gallé, the logic of form, sensitivity and liveliness of design were the most important characteristics of his furniture. The designs for shapes and decors should always be adapted to the function of the respective object. Over the course of his many years of work with wood as a material, he developed his special views on the design of furniture, which he published in the detailed article “Le mobilier contemporain orné d’après la nature” in the Revue des Arts Décoratifs in 1900. For Gallé, modernity does not mean the introduction of stylistic novelties or merely pretty appearances without deeper content and meaning, as he writes here, but his aim was to design furniture according to the needs of modern people.
Gallé, the combination of the concepts of truth and beauty formed the basis for designing furniture. In his opinion, beauty can be achieved if one pays attention to the laws of growth of nature, its structures and fundamental principles with a lot of empathy, because nature offers endless possibilities in its diversity. The basic structural elements of the furniture should not be covered up by details, the connection points should not be concealed, but rather modeled true to life.
According to Gallé, to solve this problem, one should observe how the branches of a plant grow out of the stem, how leaves attach to the branch, or how the flower is connected to the stem.
Furniture designed according to these guidelines is a mirror of life and places the truth of nature above any artificial eclecticism. In the smooth surfaces of his furniture, Emile Gallé saw a kind of unpainted canvas on which he could depict floral themes through the sophisticated combination of different colored woods. He was particularly enthusiastic about marquetry techniques and used them with great imagination in a quality that had never been seen before. He also supplemented some of these with inserts made of glass or other materials. The writer and symbolist Count Robert de Montesquiou writes about these marquetry images in the sixth chapter of his work “Les Roseaux Pensants”, which he dedicated to Gallé:
“From every line of grain a new harmony flows into the eyes. A small depression in the terrain, the course of a stream, a small irregularity in the grain that could come from a branch, becomes a cloud. The marquetry completes the picture. One suspects that one knows the secrets that the heart of a felled tree entrusts to a carpenter like Emile Gallé ; the essence of a tree speaks through it.” For Philippe Garner, a profound connoisseur of Émile Gallé’s work, the artist was ultimately a poet who used glass and wood instead of words. His goal with his furniture was to create something that could be touched and felt, three-dimensional works of art that were as poignant and moving and as rich in nuance as poems.
In the smooth surfaces of his furniture, Emile Gallé saw a kind of unpainted canvas on which he could depict floral themes through the sophisticated combination of different colored woods. He was particularly enthusiastic about marquetry techniques and used them with great imagination in a quality that had never been seen before. He also supplemented some of these with inserts made of glass or other materials. The writer and symbolist Count Robert de Montesquiou writes about these marquetry images in the sixth chapter of his work “Les Roseaux Pensants”, which he dedicated to Gallé: “From every line of grain a new harmony flows into the eyes.
A small depression in the terrain, the course of a stream, a small irregularity in the grain that could come from a branch, becomes a cloud. The marquetry completes the picture. One suspects that one knows the secrets that the heart of a felled tree entrusts to a carpenter like Gallé; the essence of a tree speaks through it.” For Philippe Garner, a profound connoisseur of Émile Gallé’s work, the artist was ultimately a poet who used glass and wood instead of words. His goal with his furniture was to create something that could be touched and felt, three-dimensional works of art that were just as moving and moving
RSA Antiquitäten Wiesbaden is your antiques dealer in the Rhine-Main area: a large selection of original Art Deco, Biedermeier and Baroque furniture: high quality and exclusive. At RSA Antiquitäten Wiesbaden you can expect a large selection of expertly restored antiques, exhibits from the Louis Seize, Biedermeier and Art Deco periods.
The following artist glossary: Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann
