Émile Gallé

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Émile Gallé, self-portrait

Émile Gallé (born May 4, 1846 in Nancy , † September 23, 1904 in Nancy) was a French artisan who is particularly known for his design of ceramics , glass and furniture in the style of historicism and art nouveau . He is considered the best-known representative of the French Art Nouveau in the arts and crafts field.

biography

Gallé's house in Nancy
Glass vase by Émile Gallé, around 1900
Vase with a clematis pattern, 1890–1900
Ceiling lamp in the Uroko house in Kobe , Japan

He was born in Nancy into a family of merchants in faience and crystal . Already in his childhood he came into contact with ceramic and glass art in the workshop of his father, Charles Gallé . After completing his Baccalauréat (Abitur) he studied philosophy , zoology , botany and mineralogy in Germany. He learned to work with glass and wood and specialized in glass blowing.

From 1862 to 1866 Gallé was sent to Germany for training in Weimar and Meisenthal in the Moselle department , where he studied the art of modeling and glass production . After further stays in London , where he represented his father's company at an Art de France exhibition , and in Paris , he returned to Nancy full of new impressions.

Here he experimented with new techniques of glassblowing (marbling, reflections, layers of glass with melting of gold and silver foils, blistering).

In 1874 he took over the management of his father's business, which soon after became world famous. A year later he married the pastor's daughter Henriette Grimm. He moved into the La Garenne atelier and set up further studios in 1883: workshops for faience, glass and wood were created.

In 1885 he traveled to Berlin and studied the famous collection of Chinese glass art in the Kunstgewerbemuseum .

He opened sales outlets in Paris (1885), Frankfurt (1887) and later also in London. In 1889 he had over three hundred employees.

In the 1890s, Gallé began to focus more and more on glass art, although he had previously won three gold medals for his faience work.

In 1901 he founded the École de Nancy with the brothers Auguste and Antonin Daum as well as René Lalique and Gabriel Argy-Rousseau , which, among other things, represented the interests of glass artists. He was their first president.

He died of leukemia in Nancy on September 23, 1904 . His widow and son-in-law Paul Perdrizet continued to run the business until the early 1930s. However, the abundance of artistic and technical innovations typical of the earlier years was missing.

Exhibitions and prizes

  • 1878: Paris: World's Fair : four gold medals
  • 1884: Paris: Exhibition "La Pierre, le Bois, la Terre, le Verre": gold medal
  • 1889: Paris: World's Fair : Grand Prix
  • 1893: Chicago : World's Fair
  • 1894: Nancy: Applied Arts Exhibition
  • 1897: Munich : gold medal
  • 1900: Paris: World's Fair : two grand prizes and one gold medal
  • 1901: Exhibition in Dresden
  • 1902: Exhibition in Turin
  • 1903: the most famous vase La Maggiorata Marta

Work and appreciation

Although Gallé also engaged in wood and ceramic work, it is mainly his glass and crystal work that contributed to his international fame. His typical work includes cameos glasses have: solid-blown vases with multi colored glass layers overlaid were and cut into various ornamental reliefs. In 1897 he invented a highly complicated technique called marqueterie de verre , a kind of inlay in glass.

In his Verreries parlantes (“Talking Glass Art”), he tried to model vases based on specific passages by contemporary symbolic lyricists (e.g. Baudelaire or Maurice Maeterlinck ) and had corresponding lines of poetry engraved.

His vases and lampshades are coveted collector's items and are exhibited in many museums around the world. He got his inspiration from an in-depth study of nature: he was fascinated by the flora from an early age and implemented these impressions in his designs. Like many artists of his time, Gallé was influenced by Japonism , whose style can be found in the ornamental decor of some of his art glasses. Based on the pattern of nature, he also made furniture designs with sometimes valuable inlays, in which he effectively combined local and exotic wood.

Emile Gallé is one of the most outstanding glass artists of his time. The art world owes him great and decisive advances in the development of glass art. He succeeded in combining intense colors and still preserved transparency of the glasses. His works achieve top prices at auctions.

Curiosities

The Swiss writer Martin Suter , born in 1948, published the novel Allmen und die Libellen ( ISBN 978-3-257-06777-4 ) in 2011 . The novel focuses on five Gallé bowls with dragonfly motifs. Their theft, sale and reappearance in connection with insurance fraud in the millions and reckless passion for collecting drive the action.

literature

  • P. Garner: Émile Gallé, symbolist and artisan. In: Weltkunst , Vol. 45, 1975.
  • Françoise Thérèse Charpentier: Émile Gallé. Nancy 1978.
  • Émile Gallé. Art Nouveau ceramics, glass and furniture. Exhibition catalog, Museum Bellerive , Zurich 1980.
  • Wolf Stadler u. a .: Lexicon of Art 5th Gal - Mr. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, ISBN 3-86070-452-4 , pp. 5-6.

Web links

Commons : Émile Gallé  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf Stadler: Lexikon der Kunst 5. 1994, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Wolf Stadler: Lexikon der Kunst 5. 1994, pp. 5-6.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Wolf Stadler: Lexikon der Kunst 5. 1994, p. 6.
personal data
SURNAME Gallé, Émile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French artisan and designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Nancy
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1904
Place of death Nancy