Nancy as a center of Art Nouveau architecture, 1895–1914

The city of Nancy, France, is, paradoxically, the least-well-known European center where Art Nouveau architecture developed, yet arguably the city where the style had the most lasting impact. Nancy’s Art Nouveau was a divergent form of modernity that was defined by regionalism and a distinct sense of place, which its proponents championed as the key elements of an authentic architecture, allowing the small city to challenge Paris as the dominant center of French artistic production in the two decades before 1914. Nancy’s architects positioned themselves strategically in the contemporary French discussions about architecture, art, and politics. They were attuned to both the artistic cultures of the capital and their region of Lorraine. Most were graduates of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and imbued by their teachers with a sense of classicism and the professional standards associated with it. As a result, much of Nancy’s Art Nouveau had a conservative character, using elements of French Renaissance, Rococo, and Baroque, and it won the approval of the national architectural press. Nancy’s Art Nouveau architects were also disciples of Emile Gallé, who, in 1901, founded the regional association of artists, industrialists, and designers called the Ecole de Nancy, dedicated to the promotion of Art Nouveau and the applied arts. Nancy’s architects collaborated with the other artists of the Ecole, creating architectural Gesamtkunstwerks that showcased exquisite craftsmanship. The artists’ strong regional pride led them to study local flora and landscape as well as historical legends and regional politics, drawing heavily on the iconography of plants and narratives to make architecture legible to a wide public. The rooting of the work of Nancy’s architects in their region and the alliances they formed with local industry and the public were achievements that Parisian Art Nouveau architects, the design vanguard in the capital, were never able to match. Consequently, in Paris, Art Nouveau was quickly discarded, while in Nancy it was celebrated as an integral piece of regional identity and a nationally important cultural achievement until after the outbreak of World War I