Nocturne, Paris by Alfred Maurer Bruce Museum 7-9-16

Electric Paris: Illuminating 19th Century Paris

This talk on how artificial lighting influenced how artists saw Paris (from 7 to 8 p.m., Tuesday, July 12 in the Community Room at Darien Library) takes place while the Bruce Museum in Greenwich exhibits “Electric Paris” (through Sept. 4). Here’s the Darien Library announcement:

Paris was already known, metaphorically, as the “City of Light” since the Enlightenment period, but this appellation took on a new and different currency in the second part of the 19th century. The rapid proliferation of artificial lighting illuminated the spectacle of the city’s pleasure-loving nocturnal activities and entertainment spaces. Parisians embraced the blazing illumination as a new metropolitan signature and undeniable proof of their city’s rapturous allure.

‘Electric Paris’ at Bruce Museum Illuminates with Impressionist & Other Works

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By KAREN SHEER

The Bruce Museum exhibit, “Electric Paris,” transports visitors to 19th-century Paris as the light shaped the works of numerous modern artists. The exhibit was meticulously curated by Margarita Karasoulas, a former Bruce Museum intern and now a Ph.D. candidate art history at the University of Delaware. She describes en plein air where a painter reproduces the actual visual conditions seen at the time of the painting. She explains, “we are presenting the exhibition into four thematic sections: Nocturnes, Lamplit Interiors, Street Light, and In and Out of the Spotlight, which examines the spectacle of artificial light in Parisian cafés, theaters, dance halls, and cabarets.”

In the late 17th and 18th centuries, Paris became known as the “City Of Light” — a metaphor for its reputation as an enlightened center of reason and forward thinking. At night, however, its streets and boulevards could be dark, scary and dangerous.