Exposition universelle de Paris, 1900
1900
- Classification
- Painting
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit line
- https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/76548
- Rights
- Public domain, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
About this work
Color-lithographed poster of the grounds of the 1900 Exposition universelle in Paris. The view overlooks the Seine, the Grand Palais, the exhibition buildings leading to Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower, and the exhibition buildings constructed around it. Some of the more fantastical buildings constructed for the Exposition are shown, such as the Globe Céleste. At the top are vignettes of the pavilions of foreign countries, the palace of electricity and castle of water, the Grand Palais, and the Porte Monumentale.
In the foreground are world leaders, including William McKinley and monarchs, such as Queen Victoria, and her son (Edward VII, upon her death), Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary, Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra of Russia, and Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia. The titles of the figures are given in the border below them.
The combination of the extravagant Beaux-Arts architecture, rich color printing, and portraits of world leaders mingling happily together gives a sense of Europe before the fall - standing as a stark contrast to the animosity and destruction of World War I that followed a little over a decade later.
The monogram of the poster's artist…
