Vase with Flowers
Émile Gallé (1846 to 1904) · About 1880
A tall, square vase of clear glass rises from a moulded foot with curling corners, and across its faces a spray of chrysanthemums, morning glories and leaves is painted in enamel of blue, russet, black and gold. The flowers wander around the corners of the vase as if the glass were not there. Gallé made it in Nancy in about 1880, in the first phase of his career, when he was still working mostly in clear glass with painted decoration and had just begun to absorb the Japanese art that was flooding into France.
Look at the drawing of the flowers. The chrysanthemum is a Japanese motif, and the way the stems are placed off centre, with empty glass left around them, comes straight from Japanese prints and lacquer. The enamel is applied in thin layers and fired, and the gilding is scratched to give the leaves texture. Gallé was a trained botanist as well as a glassmaker, and even in this early piece the plants are recognisable species rather than decorative inventions. Compare it with the later Gallé pieces displayed nearby, where the colour is inside the glass itself and the surface is carved like cameo; the distance between them is the whole history of Art Nouveau glass.
The Petit Palais bought the vase in 2004 to strengthen its Paris 1900 galleries, which bring together furniture, ceramics, jewellery and glass from the years of the Universal Exhibition. Gallé showed at that exhibition and was one of its stars, and in 1901 he founded the École de Nancy to unite the region's artists and manufacturers. Notice the small square foot: the shape is borrowed from Chinese bronze vessels, another sign of how widely this young provincial glassmaker was looking.
Did You Know? Gallé was a serious botanist who kept a garden of several thousand plant varieties in Nancy and drew his decorations from living specimens.
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