Émile Gallé
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
artist who worked in glass
Glass
Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...
, and is considered to be one of the major forces in the French Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
movement.
Biography
Gallé was the son of a faienceFaience
Faience or faïence is the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a delicate pale buff earthenware body, originally associated with Faenza in northern Italy. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip...
and furniture manufacturer and studied philosophy, botany, and drawing in his youth. He later learned glassmaking at Meisenthal
Meisenthal
Meisenthal is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.The village is famous for the Centre International d’Art Verrier...
and came to work at his father's factory in Nancy following the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. His early work was executed using clear glass decorated with enamel
Vitreous enamel
Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...
, but he soon turned to an original style featuring heavy, opaque glass carved or etched with plant motifs, often in two or more colours as cameo glass
Cameo Glass
Cameo glass is a luxury form of glass art produced by etching and carving through fused layers of differently colored glass to produce designs, usually with white opaque glass figures and motifs on a dark-colored background...
. His friend and patron Robert de Montesquiou
Robert de Montesquiou
Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac , was a French aesthete, Symbolist poet, art collector and dandy....
sent him to Bayreuth with a recommendation to Cosima Wagner
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Francesca Gaetana Wagner, née de Flavigny, from 1844 known as Cosima Liszt; was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt...
, which led to a great enthusiasm for Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
. His career took off after his work received praise at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.
Within a decade of another successful showing at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, Gallé had reached international fame and his style, with its emphasis on naturalism and floral motifs, was at the forefront of the emerging Art Nouveau movement.
He continued to incorporate experimental techniques into his work, such as metallic foils and air bubbles, and also revitalized the glass industry by establishing a workshop to mass produce his, and other artists', designs. The factory would employ 300 workers and artisans at its height, including the notable glassmaker Eugène Rosseau, and remained in operation until 1936.
Gallé wrote a book on art entitled Écrits pour l'art 1884-89 ("Writings on Art 1884-89"), which was published posthumously in 1908.
What is less well-known is Gallé's social engagement. He was a convinced humanist, and was involved in organizing evening schools for the working class (l’Université populaire de Nancy). He was treasurer of the Nancy branch of the Ligue Française pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme and in 1898, at great risk for his business, one of the first to become actively involved in the defence of Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French and European history...
. He also publicly defended the Romanian Jews and spoke up in defence of the Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
s against Britain, supporting William O’Brien, one of the leaders of the Irish revolt. In 1901 he founded École de Nancy, (Alliance Provinciale des Industries d'art) an Art Nouveau movement with, Victor Prouvé, Louis Majorelle
Louis Majorelle
Louis-Jean-Sylvestre Majorelle, usually known simply as Louis Majorelle, was a French decorator and furniture designer who manufactured his own designs, in the French tradition of the ébéniste...
, Antonin Daum and Eugène Vallin
Eugène Vallin
Eugène Vallin was a French furniture designer and manufacturer, as well as an architect.-Life and career:Vallin studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy...
in the city of Nancy in Lorraine (France). Many of Gallé works are kept at the Musée de l'École de Nancy
Musée de l'École de Nancy
The Musée de l'École de Nancy is a museum devoted to the École de Nancy, an Art Nouveau movement founded in 1901 by Émile Gallé, Victor Prouvé, Louis Majorelle, Antonin Daum and Eugène Vallin in the city of Nancy in Lorraine...
.