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The Pola Museum of Art is pleased to present Emile Gallé: Collecting Nature, the first Emile Gallé (1846 – 1904) exhibition at our Museum. The Art Nouveau movement that held sway in France at the end of the 19th century was characterized by curvilinear lines inspired by natural organic forms. Gallé was at the forefront of glass art in this style. He produced a succession of outstanding artworks incorporating his knowledge of the natural sciences, particularly botany and biology, and his outstanding technical expertise. The art production by Gallé, with their plant, insect, animal, and sea creature motifs, can be compared to the act of collecting nature.

Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. Strongly influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution, Gallé carried out his own studies of insects and plants and perceived of their habitat, the forest, as symbolic of life. The second half of the 19th century saw the popularity of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and advancements in oceanography as well as growing interest in sea ecology. In his latter years, Gallé’s dedication to the themes of the forest and the sea brought him to deep involvement in the art and literature of the Symbolist movement.

This exhibition features around 60 works selected from the collection of the Pola Museum of Art as well as approximately 70 works gathered from Japanese collections. The works span Gallé’s career and highlight his two nature inspired themes of the forest and the sea.

We would like to warmly thank the Woodone Museum of Art, the Kitazawa Museum of Art, The Suntory Museum of Art, the Darvish Gallery Collection, the Hida Takayama Museum of Art, Belle des Belles, the Yamazaki Mazak Museum, and The University Museum, the University of Tokyo, as well as private collectors who all generously lent important works for the exhibition. We are grateful to all concerned who cooperated to make this exhibition possible.

Section I. The Attraction of Enamel Colors

Section II. The Mysterious Forest

Plants, insects, birds, and small animals are dominant motifs of Gallé’s works. He became attracted to such subjects from a young age under his mother’s influence and also impressed by the anthropomorphic flower illustrations by Jean Grandville, an artist also from Nancy.

Since 16th century, there were public gardens in Nancy, where Gallé was raised, such as the Place Stanislas Botanical Garden and the Lorraine University garden. Nancy’s gardens developed dramatically, particularly from the mid-19th century as the town became a center of horticultural research. In such an environment, Gallé as a boy enjoyed gathering and collecting plant specimens with his friend and became deeply interested in botany.
When the Gallé family moved in 1873 to avenue de la Garenne, a garden was constructed on the premises.

Around 2,500 types of plants were planted, including species native to the Lorraine region, but also from North America, China, and Japan as well. A similar garden was built on the premises of Gallé’s workshop. The trees of these gardens and their seasonally blooming flowers appear as motifs of Gallé’s art. More than simply design elements, though, the plant forms were for Gallé an expression of the process evolution, of buds transforming into flowers, and of the life cycle and transience of nature itself. The words carved into the gate of Gallé’s studio, “My roots are in the depths of the forest” (Ma racine est au fond des bois), convey Gallé’s view of the mystery of life and his existence as a human being connected to plants and small insects.

Section III. The Extraordinary Sea

Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published as part of his Extraordinary Voyages (Voyages Extraordinaires) series of novels in 1870. Advancements in knowledge of oceanography in the latter half of the 19th century were widely popularized. Illustrated magazines Gallé’s father subscribed to stimulated Gallé’s interest in the sea. Gallé’s factory expanded production in the 1870s and 1880s, giving Gallé a chance to exploit the popular sea themes. He produced traditional designs with motifs of the sea god Neptune, the sea goddess Venus, and seashells. Gallé’s interest in the sea, though, was still limited.

It was only later, in the period from around 1899 to 1904, that he would focus on sea motifs, including Echinodermata such as the starfish and the sea lily. German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms of Nature sparked his interest in phenomenal sea ecology. Haeckel’s own illustrations of marine invertebrates had organic curves similar to Art Nouveau stylistic features. The best examples of such fluid form may have been the illustrations of jellyfish floating freely and elegantly in water as if unaffected by gravity.

The excellent designs in Haeckel’s book inspired Gallé and gave him ideas for the direction of his decorative art. Had Gallé been able to live longer, his knowledge of natural science and of the underwater world would have developed greatly.

Section IV. Beyond Symbolism

After having been awarded the Grand Prize of the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889 and again in 1900, Gallé’s expression became more poetic and dreamlike. He produced many glassworks that are considered as fine works of Symbolist art. His wife Henriette wrote that Gallé was able to transform the nature of decorative art because of his scholarly exploration as an artist of plants, trees, and flowers. Indeed, Gallé sought to achieve innovation in his craft by infusing his art with what he learned from botany and the natural sciences. Further, his depictions of nature were more than faithful representations. His figures of plant and sea creatures contain strong and mysterious implications of Gallé’s own symbolic message.

In contrast to his spectacular successes at the Paris Universal Expositions, Gallé suffered from health problems and troubles in the management of his company. He died at the age of 58 in 1904. Despite having to fight with illness in the last four years of his life, Gallé continued to explore new themes in his artwork. Gallé’s passion was to portray the structure of plants and organisms precisely, and to capture the texture of the atmosphere surrounding them as well as such features as shifts in light during the course of a day or with the changing seasons. Gallé produced countless masterpieces depicting processes of transformation in constantly changing nature, such as the appearance of a flower starting out as a bud and finally withering away.

As a Symbolist artist, Gallé always stressed his love of nature. For Gallé, nature offered a wealth of inspiration that led poets to sing, that spoke to artists deeply concerned with symbolism, and that unraveled mysteries in the world.