Charles Garnier

(b c. 1639; d Paris, 21 Sept 1728). French sculptor. He was Professeur and later Doyen of the Acad?mie de St Luc in Paris and is sometimes confused in contemporary documents with the sculptor Pierre Granier (1635-1715). Garnier was a bronze specialist employed by Fran?ois Girardon to repair the waxes bronzes at the Paris Arsenal from 1686 to 1692. He was also responsible for such small bronze groups and statuettes as Paetus and Arria (1696-7; Paris, Louvre) and Bacchus (before 1699; e.g. Dresden, Skulpsamml.). He also executed funerary monuments in bronze and marble, including the monument for the brain of James II of England (1703; fragments, Paris, former Coll?ge des Ecossais, 65 Rue Cardinal-Lemoine), the tomb of Maximilien Titon du Tillet (after 1711; destr.) for the chapel of the convent of the Hospitali?res at St Mand? and the tomb for the heart of Louis-Fran?ois, Mar?chal de Boufflers (1713; fragments, Crillon, Oise, parish church). His best-known work, however, is the remarkable and strikingly original Parnasse fran?ais (1718-21; Versailles, Ch?teau), an elaborate bronze group, over 2 m high, commissioned by Evrard Titon du Tillet and celebrating artists, musicians and writers of the reign of Louis XIV. The King, in the guise of Apollo and seated on top of Mt Parnassus, is surrounded by the three Graces, personified by the poets Antoinette Deshouli?res, Henriette de La Suze and Madeleine de Scud?ry. Below are statuettes of Corneille, Racine, Moli?re, Lully, La Fontaine etc. Other notable figures are represented by portrait medallions. Titon later commissioned Augustin Pajou to add Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Prosper Cr?billon and Voltaire. Apart from the Parnasse, however, few works by the strongly classical Garnier have survived, and the information about him is disappointingly fragmentary.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Jean Louis Charles Garnier (1825-1898) was a French architect of the exuberant neobaroque style, an outgrowth of the effervescent but stricter classicism of Napoleon III's Second Empire style that began in the early 1850s.

Charles Garnier was born on Nov. 6, 1825, in Paris. He attended the École de Dessin, the atelier of Louis Hippolyte Lebas, and the École des Beaux-Arts in 1841, and he also worked for Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Garnier spent 5 years in Italy after winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1848.

Garnier entered the competition for the Académie Nationale de Musique, better known as the Opéra, in Paris in 1861. He won fifth prize in the first stage of a two-phase competition and later that year won the commission. The Opéra was built from 1862 to 1867; the interiors were not completed until 1874. Sited on an irregular diamond adjacent to the Grand Boulevard, the structure was inspired, according to Garnier, by Michelangelo and Jacopo Sansovino. The Opéra provided a setting for Parisian society. The foyer, grand staircase, and auditorium are spacious, open, and rich in decoration. Empress Eugénie had favored the project by Viollet-le-Duc and did not admire Garnier's sumptuousness, even though it suited the period. When asked by the Empress whether the Opéra was in the style of Louis XIV, XV, or XVI, Garnier tactfully replied, "It is of Napoleon III."

The same plastic richness of effect was used by Garnier in his Casino in Monte Carlo (1878; extended 1881), even though the finish is in stucco. Its magnificent site facing the bay is again a stage setting, this time for the wealthy gamblers' game of roulette. The game rooms, salons, and waiting rooms are sumptuous.

After the Casino, Garnier's style mellowed considerably in a host of works ranging from churches, libraries, hotels, and houses to tombs, including the tombs of his musical contemporaries Bizet (1880) and Offenbach (1883) in Paris. Garnier died on Aug. 3, 1898.

Garnier did not fit into the emerging movements of functionalism or expressive structure, even though the structural innovations of the Opéra were of predominant significance. Structure for its own sake, as in the Eiffel Tower, he considered hideous. His plan for the Opéra, he freely admitted in his book Le Nouvel Opéra de Paris (1875-1881), was based upon no theory: "I leave success or failure to chance alone." The sweeping dynamic movement of Garnier's neobaroque can be found in the more linear forms of Art Nouveau.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Garnier in French or English. General histories do not discuss him extensively, but Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958; 2d ed. 1963), describes his work in relation to the period.

French architect, a student of Lebas. During his time as a pensionnaire in Rome (1848–54) he visited Greece and Turkey, and seems to have been more enchanted with Byzantine and other styles than he was with Ancient Greek architecture, although he investigated the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, largely from the point of view of its colouring in Antiquity. When he returned to Paris he worked for a period under Ballu, but took on what private commissions he could obtain. He made his name with his designs (won in competition) for the Opéra in Paris (1861–75), the most luxuriant building of the Second Empire and of the Beaux-Arts style, yet one in which the disposition of the main elements is immediately clear from the exterior. Garnier drew his inspiration from the Italian Renaissance, notably the architectural visions of Paolo Veronese (1528–88), the Venetian painter, while echoes of Sansovino are detectable. The lavish staircase mingled Baroque and Venetian Renaissance themes. The Opéra was immensely successful and influential, its confident brashness finally laying the drier aspects of French Rationalism to rest, and setting the agenda for public architectural style in France until 1914. The Opéra has tended to overshadow Garnier's many other architectural achievements. His ebullient interpretation of Italian and French Renaissance styles can be seen in a number of his works, including the Cercle de la Librairie (1878–9), 117 Boulevard St-Germain, the Maison Hachette apartment-block at 195 on the same Boulevard (1878–80), and, especially, the Casino, Monte Carlo (1876/8–9). The last, a lushly festive concoction, Influenced the style of buildings along the Riviera and in other seaside resorts. In the 1890s, however, the Casino theatre was altered to enable large-scale operatic performances to take place, and in 1897 Garnier protested, in vain, to the architect Henri Schmit (1851–1904) about the changes to his work.

He published his theory of theatre design in Le Théâtre (1871) and Nouvel Opéra de Paris (1878–81). His reconstruction of the temple at Aegina (complete with polychrome decorations) was published in Le Temple de Jupiter panhellenique à Egine (1884), and he also published works on domestic architecture in Constructions élevées aux Champs de Mars (1890) and L'Habitation humaine (1892).

Bibliography

• Drexler (ed.) (1977)
• C. Garnier (1871, 1878–81)
• Klicxkowski (2003)
• Mead (1991)
• Patureau (1992)
• Steinhauser (1970)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Charles Garnier
Personal information
Name	Charles Garnier
Nationality	French
Birth date	6 November 1825(1825-11-06)
Birth place	Paris
Date of death	3 August 1898 (aged 72)
Place of death	Paris
Work
Significant buildings	Palais Garnier (Paris Opéra) Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Awards and prizes	Prix de Rome - 1848

The Palais Garnier in winter.

The Casino de Monte-Carlo

Charles Garnier (6 November 1825 - 3 August 1898) was a French architect, designer of the Palais Garnier and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.

Contents 1 Education 2 Works 2.1 In France 2.2 Abroad 3 Quotations 4 External links

Education

Student of Louis-Hippolyte Lebas at the École royale des Beaux-Arts de Paris beginning in 1842, he obtained the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1848. The subject of his final examination was entitled:"Un conservatoire des arts et métiers, avec galerie d'expositions pour les produits de l'industrie". He became a pensioner at the Académie de France à Rome from 17 January to 31 December 1849. He traveled through Greece which provided him the subject of his fourth year submission, presented at the Paris Salon in 1853. He visited Greece with Edmond About and Constantinople with Théophile Gautier. He worked on the Temple of Aphaea in Aegina where he insisted on polychromy. He was named in 1874, member of the Institut de France, in the architecture section of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Works

In France

• In Paris :
  • Palais Garnier
  • Théâtre Marigny (ex-Panorama de Marigny)
  • The circle of the librairy, boulevard Saint-Germain
  • The hôtel particulier rue du Docteur-Lancereaux (the "maison opéra")
  • Tomb of Jacques Offenbach, cimetière de Montmartre (1880)
  • The Ateliers Berthier, on the boulevard of the same name, the annex of the Opéra and its fabrication workshops for decorations and storage of costumes and scenery. This building was his last realisation.

• In Provence :
  • The casino and thermal baths of Vittel
  • The église of Chapelle-en-Thiérache
  • The Astronomical Observatory in Nice (in collaboration with the engineer Gustave Eiffel)

Abroad

• In Monaco :
  • The Official Opera, the opéra and the Grand Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo

• In Bordighera, Italy where he stayed often, he was the architect of:
  • The Église de Terrasanta
  • The École Communale, today the Mairie de la ville
  • Villa Bischoffsheim (now the Villa Etelinda)
  • Villa Garnier (1872)
  • Villa Studio

Quotations

• In 1851, alors qu'il est pensionnaire à la Villa Médicis à Rome et à l'occasion d'un voyage à Athens, Garnier s'exclame en découvrant le Parthenon : "Il n'y a pas à choisir entre les arts, il faut être Dieu ou architecte."

• "Les ingénieurs ont de fréquentes occasions d'employer le fer en grandes parties, et c'est sur cette matière que plus d'un fonde l'espoir d'une architecture nouvelle. Je lui dis tout de suite, c'est là une erreur. Le fer est un moyen, ce ne sera jamais un principe."

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External links

• Charles Garnier Biography
• Jean-Louis Charles Garnier information at Structurae
• Ladyghost's web

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