One hundred years after the French Revolution, at the dawn of the "Belle Époque", a spectacular phenomenon of enthusiasm, nostalgia, curiosity and passion developed around the Versailles of the Ancien Régime. Through nearly 350 works - including a large part from private and international collections -, documents and photographs, the exhibition "Versailles Revival" retraces this surprising moment...
If the first signs of this new craze appeared in the Second Empire, through Empress Eugénie's veneration of Marie-Antoinette, it was at the end of the century that fascination spread to the artistic and literary circles. Marcel Proust rediscovers this "Versailles, a great name that is rusty and soft, a royal cemetery of foliage, vast waters and marble". The most diverse painters are inspired by it, from the Russian Alexandre Benois to Georges Rouault, Gaston la Touche, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer and Henri Le Sidaner, but also photographers like Eugène Atget, Edward Steichen and Man Ray. Cinema also took up the subject from the very beginning.
Furniture and decorative arts display the great royal examples. In the same way, the Castle served as a model for that of Louis II of Bavaria, as well as for the residences of Boni de Castellane and Alva Vanderbilt, and up to the 1912 French liner known as "le Versailles des mers". Incredible holidays bring back to life
