Western Art: Fauvism and Intimism

L. Birge Harrison had exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1881, and in 1882 his Salon entry, Novembre, becomes one of the first paintings by an American artist to be purchased by the French government.

The paintings of this period include peasant subjects that show the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage.

The limited palette and wistful mood of the early works will continue to be distinguishing features of Harrison's later landscape paintings.

Born in Philadelphia, Birge Harrison is the brother of artist T. Alexander Harrison.

He had studied first at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1874, and will later credit Thomas Eakins as a positive influence on his own teaching style.

He has come to Paris on the advice of John Singer Sargent to study with Carolus-Duran and at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel.

East Central Europe (1900–1911 CE): Rising Nationalism, Austro-Hungarian Strains, and Path Toward Crisis

Between 1900 and 1911, East Central Europe—including modern-day Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and eastern Germany and Austria east of 10°E and northeast of the defined boundary—witnessed increasing tensions driven by ethnic nationalism, internal pressures within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, rapid industrialization, and diplomatic alignments foreshadowing the crises of the early 20th century.

Political and Military Developments

Austro-Hungarian Tensions and Nationalist Challenges

The Austro-Hungarian Empire struggled to maintain internal cohesion as ethnic nationalism intensified. Hungarian assertiveness clashed with demands from Slovaks, Romanians, and Croatians. In Austria’s Czech lands, nationalist politicians increasingly resisted German domination, causing legislative paralysis and internal political crises, notably the Czech–German national conflicts in Bohemia.

German Imperial Expansion and Military Buildup

Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany accelerated naval expansion, heightening regional tensions. Germany’s aggressive diplomacy increased pressure on neighboring states, notably the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which became increasingly dependent on German military and diplomatic backing.

Polish Nationalist Activism

Polish national activism strengthened significantly in Galicia under Austrian rule, while Poles in German-controlled areas faced ongoing Germanization policies. Secret societies, educational institutions, and cultural associations sustained Polish national identity, fueling future independence aspirations.

Economic and Technological Developments

Industrial Expansion and Economic Integration

Industrial growth continued robustly, particularly in Saxony, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. Major urban centers—Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Kraków, and Wrocław—prospered economically, benefiting from advanced manufacturing, coal mining, steel production, and railway expansion.

Technological Innovations and Infrastructure

Railway networks, electrification, urban transport (streetcars, electric trams), and communications infrastructure rapidly expanded, supporting economic growth, improving regional connectivity, and significantly raising living standards.

Cultural and Artistic Developments

National Cultural Movements

Cultural nationalism thrived, particularly among Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks. In Poland, Young Poland (Młoda Polska) remained influential, fostering modernist literature and artistic expression through figures such as Stanisław Wyspiański. In Hungary, cultural renaissance emphasized national traditions in literature, music (e.g., Béla Bartók), and art nouveau architecture.

Urban Cultural Flourishing

Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Kraków, and Dresden emerged as major European cultural hubs, exemplified by vibrant literary salons, theaters, art galleries, music venues, and academic institutions, contributing significantly to the era’s artistic and intellectual vitality.

Settlement and Urban Development

Accelerating Urbanization

Rapid industrialization led to significant urban expansion. Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Leipzig, Dresden, and Kraków saw substantial population growth, extensive infrastructural improvements, public housing projects, sanitation, healthcare systems, and enhanced civic amenities.

Social and Religious Developments

Labor Movements and Socialist Growth

Labor activism and socialist politics intensified across Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. Trade unions became influential, advocating improved working conditions, wages, and social reforms. Political polarization deepened between conservative, nationalist elites and increasingly mobilized socialist and working-class movements.

Religious Institutions and Social Initiatives

Catholic institutions, notably in Austria, Bohemia, and Galicia, played key roles in education and social welfare, acting as stabilizing community forces amid rising social tensions. Protestant churches in German-majority areas actively participated in social reform and educational efforts.

Long-Term Consequences and Historical Significance

The period from 1900 to 1911 laid critical groundwork for East Central Europe's tumultuous decades ahead. Heightened nationalist tensions, Austro-Hungarian instability, and Germany’s militarization shaped the regional political environment, fueling future crises. Economic growth, technological advancement, and urbanization improved living standards but intensified social and class tensions, fostering organized labor and socialist politics. Cultural nationalism strengthened ethnic identities, significantly influencing future geopolitical realignments. Collectively, these developments set the stage for the dramatic upheavals and transformations that culminated in World War I and the collapse of longstanding imperial orders.

Lovis Corinth heads the Sezession movement against the academic school in Berlin, with the collaboration of Max Slevogt and Max Liebermann.

The forty-two-year-old German Impressionist's training had been academic, taken after 1884 in Paris under the French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

There, however, he had been influenced both by the French Impressionists and by the work of Peter Paul Rubens, and, after he settles in Berlin in 1900, his pictures, which had been at first somber, gain brilliance from the former and vitality from the latter.

Paul Cézanne paints in Aix in increasing isolation.

Giacomo Balla, largely self-taught and greatly influenced by French Neo-Impressionism during a sojourn he makes in Paris in 1900, when he is twenty-nine, adopts Pointillism upon his return to Rome, and imparts that style to two younger artists in his studio, eighteen-year-old Umberto Boccioni and seventeen-year-old Gino Severini.

Claude Monet returns to London to work on his Thames series, and works also at Vétheuil.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir holds a joint exhibition with Claude Monet at Durand-Ruel, New York.

Pablo Picasso's Catalan artist and writer friends gather regularly at the café Els Quatre Gats ("The Four Cats," styled after the Chat Noir ["Black Cat"] in Paris), where Picasso has his first Barcelona exhibition in February 1900, and they are the subjects of more than fifty portraits (in mixed media) in the show.

In addition, there is a dark, moody "modernista" painting, Last Moments (later painted over), showing the visit of a priest to the bedside of a dying woman, a work that is accepted for the Spanish section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in that year.

Eager to see his own work in place and to experience Paris firsthand, Picasso sets off in the company of his studio-mate Carles Casagemas (Portrait of Carles Casagemas, 1899) to conquer, if not Paris, at least a corner of Montmartre.

Paul Gauguin, increasingly disgusted with the rising Western influence in Tahiti again seeks a more remote environment, this time on the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas, where he moves in September 1901.

He purchases land here and, with the help of his neighbors, he builds a home that he calls “the house of pleasure”.

Conceived as a total work of art decorated with elaborately carved friezes, the house is possibly inspired by Maori works he had seen in Auckland, New Zealand.

Gauguin had earlier written a travelogue (first published 1901) titled Noa Noa, originally conceived as commentary on his paintings and describing his experiences in Tahiti.

Modern critics will suggest that the contents of the book were in part fantasized and plagiarized.

In it he reveals that he had in 1891 taken a thirteen-year-old girl as native wife or vahine (the Tahitian word for "woman"), a marriage contracted in the course of a single afternoon.

This was Teha'amana, called Tehura in the travelogue, who was pregnant by him by the end of summer 1892.

Teha'amana is the subject of several of Gauguin's paintings, including Merahi metua no Tehamana and the celebrated Spirit of the Dead Watching, as well as a notable woodcarving Tehura now in the Musée d'Orsay.

By the end of July 1893, Gauguin had decided to leave Tahiti and he would never see Teha'amana or her child again even after returning to the island several years later.

Renoir exhibits twenty-three works at a mixed show at Paul Cassirer in Berlin.