Top 100 — Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau: 100 Paintings and Their Motifs
Klimt, Munch, Khnopff, Redon, Hodler and their European neighbours: painting discovers that a line can undulate without losing its character.
Art Nouveau paints bodies enveloped in gold, rhythmic landscapes, unsettling myths and faces that keep their secrets. Flowers sometimes grow with military discipline, but the painting always retains enough freedom to escape them.
The Line Takes the Stage
When Ornament Becomes Architecture
Between the 1880s and the First World War, Art Nouveau painting seeks a form capable of uniting body, nature, myth and modern life. In Vienna, Brussels, Munich, Barcelona, Prague and Helsinki, Klimt, Khnopff, von Stuck, Casas and Gallen-Kallela invent very different responses: total ornament, uneasy Symbolism, society portraiture, national legend or rhythmic landscape. These hundred paintings follow exchanges between ornament, narrative, portrait and landscape that gave the movement its surprising diversity.
Art Nouveau does not place a few flowers on modernity: it redraws its walls, letters and even hairstyles with a line politely refusing to walk straight.Go to the Images
The Works in the Selection
The Works in Pictures
The Icons of Modernity
Klimt, Munch, Khnopff, Redon and Hodler open the selection with paintings that gave the end of the century a face.
#1
Gustav Klimt1. The Kiss
Klimt painted The Kiss in 1907–1908, at the height of his golden period. Cloaks covered in rectangles and circles envelop the couple like a mosaic, while their feet remain at the edge of a flower-filled meadow: the embrace seems eternal, but its balance is deliciously precarious.
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#2
Edvard Munch2. The Scream
Munch conceived The Scream from a walk above Oslo’s fjord, when he said he felt a scream passing through nature. The figure may not be screaming: it is covering its ears. The undulating sky transforms an intimate crisis into a universal image of modern anxiety.
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#3
Gustav Klimt3. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
Commissioned by industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, this 1907 portrait depicts his wife Adele amid a field of gold. Klimt combines oil, metal leaf and motifs inspired by Ravenna’s mosaics. The body almost disappears beneath ornament, except for the intensely present face and hands.
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#4
Franz von Stuck4. Sin
First exhibited in 1893, Sin established Franz von Stuck’s reputation. A nude woman entwined by a snake emerges from an almost black background. The painting does not recount biblical wrongdoing: it arranges an unsettling encounter between desire, menace and a frontal gaze.
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#5
Fernand Khnopff5. I Lock My Door Upon Myself
Khnopff borrowed the title from a Christina Rossetti poem and in 1891 painted a woman isolated among lilies, a bust of Hypnos and a Bruges street. Every object seems to belong to a private memory. The closed door protects less a room than a carefully locked inner world.
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#6
Odilon Redon6. The Cyclops
Around 1914, Redon imagined Polyphemus observing sleeping Galatea behind a hill of flowers. The Odyssey’s cyclops is no longer a brutal monster: his enormous eye expresses an almost timid curiosity. Yet luminous colours preserve a slight fever within the dream.
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#7
Ferdinand Hodler7. The Night
When Hodler exhibited The Night in 1891, Geneva judged its nudes scandalous and removed the canvas. The artist depicts himself among sleepers, awakened by a black figure embodying death. Repeated bodies transform the shared bed into a frieze about sleep and vulnerability.
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#8
Akseli Gallen-Kallela8. The Defence of the Sampo
Gallen-Kallela draws on the Kalevala to show Väinämöinen defending the Sampo, a magical mill coveted by Louhi. The struggle unfolds on a raging sea beneath red sails. Finnish national legend receives the sharp energy of a great modern adventure.
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#9
Gustav Klimt9. The Beethoven Frieze
Created for the Vienna Secession’s Beethoven exhibition in 1902, this frieze illustrates the search for happiness through humanity’s suffering. Klimt guides the visitor from hostile forces to the final embrace, in dialogue with the Ninth Symphony and Josef Hoffmann’s architecture.
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#10
Akseli Gallen-Kallela10. The Aino Triptych
The Aino Triptych recounts three episodes from the Kalevala: the encounter with Väinämöinen, Aino’s flight and her disappearance into water. Gallen-Kallela frames the narrative with motifs inspired by Finnish folk art. Idyllic nature becomes the stage for a tragic refusal.
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#11
Fernand Khnopff11. The Caress
In The Caress, painted in 1896, Oedipus faces a sphinx with a cheetah’s body and a face inspired by Khnopff’s sister Marguerite. The ancient riddle becomes dangerous intimacy. A hand placed on the cheek hesitates between tenderness, domination and a trap.
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#12
Odilon Redon12. Closed Eyes
Around 1890, Redon painted a face with lowered eyelids inspired by his wife Camille. After the dark charcoals of his early work, he introduces restrained colour here. The visible world fades just enough for sleep, meditation and inner apparition to become inseparable.
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#13
Edvard Munch13. Madonna
Madonna belongs to Munch’s Frieze of Life. A woman with closed eyes arches before a red halo, between ecstasy and unease. The artist associates conception, love and death within an image whose painted and printed versions long disturbed the boundaries of the sacred.
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#14
Franz von Stuck14. Lucifer
Von Stuck presents Lucifer as a seated sovereign rather than a demon in action. The massive body merges into shadow while the eyes look directly at the viewer. This stillness intensifies the threat: evil does not even need to rise.
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#15
Carlos Schwabe15. Death and the Gravedigger
Schwabe painted Death and the Gravedigger in 1895 to illustrate the end of a world. A green angel descends towards the digging man, carrying a fragile flame amid a snowy cemetery. Winter, fatigue and hope meet without resolution.
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#16
Ramón Casas16. Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu on a Tandem
Ramon Casas and Pere Romeu, owners of Barcelona’s Els Quatre Gats cabaret, depict themselves on a tandem in 1897. The painting parodies official portraits while celebrating urban modernity. Two bohemians on a bicycle suffice to give Catalan Modernisme its most cheerful manifesto.
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#17
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec17. At the Moulin Rouge: The Departure of the Quadrille
At the Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec observes the quadrille’s end as dancers and customers disperse. Cropped silhouettes and the empty dance floor convey the aftermath more than the spectacle. The painter knows these regulars; he recounts their fatigue without turning them into curiosities.
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#18
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec18. At the Moulin Rouge
Painted around 1892, At the Moulin Rouge gathers several cabaret figures: Jane Avril crosses the scene, La Goulue appears at the mirror and May Milton emerges at the right edge with a face turned green by the lighting. Lautrec composes a true group portrait of Parisian nightlife.
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#19
Gustav Klimt19. Judith I
Klimt painted Judith in 1901, at the beginning of his golden period. The biblical heroine barely displays Holofernes’s head, pushed into a corner, while her own face dominates. Political victory becomes an image of sensual power, and the gold necklace almost resembles armour.
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#20
Gustav Klimt20. Judith II
In Judith II, painted eight years after the first version, Klimt elongates the heroine’s body and hardens her hands. Decorative motifs become more restless. Often called Salome, the figure deliberately hovers between two femmes fatales whose stories end with a severed head.
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#21
Gustav Klimt21. Farm Garden with Sunflowers
Around 1907, Klimt painted this garden near the Attersee like a vertical tapestry. Sunflowers rise above a crowd of small flowers with no visible horizon. The farm almost disappears into vegetation: landscape becomes a living wall, far less disciplined than wallpaper.
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#22
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec22. La Goulue Entering the Moulin Rouge
Lautrec captures La Goulue as she enters the Moulin Rouge before dancing begins. Framing and a recognisable silhouette express Louise Weber’s celebrity without an official pose. The star belongs to the place as much as its mirrors, lamps and audience.
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#23
Gustav Klimt23. Serena Pulitzer Lederer
Klimt portrayed Serena Pulitzer Lederer in 1899, before the profusion of gold in his most famous works. Her white dress stands out within a pale, almost liquid atmosphere. A member of a family of great collectors, Serena appears with restrained rather than ostentatious elegance.
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#24
Gustav Klimt24. The Cradle
The Cradle, completed around 1917–1918, almost entirely hides the infant beneath a mountain of colourful fabrics. Klimt transforms blankets and cushions into a decorative pyramid. Only the small face at the top reminds us that this spectacular textile composition must still let someone sleep.
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#25
Gustav Klimt25. Mäda Primavesi
Mäda Primavesi was only nine when Klimt painted her in 1912–1913. Her white dress and confident pose contrast with a vivid floral background. The daughter of Viennese patrons, she meets the gaze with an independence rare in children’s portraits of the period.
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From Vienna to Barcelona, artists observe models, dancers, writers and new places of sociability.
#26
Santiago Rusiñol26. Portrait of Miquel Utrillo
Rusiñol painted his friend Miquel Utrillo at the Moulin de la Galette during their Paris years. The critic and engineer appears immersed in the cabaret’s smoky atmosphere. This portrait connects Montmartre bohemia with Catalan Modernisme, soon to gather around Els Quatre Gats.
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#27
Giovanni Segantini27. Midday in the Alps
Segantini painted Midday in the Alps in 1891, with a shepherdess and her flock beneath almost crystalline high-altitude light. His small separate strokes intensify air and grass. Rural work becomes a pantheistic vision where the mountain seems to breathe with the animals.
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#28
Franz von Stuck28. Sisyphus
Von Stuck revisits the myth of Sisyphus, condemned to push his rock eternally. The tense body occupies almost the entire canvas and transforms punishment into a study of strength. Nothing indicates the summit: the monumental effort is precisely what will never reach completion.
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#29
Edvard Munch29. Kiss
In The Kiss, Munch merges a couple’s faces near a window. The embrace protects the lovers from the outside world, but their identities disappear into a dark mass. Painted in several versions, the scene belongs to the Frieze of Life, between desire and loss of self.
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#30
Ferdinand Hodler30. Lake Thun with a Symmetrical Reflection
Hodler constructs this Lake Thun view around an almost perfectly symmetrical reflection. Mountains, water and sky echo one another according to his principle of parallelism. Swiss landscape stops being a merely picturesque view and becomes a highly ordered meditation on natural repetition.
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#31
Akseli Gallen-Kallela31. Lemminkäinen’s Mother
In the Kalevala, Lemminkäinen’s mother finds her son’s dismembered body beside the river of the dead and tries to revive him. In 1897, Gallen-Kallela painted the wait for a divine sign. The pale young man and silent sky give the myth an immediate maternal anguish.
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#32
Santiago Rusiñol32. The Gardens of Aranjuez
Rusiñol discovered the gardens of Aranjuez during stays in Castile and made them a major theme. Paths, fountains and clipped trees appear deserted, as though an old court had just departed. The garden’s geometry accommodates a thoroughly modern melancholy.
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#33
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec33. At Grenelle, Absinthe Drinker
In Grenelle, Toulouse-Lautrec paints an absinthe drinker without the cabarets’ noisy folklore. The woman remains absorbed in solitude, surrounded by an unwelcoming space. The glass is no moralising accessory: it belongs to a life observed very closely.
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#34
Fernand Khnopff34. Who Shall Deliver Me?
Khnopff borrows the title Who Shall Deliver Me? from Christina Rossetti and gives the figure an almost captive presence. The face, isolated within silent space, offers no narrative answer. The entire painting rests in this waiting between a desire to escape and voluntary withdrawal.
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#35
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec35. At the Moulin Rouge: The Clown Cha-U-Kao
Cha-U-Kao, a Moulin Rouge performer and female clown, was one of Lautrec’s favourite models. He shows her in her yellow and black costume, aware of the spectacle but not reduced to it. Her substantial, dignified presence resists the usual caricatures of nightlife.
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#36
Egon Schiele36. Cardinal and Nun (Caress)
Schiele painted Cardinal and Nun in 1912 by reworking Klimt’s The Kiss. He depicts himself with Wally Neuzil, dressed as a cleric, in a stiff and anxious embrace. The black background transforms the loving gesture into wrongdoing, confession or anticipated separation.
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#37
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec37. In Bed: The Kiss
In Bed: The Kiss belongs to the series in which Lautrec observes two women within a brothel’s intimacy. Bodies draw together without erotic staging for a client. The moment’s tenderness contrasts with the place’s social harshness.
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#38
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec38. Two Women Dancing at the Moulin Rouge
Two Women Dancing at the Moulin Rouge shows movement from the dance floor’s edge. Lautrec uses skirts, legs and diagonals to convey rhythm. He seeks no perfect pose: dancing exists through successive imbalances.
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#39
Franz von Stuck39. Judith and Holofernes
Von Stuck chooses the moment when Judith displays Holofernes’s head. The heroine is not fragile: her body stands out with almost sculptural assurance. The biblical narrative becomes a confrontation between seduction, violence and female power.
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#40
Franz von Stuck40. Judith and Holofernes II
In Judith and Holofernes II, von Stuck revisits his heroine with more theatrical tension. Dark contrast concentrates action around body and trophy. Repetition of the subject shows how strongly the victorious woman fascinated fin-de-siècle culture.
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#41
Alphonse Mucha41. France’s Kiss to Bohemia
Mucha painted the allegory France’s Kiss to Bohemia in the context of Franco-Czech cultural ties. Two female figures embody the nations. Floral ornament does more than provide a setting: it transforms diplomacy into an affectionate gesture.
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#42
Franz von Stuck42. The Kiss of the Sphinx
Von Stuck’s The Kiss of the Sphinx unites a man and the mythical creature in a fatal embrace. The sphinx no longer waits for her riddle to be solved; she absorbs her victim. The painting gives desire the literal form of danger approached willingly.
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#43
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec43. Jane Avril Arriving at the Moulin Rouge
Jane Avril Arriving at the Moulin Rouge shows the dancer before the stage, still in the movement of the street. Lautrec immediately recognises her slender silhouette and restless bearing. This transitional moment reveals the person behind the poster icon.
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#44
Franz von Stuck44. The Spring of Love
In The Spring of Love, von Stuck places a nude couple within vibrant nature. Flowers and young bodies connect season, desire and renewal. Beneath decorative gentleness, the embrace retains the physical power characteristic of the Munich painter.
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#45
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec45. Jane Avril at the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge, Putting on Her Gloves
Lautrec catches Jane Avril putting on her gloves at the Moulin Rouge entrance. An everyday gesture replaces the star’s pose. This second before the show tells more of her elegance and professionalism than a perfectly arranged portrait.
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#46
Ramón Casas46. Plein Air
Plein Air, painted by Ramón Casas around 1890–1891, shows a woman on a Barcelona terrace. Light, furniture and a pale dress introduce modernity into domestic life. The title celebrates fresh air as much as a new urban way of living.
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#47
Franz von Stuck47. Tilla Durieux as Circe
Von Stuck paints actress Tilla Durieux as Circe, the sorceress from the Odyssey. An authoritative profile and sumptuous costume transform the portrait into a role. Modern celebrity thus meets an ancient woman reputed to turn men into animals.
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#48
Odilon Redon48. Fishing Village, Brittany
Redon stayed in Brittany and painted this fishing village in a more earthy palette than his mythological visions. Yet houses, coast and sky retain a silent strangeness. Reality seems observed here from the shore of a dream.
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#49
Franz von Stuck49. At the Spring (Listening Nymph)
At the Spring shows a nymph attentive to the water’s murmur. Von Stuck slows myth into a scene of listening. Figure and landscape share the same calm, far from the battles of centaurs occupying another part of his work.
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#50
Gustav Klimt50. Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve remained unfinished at Klimt’s death in 1918. Luminous and frontal, Eve almost hides Adam in shadow. Reversing the traditional hierarchy places the first woman at the centre of a scene less guilty than sensual and mysterious.
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Judith, sphinxes, Amazons and inner visions show how much modern beauty also favours dangerous territory.
#51
Edvard Munch51. Anxiety
Anxiety revisits the bridge and red sky of The Scream’s world but replaces the isolated figure with a crowd advancing towards us. Pale faces do not communicate. Munch thus transforms personal anxiety into collective unease.
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#52
Egon Schiele52. Agony (The Death Struggle)
Schiele painted Agony in 1912, with two figures pressed together beneath a blanket. The title and emaciated faces evoke illness, death or spiritual separation. Bodies remain close, but angular drawing prevents easy consolation.
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#53
Odilon Redon53. Allegory: A Red Tree Not Reddened by the Sun
In this Allegory with a Red Tree, Redon frees colour from natural logic. The blazing plant rises within a dreamlike landscape without a precise explanation. After his years of black, the artist discovers that brilliant colour can be equally mysterious.
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#54
Gustav Klimt54. Allegory of Sculpture
Allegory of Sculpture belongs to Klimt’s early decorative commissions. A female figure embodies sculpture, surrounded by classical attributes. Already, the real body enters dialogue with an ornamental surface anticipating Vienna’s great decorations.
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#55
Odilon Redon55. Alsace
In Alsace, Redon combines landscape, memory and atmosphere rather than a specific historical scene. Forms seem to emerge from coloured mist. The work suggests a dreamed land charged with identity without confining itself to patriotic illustration.
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#56
Egon Schiele56. Lovers
In Lovers, Schiele constructs closeness through entwined limbs and nervous contours. Exposed paper isolates the couple from the world. The embrace is neither peaceful nor social: it engages the full fragile weight of both bodies.
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#57
Franz von Stuck57. Wounded Amazon
Von Stuck’s Wounded Amazon shows a warrior at the instant power shifts towards vulnerability. The athletic body remains monumental despite injury. Myth allows the painter to combine ancient heroism with erotic tension.
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#58
Franz von Stuck58. Amazon in Battle
Amazon in Battle captures the warrior in full action. Von Stuck simplifies the setting to concentrate energy on bodies and weapons. The mythological episode becomes a study of movement where musculature serves as narrative.
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#59
Gustav Klimt59. Female Friends I
Under the title Female Friends I, Klimt depicts two women close together within a space saturated with patterns. Dresses and floral background almost abolish depth. Intimacy emerges as much through the figures’ closeness as through sharing one decorative fabric.
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#60
Franz von Stuck60. Amazon and Centaur
Amazon and Centaur brings together two mythological figures whose confrontation seems as physical as symbolic. Von Stuck contrasts the warrior’s control with animal strength. The composition leaves the outcome suspended, like a duel sculpted before impact.
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#61
Odilon Redon61. Anemones and Tulips
Redon paints anemones and tulips with a freedom of colour transforming the bouquet into an apparition. Flowers are not classified as in a herbarium; they float within vibrant space. His late period discovers an inexhaustible source of strangeness in botany.
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#62
Edvard Munch62. Ashes
In Ashes, Munch shows a dejected man and a woman with dishevelled hair after a romantic encounter. The forest surrounds their distress without commenting. The title suggests what remains when desire has burned faster than promises.
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#63
Odilon Redon63. Apollo
Redon’s Apollo is not a god described through archaeology. He emerges within colourful light as a force of clarity. Myth allows the painter to contrast solar momentum with the monsters and shadows of his inner world.
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#64
Odilon Redon64. Apollo Victorious over the Serpent Python
Apollo Victorious over the Serpent Python revisits the god’s foundational battle at Delphi. Redon dissolves action within a cloud of colours. Victory is not military: it resembles a slow passage from darkness towards luminous consciousness.
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#65
Egon Schiele65. Street Cart
Schiele’s Street Cart transforms an ordinary vehicle into a restless, isolated form. Wheels, body and street carry the same graphic tension as his human figures. Even without a model, the city seems to possess a slightly anxious body.
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#66
Odilon Redon66. Apparition
In Apparition, Redon makes a figure emerge from indefinite space. Contours remain deliberately unstable, as though the image hesitated between memory and vision. Painting invites us to look without supplying instructions, which suits it rather well.
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#67
Gustav Klimt67. After the Rain
After the Rain shows Klimt far from the gold of Viennese portraits. The damp landscape is constructed through small strokes and masses of vegetation. Cleansed air and darkened paths reveal his attention to atmospheric variations around the Attersee.
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#68
Egon Schiele68. Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (Winter Tree)
Schiele paints this autumn tree as an organism subjected to wind. Thin branches twist against an almost empty background. Landscape reprises the vulnerability of his human bodies, but with roots to try to hold on.
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#69
Odilon Redon69. Trees against a Blue Sky
Trees against a Blue Sky belongs to Redon’s colourful period. Trunks and foliage rise within unreal light. The natural subject becomes a passage between observed world and inner vision without an abrupt rupture between them.
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#70
Gustav Klimt70. Attersee
Klimt spent summers near the Attersee and painted the lake in square formats. The horizon rises, water fills with small strokes and distance contracts. Landscape becomes a meditative surface rather than a tourist panorama.
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#71
Ramón Casas71. At the Moulin de la Galette
At the Moulin de la Galette, Ramón Casas observes Montmartre sociability during his Paris stay. The dance venue is treated with restraint, far from spectacular posters. The Catalan painter learns a modernity here that he will bring back to Barcelona.
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#72
Jan Toorop72. Broek in Waterland
Jan Toorop paints Broek in Waterland by simplifying houses, canals and sky into supple rhythms. The Dutch village retains its calm, but undulating lines give it an almost organic life. Landscape participates fully in Art Nouveau’s vocabulary.
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#73
Ferdinand Hodler73. The Woodcutter
Hodler makes the woodcutter a monumental figure at the precise moment the axe falls. The worker fills the canvas and landscape is reduced to his gesture. This commission for Swiss banknotes transforms everyday effort into a national emblem.
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#74
Edvard Munch74. The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life gathers love’s stages on an Åsgårdstrand beach. A woman in white advances, a couple dances at the centre and a black figure moves away. Munch arranges the birth of desire, possession and solitude within a circle that stops for nobody.
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#75
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec75. The Gypsy Woman
The Gypsy Woman, painted in 1899, shows Lautrec’s interest in performers away from the spotlight. The sitter retains a direct presence without an intrusive cabaret setting. Rapid brushwork captures a personality rather than a picturesque type.
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Alpine lakes, gardens, cities and national legends carry the new line far beyond Paris and Vienna.
#76
Fernand Khnopff76. Portrait of Marguerite
Khnopff paints his sister Marguerite in a white dress, standing upright before a closed door. Frontality and spareness give the portrait an almost ritual distance. A recurring model for the artist, she embodies an ideal of inaccessible, perfectly silent beauty here.
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#77
Egon Schiele77. Seated Couple
In Seated Couple, Schiele interlocks two bodies without erasing individuality. Clothing and limbs form a compact construction on bare paper. Intimacy seems real, but the surrounding emptiness reminds us how fragile this closeness remains.
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#78
Ferdinand Hodler78. Madame Valentine Godé-Darel Ill
Hodler paints Valentine Godé-Darel during the illness that would claim her in 1915. Far from official portraiture, the series follows his companion’s decline with devastating honesty. This image is an act of presence as much as a confrontation with death.
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#79
Egon Schiele79. Two Women in Love
Schiele’s Two Women in Love combines desire and vulnerability within a close pose. Angular contours prevent the image becoming decorative. The two figures occupy a space of their own, detached from surrounding social conventions.
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#80
Alphonse Mucha80. Coronation of the Serbian Tsar Stefan Dušan as Byzantine Emperor
This scene belongs to The Slav Epic, Mucha’s monumental cycle recounting the history of Slavic peoples. Stefan Dušan’s coronation becomes a collective ceremony saturated with costumes and symbols. The artist leaves the poster here for grand history painting.
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#81
Egon Schiele81. Crescent of Houses (The Small Town V)
In Crescent of Houses, Schiele observes Krumau, his mother’s birthplace. Closely packed façades follow the terrain’s curve like an organism. The almost complete absence of inhabitants gives the small town a strange independent life.
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#82
Egon Schiele82. Crescent of Houses II (Island Town)
Crescent of Houses II revisits the island town by emphasising juxtaposed façades. Roofs, windows and walls become an irregular mosaic. Schiele treats architecture like a group of bodies, each leaning according to its own fatigue.
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#83
Alphonse Mucha83. Meeting at Křižky
Meeting at Křižky belongs to Mucha’s historical paintings devoted to Czech memory. Assembly and landscape place political speech within a community. The decorative line serves a national narrative here rather than a Parisian advertisement.
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#84
Egon Schiele84. Dead City III (The City on the Blue River III)
Dead City III shows Krumau as an almost deserted town beside water. Crowded houses and muted colours create a funerary presence. Schiele does not paint ruins: he gives an inhabited city the appearance of an already distant memory.
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#85
Egon Schiele85. Houses in Winter (View from the Studio)
From his studio, Schiele looks at houses caught in winter. Dark façades align beneath cold light without human anecdote. The neighbourhood becomes a collective portrait where every building seems to endure the season in its own way.
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#86
Alphonse Mucha86. Woman in the Wilderness
Mucha’s Woman in the Wilderness belongs to compositions where an allegorical figure dominates a stylised landscape. Costume, veil and undulating line construct a more narrative vision than his decorative panels. The character’s solitude gives the setting its emotional scale.
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#87
Stanisław Wyspiański87. Girl Extinguishing a Candle
Wyspiański captures a girl bending over a candle in brief domestic light. The act of extinguishing it becomes the portrait’s centre. Pastel preserves this moment before the room, and perhaps childhood itself, slips into darkness.
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#88
Léon Bakst88. Ida Rubinstein
Bakst paints Ida Rubinstein, a Ballets Russes dancer, with the elongated elegance that made her famous. The portrait combines society personality and stage presence. Costume, pose and line transform the sitter into a modern apparition without reducing her to a role.
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#89
Ferdinand Hodler89. The Sacred Hour
The Sacred Hour belongs to Hodler’s symbolic compositions founded on repetition. Female figures form a calm, almost musical frieze. The painter calls this pursuit of visible order capable of expressing spiritual experience parallelism.
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#90
Ramón Casas90. The Charge
The Charge, painted after the suppression of a workers’ demonstration in Barcelona, shows a mounted guard dispersing the crowd. Casas leaves a large empty space around the central violence. The political event becomes a striking image of power and panic.
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#91
Józef Mehoffer91. The Muse
In The Muse, Mehoffer combines portrait, allegory and floral decoration. The figure seems to belong to a real interior while embodying artistic inspiration. Polish Modernism’s lines and colours transform human presence into decorative rhythm.
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#92
Jan Toorop92. The New Generation
Toorop’s The New Generation shows how his sinuous line can carry a social and spiritual idea. Figures answer one another like branches of one tree. The title looks towards the future without abandoning the end of the century’s Symbolist density.
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#93
Edvard Munch93. Puberty
Munch painted Puberty around 1894: a nude adolescent sits before an enormous shadow. Frontality, crossed arms and the spare bed express sudden bodily awareness. The shadow seems to grow faster than the sitter, neatly summarising the age in question.
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#94
Akseli Gallen-Kallela94. Joukahainen’s Revenge
In the Kalevala, Joukahainen prepares revenge after losing a singing duel against Väinämöinen. Gallen-Kallela paints the tense archer within a frozen landscape. Legend advances here with the silent precision of an arrow before release.
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#95
Akseli Gallen-Kallela95. Lake Keitele
Lake Keitele, painted in 1905, shows a Finnish expanse crossed by long silver traces. These bands may evoke wind, Väinämöinen’s wake or a luminous phenomenon. Real landscape thus opens discreetly onto national myth.
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#96
Ferdinand Hodler96. Lake Geneva Seen from Chexbres
From Chexbres, Hodler overlooks Lake Geneva and orders lake, mountains and clouds into parallel bands. Repetition simplifies landscape without impoverishing it. Each shore answers the other within a broad, stable and almost musical vision.
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#97
Edvard Munch97. Separation
Separation belongs to the Frieze of Life. A man turns away while a luminous woman remains near the shore; her hair still seems to reach him. Munch paints physical pain continuing after departure rather than a recounted break-up.
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#98
Edvard Munch98. Vampire
Vampire shows a woman bending over a man’s neck. Munch initially called it Love and Pain; a friend imposed the more sensational title. Red hair envelops the couple, leaving the question open: a consoling kiss, domination or injury.
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#99
Fernand Khnopff99. Silence
Silence condenses Khnopff’s art: a closed profile, restrained gestures and space without an explicit narrative. The figure does more than ask for quiet; she makes silence almost material. The work protects its mystery with the efficiency of a locked door.
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#100
Stanisław Wyspiański100. Double Portrait
In this Double Portrait, Wyspiański uses pastel to capture two presences without official pomp. Faces, close but distinct, are connected by rapid lines and intimate framing. Polish Modernism becomes a matter of a shared gaze here.
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A Hundred Paintings, Three Lasting Impulses
The selection reveals a less uniform movement than it appears: Vienna covers bodies in ornament, Brussels cultivates silence, Munich awakens myths and northern modernisms give landscapes a memory.
The Surface Becomes Active
Patterns, colours and contours do more than decorate the subject: they determine its presence.
Myth Returns to the Present
Judith, Oedipus, Aino and Sisyphus speak to the anxieties of the late nineteenth century.
The Landscape Thinks
Lakes, gardens and cities become rhythms capable of carrying memory and emotion.
A Timeline in Arabesques
Five Dates to Follow the Painting
Hodler transforms sleep and fear of death into a great human frieze.
Von Stuck establishes a Symbolist painting in Munich as monumental as it is unsettling.
Klimt and his Viennese companions demand free art united with architecture and decoration.
Painting, music and exhibition space echo one another in a total artwork.
The Kiss and Adele Bloch-Bauer bring pictorial ornament to an intensity that became emblematic.
The Line in Depth
Why Does Art Nouveau Still Captivate?
In painting, Art Nouveau follows no single formula. Klimt transforms the canvas into a sensual mosaic; Khnopff constructs mental chambers; von Stuck gives myths physical power; Hodler orders bodies and landscapes through repetitions. Their common ground lies less in floral motifs than in making the entire surface work.
Symbolism runs through much of this selection. Redon opens reality onto dreams, Munch gives anxiety visible form and Schwabe populates nature with spiritual presences. Their curves are no affectation: they connect the body with emotion extending far beyond its contour.
In Barcelona, Casas and Rusiñol observe cafés, gardens and the political tensions of modern society. In Finland, Gallen-Kallela makes the Kalevala a national history in images. In Poland, Wyspiański and Mehoffer unite portrait, memory and decoration. The movement travels well and fortunately does not require every flower to have the same passport.
Landscapes also play an essential role. Klimt compresses gardens and lakes into tapestries; Hodler seeks order in shores and mountains; Schiele gives trees and houses his figures’ fragility. Nature is therefore never merely a polite background: it has its own character.
Four Keys to Understanding
Look Beyond the Arabesque
Immediate beauty opens the door; rhythm, symbol, material and pose then explain why these paintings continue to hold attention.
Follow Repetitions
Observe how bodies, trees, fabrics and horizons construct a cadence.
Identify the Narrative
A snake, flower or lake may carry mythological or intimate memory.
Compare Surfaces
Gold, coloured paint, pastel and flat areas give every school its own weight.
Read the Silences
A closed face or suspended gesture often tells more than the setting.
A Library of the Free Line
Continue after the Last Arabesque
Artists, collections, museums and sources place works within their history, because a line can wander while retaining a verifiable address.
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