Boldini: Pleasures and Days

Giovanni Boldini, Portrait of Miss Bell, 1903, oil on canvas, Villa Grimaldi Fassio, Civica Raccolta Luigi Frugone (Musei di Nervi), Italy © Musei di Nervi, Raccolte Frugone

Boldini: Pleasures and Days is the first a major exhibition devoted to the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini in France for more than 60 years. And yet, the virtuoso portrait painter, also a keen observer of the high society circles he moved in and admired, was one of the brightest stars of the Paris art scene at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. An evocative and immersive scenography provides the backdrop for a selection of 150 works including paintings, drawings, engravings, costumes and fashion accessories lent by international museums such as the Giovanni Boldini museum in Ferrara, the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, London’s National Portrait Gallery, the Musée d’Orsay, the Palais Galliera, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs among others, as well as many private collections. The exhibition invites visitors to delve into the pleasures of the Belle Époque through Boldini’s œuvre, and delight in the scintillating atmosphere of a capital on the cutting edge of modernity.