Henri Vever : Champion De L'art Nouveau

In 1898, the famous jeweler Henri Vever kept a journal. A promoter of Art Nouveau, he shared the fervor for this "modem style" of his contemporary René Lalique. A renowned art lover, he frequented the most prominent dealers and collectors. Vever is above all a passionate Japanese. 1898 also marked a political turning point. Vever followed closely the Dreyfus affair and was resolutely Anglophobic and Americanophobic when the Fachoda crisis and the Spanish-American war broke out. Fond of the new technical "wonders" of his time, he appreciated the color photographs of the Fumière brothers and the phonograph. This well-to-do Parisian bourgeois attended a rehearsal of Cyrano de Bergerac, tasted ice creams at the Café Napolitain, rode his bicycle in the Bois de Boulogne, consulted fortune-tellers... This fascinating chronicle of Parisian life on the threshold of the 20th century is a precious testimony to a pivotal moment, fully lived as such by a dynamic man introduced into the most varied Parisian circles.