Berthe Pascault
The Green Fairy with Roses
Hand painted polychrome oil on porcelain
Signed lower left
In its original gilded wooden frame
About 1900
Plate dimensions H 15 cm L 11,5 cm
H 26 cm W 23 cm D 5 cm
The Green Fairy…Absinthe…the green fairy, the muse of writers, from Baudelaire and Rimbaud to Joyce and Hemingway. The drink that “drives you crazy” and which was long forbidden to consume.
On the glory side, lithographs by Daumier, paintings by Van Gogh, verses by Rimbaud or Verlaine… the image of the green fairy is marked by these representations of the Belle Époque, magnified by artists who sometimes describe her as a true muse. Outside this circle, absinthe was widely consumed in France, where in the 1900s it had become the aperitif par excellence on the terraces of large cities. Oddly enough, it was the soldiers who, returning from the colonies, started the fashion! In Africa, a few drops of absinthe purified the water they drank.
The "Belle époque" style or modern style was short-lived. It dates from 1895 to 1910. Artists who in turn became architects, decorators, glassmakers, or sculptors (such as Majorelle, Guimard, Gallé, Gaillard, Plumet, de Feure, and Selmersheim) while drawing inspiration from Gothic and Rococo art, Louis XV and Louis XVI styles. XVI, were able to create a new art inspired by nature, women, flowers and insects.