Salon · 1896
Galerie des Arts réunis – 1896 Salon de la Rose+Croix
Address · 28, avenue de l'Opéra, 75002 Paris
Metro · Pyramides (7, 14) / Opéra (3, 7, 8)
Today · Fate unknown. Gallery gone; the building's current use has not been checked.
The story
Avenue de l'Opéra, laid out under the Second Empire and completed in 1878, was in the 1890s one of the most prominent shopping streets in Paris. Private galleries rented their rooms to artists' societies. The Galerie des Arts réunis had a space large enough to hold thousands of visitors, and electric daytime lighting that was still rare at the time. It stood halfway between the Louvre and the Opéra.
After the 1894 and 1895 Salons in a small gallery on rue de la Paix, Péladan looked for somewhere larger: his marriage in January 1896 to a niece of Larmandie had earned him enormous publicity. The March 1896 Salon was organized by Larmandie while Péladan was in Venice. Churton reports more than eight thousand visitors on opening day and describes the controversy over the poster by Armand Point and Léonard Sarluys, in which Zola's head can be recognized.
The gallery disappeared long ago. All that remains is the memory of a popular exhibition, proof that Rosicrucian aesthetics attracted a wide public in the mid-1890s, despite the mockery of the critics. The address can be found at the number given, but nothing now distinguishes it from the other buildings on the avenue. Yet the 1896 Salon was one of the best attended of the series, and its famous poster is now held in several public collections. It illustrates the bitterness of the debate between Idealists and Naturalists at the end of the century.
To be checked · Churton writes “28 rue de l'Opéra”; this is most likely avenue de l'Opéra. Number and coordinates not verified.