Restaurant scene Fin-de-siècle Paris: the Mecca of Art Nouveau. The great 'world exhibitions' of the last decades of the nineteenth century had popularized a series of exceptional new scientific achievements which, via Paris, had spread their fame all over the world. A thousand novelties put an end for ever to the old traditional way of life, replacing it with a totally new technological reality and a new attitude to life, unmistakable in its style. Art Nouveau is not a uniform, codified phenomenon but a rich and varied brew, exemplified by a whole list of different personalities from Eiffel to Debussy, from Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Gallé and Guimard right up to Lalique - to say nothing of the 'newcomers' like Mucha, from Prague, Bakst, with his Russian ballets or Boldini, with his portraits. It was certainly a great age, a great 'epoch'; but it faded quickly. Part of the series La Grande Epoque

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