thumb|250px|right|Neo-Grec architecture in the tomb of actor [[Bogumil Dawison in Dresden, Germany]]

Néo-Grec was a Neoclassical Revival style of the mid-to-late 19th century that was popularized in architecture, the decorative arts, and in painting during France's Second Empire, the reign of Napoleon III (1852–1870). The Néo-Grec vogue took as its starting point the earlier expressions of the Neoclassical style inspired by 18th-century excavations at Pompeii, which resumed in earnest in 1848, and similar excavations at Herculaneum. The style mixed elements of the Graeco-Roman, Pompeian, Adam and Egyptian Revival styles into "a richly eclectic polychrome mélange." "The style enjoyed a vogue in the United States, and had a short-lived impact on interior design in England and elsewhere." According to Levine, Néo-Grec was a somewhat looser style, which "replaced the rhetorical form of classical architectural discourse by a more literal and descriptive syntax of form." It was meant to be a "readable" architecture.

American architect Richard Morris Hunt introduced Néo-Grec massing into his buildings in the late 1860s and 1870s. Hunt's student, Frank Furness, did the same in his early Philadelphia buildings, and experimented with using massing and visual "weight" for dramatic effect.

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File:Etrurisches Zimmer.jpg|Etruscan room (1840), watercolor by Friedrich Wilhelm Klose, City Palace, Potsdam, Germany

File:Frédéric-Eugène Piat - Cheminée monumentale de style néo-grec.JPG|Cheminée monumentale de style néo-grec (1862), Frédéric-Eugène Piat, Paris, France

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In the United States

Frank Furness and furniture maker Daniel Pabst created Neo-Grec furniture for the city house of liquor baron Henry C. Gibson, circa 1870, and for the library of the architect's brother, Horace Howard Furness, circa 1871.

File:Desk, designed by Frank Furness, 1870-71, Philadelphia Museum of Art.jpg|Horace Howard Furness desk & chair (1870-71), designed by Frank Furness and made by Daniel Pabst. Philadelphia Museum of Art

File:RooseveltDiningroom.jpg|Dining room of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. ( 1873), Manhattan, New York City. The dining table is now in the collection of the High Museum of Art.

File:Pabst Neo-Grec Armchair profile.jpg|Neo-Grec armchair (1870–1875), attributed to Daniel Pabst, Philadelphia, private collection

File:Cabinet MET DT180 cropped.jpg|Modern Gothic exhibition cabinet (1877–1880), attributed to Daniel Pabst, Philadelphia, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Painting

In painting, the Neoclassical style continued to be taught in the Académie des Beaux-Arts, inculcating crisp outlines, pellucid atmosphere, and a clear, clean palette. However, a formal Neo-Grec group of artists was created in the mid 19th century after growing interest in Ancient Greece and Rome, and especially the later excavations at Pompeii. The Paris Salon of 1847, revealed the academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, who in The Cock Fight depicted a composition in which, in a scene of antiquity, a young boy and a girl attend the combat of two cocks. Gérôme gained fame from this exhibition, and in the next year formed the Neo-Grec group with Jean-Louis Hamon and Henri-Pierre Picou&mdash;all three pupils in the same atelier under Charles Gleyre.

Gleyre himself adopted the tenets of neo-classicism more strictly than others at the time, adopting the classical style and aesthetic, but almost exclusively applying it to myths and motifs from antiquity, recalling both characters from Greek myth, and antique emblems such as bacchantes and putti. The Neo-Grec group took Gleyre's style and interests, but adapted it from use in history painting as in Gleyre's work, into genre painting. Because they were inspired by discoveries at Pompeii, they were also called néo-pompéiens.

Louis Hector Leroux was also identified as a Neo-Grec.

The paintings of the Neo-Grecs sought to capture everyday, anecdotal trivialities of ancient Greek life, in a manner of whimsy, grace, and charm, and were often realistic, sensual, and erotic. For this reason they were also called "anacreontic" after the Greek poet Anacreon, who wrote sprightly verses in praise of love and wine. Alfred de Tanouarn describes one of Hamon's paintings as "clear, simple and natural, the idea, the attitudes and the aspects. It leads the lips a soft smile; it causes us an inexpressible feeling of pleasure in which one is happy to stop and view the painting". It can perhaps be said the motto of this group was "the goal of art is to charm". Most Neo-Grec paintings were also done in a horizontal layout as in a frieze decoration or Greek vases, with the composition simplified.

The Neo-Grec school was criticized in many respects; for its attention to historical detail it was said by Charles Baudelaire "the scholarship is to disguise the absence of imagination", and the subject matter was considered by many as trivial. The painters were also charged with selectively adopting the ancient Greek style, in that they left out noble themes and only focused on trivial daily life&mdash;leading to the accusation that they were creating art that supported the ideologies of the bourgeoisie, or comfortable middle class.

The discovery in Pompeii also inspired history paintings based on the event, not necessarily strictly in a Neo-Grec style, such as The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Briullov.

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File:Jean-Léon Gérôme - Jeunes Grecs faisant battre des coqs, 1846.jpg|The Cock Fight by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1846

File:Hamon Jean-Louis-Old China Shop (Pompeii).jpg|The Old China Shop (Pompeii) by Jean-Louis Hamon, 1860. Hamon was one of the original members of the Neo-Grec group and one of the longest running adapters of the style. Here, Hamon specifically references Pompeii.

File:Toulmouche Auguste-Maternal Love.jpg|Maternal Love by Auguste Toulmouche. Toulmouche often associated with the Neo-Grec group and many of his paintings, though not depicting antique subjects, adapted the style to a context that was contemporary, using subjects considered 'bourgeois' in reflecting the daily life of the French middle class.

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Music

The Neo-Grec vogue even made its way into French music through the works of the composer Erik Satie in a series of pieces called Gymnopédies – the title is a reference to dances performed by the youths of ancient Sparta in honour of Diana and Apollo at ceremonies commemorating the dead of the Battle of Thyrea. Their archaic melodies float above a modally oriented harmonic basis. The melodies of the Gnossiennes go further in this direction; they use ancient Greek chromatic mode (A–G flat–F–E–D flat–C–B–A) and an arabesque ornamentation.

See also

  • List of architectural styles
  • Goût grec
  • Empire style
  • Federal architecture
  • Neoclassical influenced fashions

References

;Notes

  • Greek Revival - Buffalo Architecture and History Neo-Grec features and examples from Buffalo
  • Antique Room Neo-Grec furniture furniture gallery
  • Bradbury & Bradbury Wallpapers Neo-grec roomset and links to wallpapers showing typical neo-grec patterns