Jean Louis Charles Garnier

Jean Louis Charles Garnier (1825-1898) was a French architect of the exuberant neobaroque style, an outgrowth of the effervescent but stricter classicism of Napoleon III's Second Empire style that began in the early 1850s.

Charles Garnier was born on Nov. 6, 1825, in Paris. He attended the École de Dessin, the atelier of Louis Hippolyte Lebas, and the École des Beaux-Arts in 1841, and he also worked for Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Garnier spent 5 years in Italy after winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1848.

Garnier entered the competition for the Académie Nationale de Musique, better known as the Opéra, in Paris in 1861. He won fifth prize in the first stage of a two-phase competition and later that year won the commission. The Opéra was built from 1862 to 1867; the interiors were not completed until 1874. Sited on an irregular diamond adjacent to the Grand Boulevard, the structure was inspired, according to Garnier, by Michelangelo and Jacopo Sansovino. The Opéra provided a setting for Parisian society. The foyer, grand staircase, and auditorium are spacious, open, and rich in decoration. Empress Eugénie had favored the project by Viollet-le-Duc and did not admire Garnier's sumptuousness, even though it suited the period. When asked by the Empress whether the Opéra was in the style of Louis XIV, XV, or XVI, Garnier tactfully replied, "It is of Napoleon III."

The same plastic richness of effect was used by Garnier in his Casino in Monte Carlo (1878; extended 1881), even though the finish is in stucco. Its magnificent site facing the bay is again a stage setting, this time for the wealthy gamblers' game of roulette. The game rooms, salons, and waiting rooms are sumptuous.

After the Casino, Garnier's style mellowed considerably in a host of works ranging from churches, libraries, hotels, and houses to tombs, including the tombs of his musical contemporaries Bizet (1880) and Offenbach (1883) in Paris. Garnier died on Aug. 3, 1898.

Garnier did not fit into the emerging movements of functionalism or expressive structure, even though the structural innovations of the Opéra were of predominant significance. Structure for its own sake, as in the Eiffel Tower, he considered hideous. His plan for the Opéra, he freely admitted in his book Le Nouvel Opéra de Paris (1875-1881), was based upon no theory: "I leave success or failure to chance alone." The sweeping dynamic movement of Garnier's neobaroque can be found in the more linear forms of Art Nouveau.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Garnier in French or English. General histories do not discuss him extensively, but Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958; 2d ed. 1963), describes his work in relation to the period. □

Garnier, Jean-Louis-Charles (1825–98). French architect, a student of Lebas. During his time as a pensionnaire in Rome (1848–54) he visited Greece and Turkey, and seems to have been more enchanted with Byzantine and other styles than he was with Ancient Greek architecture, although he investigated the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, largely from the point of view of its colouring in Antiquity. When he returned to Paris he worked for a period under Ballu, but took on what private commissions he could obtain. He made his name with his designs (won in competition) for the Opéra in Paris (1861–75), the most luxuriant building of the Second Empire and of the Beaux-Arts style, yet one in which the disposition of the main elements is immediately clear from the exterior. Garnier drew his inspiration from the Italian Renaissance, notably the architectural visions of Paolo Veronese (1528–88), the Venetian painter, while echoes of Sansovino are detectable. The lavish staircase mingled Baroque and Venetian Renaissance themes. The Opéra was immensely successful and influential, its confident brashness finally laying the drier aspects of French Rationalism to rest, and setting the agenda for public architectural style in France until 1914. The Opéra has tended to overshadow Garnier's many other architectural achievements. His ebullient interpretation of Italian and French Renaissance styles can be seen in a number of his works, including the Cercle de la Librairie (1878–9), 117 Boulevard St-Germain, the Maison Hachette apartment-block at 195 on the same Boulevard (1878–80), and, especially, the Casino, Monte Carlo (1876/8–9). The last, a lushly festive concoction, Influenced the style of buildings along the Riviera and in other seaside resorts. In the 1890s, however, the Casino theatre was altered to enable large-scale operatic performances to take place, and in 1897 Garnier protested, in vain, to the architect Henri Schmit (1851–1904) about the changes to his work.

He published his theory of theatre design in Le Théâtre (1871) and Nouvel Opéra de Paris (1878–81). His reconstruction of the temple at Aegina (complete with polychrome decorations) was published in Le Temple de Jupiter panhellenique à Egine (1884), and he also published works on domestic architecture in Constructions élevées aux Champs de Mars (1890) and L'Habitation humaine (1892).

Bibliography

Drexler (ed.) (1977);
C. Garnier (1871, 1878–81);
Klicxkowski (2003);
Mead (1991);
Patureau (1992);
Steinhauser (1970)

Jean Louis Charles Garnier (zhäN lwē shärl gärnyā´), 1825–98, French architect, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and won the Grand Prix de Rome (1848). He was awarded the commission for the Opéra in Paris (1861–75), which is his principal work. It provided an impressive focus for the new boulevards of G. E. Haussmann's city planning. It is an ornate interpretation of Renaissance architecture, especially noted for the grand staircase. Garnier also built the casino at Monte Carlo.