They called it the Belle Epo^que, the "Beautiful Age": France's brief period of grace after concluding peace with Prussia in 1871 and before the horrors of World War I turned her pastures into killing fields in 1914.
"Paris 1900: Brilliance de la Belle Epo^que" is a ghost-haunted show. Portraits of elegant Frenchwomen greet the visitor in the entrance lobby of Tokyo's Teien Art Museum, which was once an Imperial residence and is a masterpiece of the French Art Deco style of the 1920s and '30s. There is Mme. Singer, her loosely folded arms accentuating her tiny, whaleboned waist. Middle-aged Mme. Herve is a little self-conscious in a revealing white, lacy dress. The stunning Mme. Rosenau casts a smoldering sideways look from a dark corner.
And just as in real life, the star of the show holds court in an inner sanctum. The "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, muse of Oscar Wilde and the icon of her age, reclines swathed in floor-length silk, idly fanning herself, in a wall-size portrait hung in the Teien's former dining room. These are the faces of just a century ago, but of a world now far distant, before Europe lost its innocence on the battlefields of two world wars.
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