Beauty Tycoons

What we can learn from the Belle-Époque industrialists

By Avetis Muradyan · 9 July 2025

The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life […] This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

— Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The hollowing of the arts and literature in the early 20th century and the dominance of suffocating state structures predates us already by several generations. Walter Benjamin’s commandement—Communism responds by politicizing art—has been the mantra of the Leftist march through the institutions (including the MFA programmes, the grant committees, and the museums). The regime art sucks because it is always political, it is always trying to hamfist its dogma down our throat. It is always there to fight the supposed spectre of fascism. There is a reason no MFA programme has managed to—or even can—produce a Rimbaud: Communism responds by politicizing art.

For those on the Right pondering on how to get out of this pit, hope lies on the flip side of this mantra. There is no need for ‘Right wing art’ because all real art is now by definition reactionary and hostile to regime prescriptions—whether we understand real art as the Scrutonian “that which affirms us in our joy or consoles us in our sorrow” or much widely the pursuit of excellence, beauty and creativity. In this respect, the Belle-Époque —as the peak of literary, artistic achievement—provides a very interesting case study and a model to emulate.

***

Duchess

Paris was the centre of the universe at the end of the nineteenth century. All the crowned heads of Europe made pilgrimages to the city of lights. One of these was Grand-Duc Wladimir of Russia, a fanatic of the bohemian world of Montmartre. The Grand-Duc and his wife were usually accompanied by Laure de Chevigné (née de Sade—yes that one) who, as the chainsmoking enfant terrible of the French upper class, had for years cultivated a variety of relationships and patronages with the dingy cultural milieu of Montmartre.

On one particular trip, Laure took the Grand-Duc and the Grande-Duchesse straight to the Chat-Noir, the first cabaret in Paris with its eclectic byzantine decor—part Louis XIII, part museum of morbid objects—where Rodolphe Salis, the owner and presenter of the Cabaret, served them with a tirade that would have landed him in Siberia had they not been in Paris. Being a good sport, the Grand-Duc was elated by the daring, and Laure was left triumphant as she had tastefully blended the heights of society with the gutters of the capital of Europe.

Rodolphe Salis, the creator of the Chat-Noir, was a matchless cultural entrepreneur who had the idea to introduce Baudelairean absinthe drinking to noble and bourgeois crowds. As most ventures, cultural or otherwise, the Chat-Noir had very modest origins—a sombre decor and served cheap wine. Salis, who despite graduating from Beaux-Arts Paris, had plowed as a failed religious trinket maker to bide his artistic ventures as a bohemian artist in Montmartre, reinvented himself as a maestro of performance and curation. Bedecked in gold from head and toe, armed with his hors-pair charisma, he welcomed his bohemian friends to his absinthe den night after night to the most outrageous performances in all Montmartre. The venue was soon discovered by bourgeois and aristocratic Paris and eventually the crowned heads of Europe by the craze of parnassian absinthe drinking and ombres chinoises.

The Chat-Noir was a favourite meeting place among the artists and writers of Montmartre, who eventually spun out multiple literary groups. Salis later started his own literary magazine, La Revue du Chat-Noir, to promote his venue which featured the poets and songwriters who presented at the cabaret, as well as the artists which helped decorate it. Salis embodied almost perfectly the cultural entrepreneurship and avenues of artistic and literary cross-pollination and multi-media experimentation responsible for the long-lasting impression of the Belle-Époque on us moderns.

That Laure de Chevigné was well acquainted with that world came as no surprise. The Comtesse de Chevigné was an outrageous figure among the aristocratic set. She chainsmoked, was an avid rider and hunter, had an affected peasant speak from her childhood in the country, and cursed like a man. Despite flaunting all the social rules which applied to women of her social standing, Laure de Chevigné had won her spurs. She had spent her youth in Frohsdorf, in Austria, at the exiled court of Henry V, the legitimist pretender to the throne of France where her husband, the count Adhéaume de Chevigné, served the exiled prince, plotting against successive Orleanist, Bonapartist and Republican governments to reinstate Bourbon rule in France. That she was greatly liked by the tragic Henry V was part of her legend and made her a lasting fixture in royalist circles. She banked on her stellar social standing to host a salon which included major musical, literary and artistic figures of the Belle-Époque. Her patronage and support won her a cameo in Maupassant’s infamous Bel-Ami as Mme de Marelle who becomes the patron of her lover, Georges Duroy, and assists in his social rise.

The salons of high flying socialites were immensely sought after by the artists and writers of the Belle-Époque—who determined who “was in” and who “was out”. Their patronage became valuable for the careers of budding artists and literati. Their friendship and company was appreciated in of itself as these women were paragons of refinement and good taste. Serving as unattainable portraits of perfection, they appear incessantly, immortalized, throughout the works of art and literature from the period—none more so than Élisabeth de Greffulhe, an acquaintance and rival of Laure de Chevigné, who became the mythical queen of the Belle-Époque.

A portrait of Élisabeth de Greffulhe by Philip de László. — Élisabeth de Greffulhe

A master of the social theatre, de Greffulhe weaponised her great beauty and extravagant taste in fashion to dazzle the gallery. She carefully cultivated an image and forged associations by designing her outfits to recall famous paintings such as Da Vinci’s Saint John the Baptist or Jacques Louis-David’s Portrait of Madame Récamier, impressing her association with the world of the arts. She appears in a variety of works by the most famous artists of the time, including the painters Philip de László and Gustave Moreau, who painted a now lost portrait (she was also the owner of his L’Apparition which she first saw in his studio while posing), as well as Nadar, the most eminent photographer of the era. De Greffulhe was herself a prolific writer and espitolerian, authoring hundreds of texts, some published pseudonymously, and an amateur painter. Her patronage includes Gabriel Fauré with whom she founded the Société des Grandes Auditions Musicales de France and Marie Curie whose Institut du radium she supported.

Republican Vertigo

The French Third Republic was in many ways a polite fiction. Since the Bourbon Restoration, the aristocracy had returned to France and resumed their lives in their palatial estates. Taking up urban residences in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Paris’ social life became entirely absorbed and regimented. The aristocracy often strolled around the city in bedecked carriages accompanied by servants in livery to the mesmerised Parisian crowd as if the revolution of 1789 had not happened. An entire presse mondaine made currency of the parties, outings, gossip, fashion, and tastes of the monde in which the entire republic was kept in thrall. In a strange inversion, the press (the very tool of democratic consensus making), became a critical mechanism for the French aristocracy in maintaining their prestige and social power.

Another major class dynamic was the rise of the bourgeoisie in France in the entirety of the 19th century. With the instauration of the July Monarchy in 1830, the self-proclaimed “Bourgeois-King” Louis-Phillipe d’Orléans instated free market and free trade reforms which quickly turned a ravaged post-war French economy into an economic powerhouse. Major investments in rail and textiles, as well as the early industrial economy of the country, happened under Orléansist economic directives. It had the secondary effect of leading to the rise of the French bourgeoisie in all sectors of public life. Although the Jewish Rothschild and Péreire families dominated French finance, the industrial revolution also catapulted the steel barons Schneiders, Wendels, as well as the Protestant bourgeoisie from peripheral but mineral rich regions of France into pre-eminence. They often became funders and patrons of their own right and helped finance the boiling art and literary scene of the Belle-Époque.

Jean Béraud's "Une Soirée" / Claude Monet's "Le Train dans la neige"

The wider economic effects shouldn’t be discarded. The industrial revolution and its captains of industry managed to bring about the most transformative prosperity in France’s history. The GDP of France in the “long nineteenth”, from 1789-1913 increased ~900%, and GDP per capita ~500%. Life expectancy doubled, and the literacy rate went from 30% for men to 95% for both sexes. The overcrowded cities of France of 1789 had been replaced by some of the most charming urbanism in the world with wide avenues, sanitation, and urban transportation. It created a wealthy middle class who had the means to support the arts and literature both as consumers of cultural products as well as producers.

This exceptionally fruitful period for the arts and the letters was dominated by the tastemaking and patronage by the aristocracy, as well as the funding and the wider prosperity brought about by the bourgeoisie. In that sense, Belle-Époque society confounds all pedestrian academic prescriptions about democracy, egalitarianism, capitalism and their relationship to art and literature. It was arguably the most active period of high quality literary production coupled with an extremely widespread and truly sincere appreciation of the arts and architecture. Yet, it was deeply aristocratic, bourgeois, inegalitarian, hyper-capitalist and imperialist—essentially everything that the Left has been trying to eradicate.

The bourgeoisie, its values and its spirit of entrepreneurship, is not incompatible with High Culture or the search for excellence, but can rather push it to new heights.

This contradiction shouldn’t be lost on anyone. The Belle-Époque is familiar to us in the sense that it is a modern industrial society and not a mythical golden age lost in the pages of history. The high and petite bourgeoisie are classes that perdure into our 21st century. However, the Belle-Époque also shows that things can be exactly the same, yet completely different. Any student of the era walks away with the impression that the suffocating 20th century and its institutions and structures which rule the 21st have left vast swathes of our modernity in a catatonic state. We seemed to have missed our chance at another modernity.

As such, many aspects of their modernity seem to be lacking in ours, such as— for an age dominated by the bourgeoisie— bourgeois virtues. The Left has always sneered in utter disgust at profit, placing in it the root of all evil. Likewise, the parts of the New Right ape, without the wealth, breeding or taste of a decadent aristocracy, a hatred of commerce and the merchant. But the Belle-Époque is a fount of inconvenient examples to the contrary. The bourgeoisie, its values and its spirit of entrepreneurship, is not incompatible with High Culture or the search for excellence, but can rather push it to new heights.

***

Merchant

“We are on this earth, not for our own amusement and to only think only of ourselves and our loved ones, but to do good all around us, within the limits of our power […] The fortune that divine providence has placed in our hands does not belong to us; this should never be forgotten, we are merely who dispense it.”

— Durand-Ruel, Letter to his son

A life-long devout Catholic, art dealer Durand-Ruel is above all the most ingenious art merchant of the Belle-Époque. He brought Impressionism, the art form we most associate with the Belle-Époque, to world-wide renown, developing through the decades of investment and careful marketing the playbook for the modern art market. His Catholic view of wealth, beauty, and art, informed his approach to the art business in the very bourgeois sense of a warden of earthly wealth.

The triumph of Impressionism was not his first success. Having abandoned his officer studies at the prestigious St-Cyr, Paul returned to the struggling paternal Durand-Ruel gallery where he found a vocation despite having been more inclined for a military or ecclesiastical career. Having met Monet and Camille Pissarro in London during the Franco-Prussian war, he became their admirer, patron and promoter—purchasing their paintings and paying for Monet’s expanses so that he might focus entirely on his art.

Back in Paris, Durand-Ruel would meet the full set of the Impressionist movement. He earnestly launched himself into its promotion of the New Painting, which almost destroyed him. As he writes in one of his memoirs:

All my efforts were thwarted by the violent campaign mounted against Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas and Puvis de Chavannes, and other artists whose work I had the audacity to show in my galleries. Attacked and reviled by the upholders of the academy and old doctrines, by the most established art critics, by the entire press and by most of my colleagues, they were beginning to become the laughing stock of the salons and the public… I was treated as a madman and a person of bad faith. Little by little the trust I had succeeded in inspiring disappeared and my best clients began to question me.

To pay off his creditors he sold his other collections, through intermediaries because his name was then entirely toxic in the art world. He was facing financial ruin:

I had to raise cash from everywhere […] I sublet the apartment […] Only one person agreed to lend me money, on the value of the frames, not the value of the pictures.

At the death of his pregnant wife after the armistice of 1871, he was left a widower with five young children. He never remarried and pursued his impressionist campaign with missionary zeal.

French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel and his son

The first sigh of relief came from America. When Durand-Ruel set sail to New York with 300 frames at the invitation of the American Art Association, the Impressionists were well received for the first time. The exhibition was so popular it had to be extended. American collectors took to the New Painting with a lot of enthusiasm, and Durand-Ruel began climbing out of his financial pit. Although he always had a presence in America prior, Durand-Ruel continued to reinforce this market over the decades. He opened a New York subsidiary, ‘Durand-Ruel and Sons’, where the family made sure one of the sons was in America at all times. From London, he’d write: “Monet is more familiar in American backwood towns than here.” Americans did not have the same snobbish prejudices about art as European collectors, so America became a staple market for Durand-Ruel for decades, helping catapult the Impressionists’ popularity back in the Old World and to the heights of success. “My madness had been wisdom. To think that, had I passed away at 60, I would have died debt-ridden and bankrupt, surrounded by a wealth of underrated treasures,” he’d write towards the end of his life.

Durand-Ruel’s ‘method’, revolutionary at the time, was based on seven principles: the protection of the art above all; the exclusivity of the artist’s work (to achieve monopoly); individual exhibitions over group exhibitions; access to international markets through a network of galleries; access to his galleries free of charge (as well as his apartment where works were on display); use of press to market the works, and the blending of the world of finance with art (trade financing). Additionally, he was also among the first to create prints of the paintings, as well as to disseminate them widely, like Rodolphe Salis had done with his Revue du Chat-Noir.

The Durand-Ruel case demonstrates that innovation, capital, markets are not contrary to art, excellence and beauty. Rather, they can be ways to push art to wider and better recognition. There is no inherent ‘badness’ to the profit motive. The profit motive is not always the primary motive for most entrepreneurs anyway; it can often be an indicator of the health of the business. The principle of marriage between the world of finance and art—what today we would call ‘financialization’—is also not necessarily something which takes away from the integrity of our cultural mission. If Durand-Ruel did not have access to the trade financing, there would have been no Impressionism and no artistic avant-garde.

***

It is then no surprise that the Impressionist found resonance in America. That so many Monets, Renoirs, and Degas’ found their way into the studies of American industrialists and tycoons is, in retrospect, self-evident. The origins of the movement is one rooted in entrepreneurship, and American entrepreneurs must have seen some reflection of themselves in their own collections. That the New York’s Modern Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts hold the lion’s share of the Durand-Ruel collections is just the legacy of that spirit which dominated Gilded Age America on the other side of the Atlantic.

Today, we have much to recover from the spirit that animated Gilded Age America and Belle-Époque France. The motto of the literary Parnassian movement was “L’Art pour l’Art” (Art for Art’s sake). To describe their approach to poetry, they used the figure of the sculptor. The cult of work and of aesthetic excellence trumped all their other concerns.

Many on the New Right have for some decades now tried to look for answers to the problem of the pervasive ugliness of our society. Distressing decades indeed, it is perhaps time to take the La Belle-Époque prescription to heart and stop lingering on the battlefields of an already won Culture War. The season for bickering is over; it is time to build, sculpt, create, buy, sell and fund.