15 Facts About Frantz Jourdain

Frantz Jourdain is best known for La Samaritaine, an Art Nouveau department store built in the 1st arrondissement of Paris in three stages between 1904 and 1928.

Frantz Jourdain was respected as an authority on Art Nouveau.

Frantz Jourdain began writing on the arts in 1875, and by the end of his life had published about two hundred articles in sixty magazines and newspapers, at first news items but later critical articles in which he expressed his thoughts on art.

Between 1880 and 1910, Jourdain was at the forefront of the movement to renew and synthesize the arts, and played an important role in introducing new ideas.

Frantz Jourdain discovered unknown painters of the late 19th century and was a great admirer of the Galerie des machines of the Exposition Universelle, designed by Ferdinand Dutert and Victor Contamin.

Frantz Jourdain had become a prominent and often quoted art critic by the 1890s, an opponent of academic training and of the English Arts and Crafts movement.

Frantz Jourdain was hostile to institutions such as the Beaux-Arts, which stifled new talent, and thought the Prix de Rome which sent artists to the Villa Medici to study the well-known antiquities was a waste of time.

Frantz Jourdain then bought the building, and in stages bought the building that faces it on the rue de la Monnaie.

Frantz Jourdain was given the job of creating the maximum amount of space as quickly and cheaply as possible, and designed a radical steel structure.

Frantz Jourdain's work was part of the architecture event in the art competitions at the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Frantz Jourdain built Store 3 on the lot bounded by the rues de Rivoli, Pont-Neuf and Boucher between 1930 and 1933.

Frantz Jourdain was a founding member of the Societe du Nouveau Paris, a group that promoted modernization of Paris.

Frantz Jourdain's son Francis Jourdain was a designer, writer, and painter.

Francis Frantz Jourdain said of the society in which he grew up that it was dominated by people who were highly opinionated and quick to take sides.

Frantz Jourdain's father was very much typical of this society.