French Art Nouveau deserves an important place, both for the quantity of artists and work which it produced and for the high level it reached. The society of the period, middle-class and refined, accepted the new artistic tendencies with enthusiasm, making it the subject of a real fashion. On the other hand, Art Nouveau in France did not develop only following ideas originating from England and Belgium, but had its own original introductions.
These may be traced both in the paintings of Gustave Moreau, Rodolphe Bresdin and Odilon Redon, impregnated with symbolistic elements, with anti-historicism and the taste for the exotic, and in the theories of the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) who, parallel to Ruskin e Morris, promoted the Gothic taste, a new attention to the design of everyday objects, the use of iron and the importance of the structural elements, left bare.
There were two principal centres: Paris and Nancy.
In Paris, more open and international, the abstract and symbolic – structural of Belgian origin aspect was developed.
In Nancy the bond with tradition prevailed and dominated the floral taste close to rococo.
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