

THE GILDED AGE REVISITED: PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COLLECTION
Painted in October 1887.
As Patrick Offenstadt remarks, "the Paris Béraud records is one where people enjoy themselves, making good use of the capital’s many resources. He also focuses on modern Paris, proud of its broad streets, its architecture and its élan…" (Patrick Offenstadt, op. cit., p. 85). The Parc Monceau, the entrance to which is marked by a grille that surrounds a colonnaded rotunda, seen here, is at once an important historical site and a distinctly modern space, located in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris (see fig. 2). Designed as an English-style garden for Philippe d’Orléans in the late-eighteenth century, it was the first park in the city to be reenvisioned and restored by Baron Haussmann during the Second Empire. The Parc Monceau was a favorite subject of Claude Monet, who painted six different views of this park in both 1876 and 1878. Perhaps the most iconic of the six is The Parc Monceau currently in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which focuses on the park as a space for fashionable Parisians at leisure.