Un Fort De La Valleé - Halles Centrales

(Emile -Henri Blanchon)

Oil On Canvas: 275 x 58.6 cm (114.58 x 24.42 in)

Exhibited: Exhibitied: Paris, Salon, 1884, no. 251.

Blanchon was a student of Cabanel, who came to fame in 1880, when he won first place, together Henri Gervex, in a major competition to select painters to decorate new town halls throughout Paris. Their designs, for the Marie in the XXe arrondissement for example, emphasized the daily life of the city, instead of the traditional allegorical scenes, mythologies, histories. For a series of wall and ceiling paintings in the XIXth arrondisement, the artists chose the distinctly modern image of a butcher leading a steer to the slaughterhouse. Blanchon’s decision to exhibit this scene from Les Halles at the1884 Salon reminded his audience of hison-going work for the nation.
The porters of Les Halles, les forts or the strong men, of the market were licensed to carry inspected merchandise to and from the daily auctions of fish, fowl, meat and vegetables (an auctioneer is in the background at left.) They controlled the bustling traffic of the marketplace with all the authority of French officialdom. Scenes of Les Halles became particularly popular in the decade following publication, in 1873, of Emile Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris, (the belly of Paris, referring to Les Halles) a novel set in and around the market which celebrated food and all its meanings for those who prepared, handled and sold it.
At the heart of the 1st arrondissement, on the right bank, near the Seine to the south and the Grands Boulevards to the north, a market had stood since the 12th century, when in 1183, King Philippe II Auguste had enlarged the his capital’s food market, building a shelter for the merchants. Goods arrived on barges that regularly sailed up the Seine. The area was first known as Les Champeaux, but got its nickname Les Halles because chacun y allait (all went there). In the 1850s, Victor Baltard designed the massive glass and iron buildings that became synonymous with the Les Halles of Zola’s Le Ventre.
During that heyday, the market sprawled over nearly a square mile, covered by Baltard’s wrought-iron pavillons or ‘umbrellas’ that formed an odorous labyrinth that was Europe’s greatest food market.
There was widespread opposition to the destruction of the structures in 1969, when the 19th century market was destroyed, and the food market moved to Paris’s suburb.

Paris, Salon, 1884, no. 251.