Le petit palais, Paris

Technique: Canvas, oil.
Size: 64.7 × 80.8 cm.

An urban scene depicting the Petit Palais, the Beaux-Arts exhibition hall built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle and now home to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris. Paris remained Hervé's principal subject throughout his life: he painted its boulevards, gardens and squares in the manner of a late Impressionism, with a light, vibrating touch and a pearly palette softened by diffuse light. The canvas continues this line, treating the architectural motif as part of the living fabric of Parisian daily life.