Fashion in Art: The Second Empire and Impressionism

Between 1850 and 1900 fashion in Paris became an art form in itself, its designers inspired to creations of ever greater elegance and exoticism by the examples of the Old Masters and the popular painters of the day.

But as art inspired fashion, so fashion served as a muse for art: painters from Courbet to Whistler, from Manet to Vuillard borrowed the poses of their models from the fashion plates of the day, and embraced the intimate scene - a walk in the garden, a visit from a friend - so typical of the genre.

The dialogue between fashion and art is illustrated here by some 120 paintings - works by Ingres, Tissot, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Seurat and Degas among them - and a clutch of hitherto unpublished photographs from the recently discovered archive of Disderi.