Art Nouveau Coloring Pages
Welcome to my Art Nouveau coloring pages section.
Art Nouveau is French for "new art." Around 1890 artists got tired of copying the heavy, old-fashioned styles of the Victorian era and turned to nature instead. For about twenty years flowers, vines and swirling curves showed up on everything from posters and jewellery to doorknobs and lamps. Then World War I came along and the cleaner, boxier Art Deco style took over.
Victorian Illustration
Art Nouveau didn't appear overnight. Walter Crane illustrated Victorian children's picture books with flat, patterned designs and flowing flowers, and those ideas helped inspire the artists who came next. These ladies among the irises and lilies sit right on the line between the two styles.
Victorian Illustration coloring pages
About Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau artists hardly ever drew a straight line if a curve would do. Their favourite was a long swooping line that flicks back on itself like a cracked whip, so people called it the "whiplash" curve. Ideas came straight from nature: vines, flowers, insect wings, peacock feathers and ripples on water.
You could find the style all over a city. When Paris opened its first Metro stations around 1900, Hector Guimard designed the entrances. The green iron railings grow up out of the pavement like plant stems, and the lamps on top look like flower buds. Some of them are still there today.
Alphonse Mucha made the posters most people picture when they hear "Art Nouveau," usually a woman with long flowing hair in a ring of flowers. Aubrey Beardsley drew in nothing but black ink on white paper, a lot like a coloring page. Louis Comfort Tiffany's studio made lamps with colored glass shades shaped like dragonflies and wisteria. Gustav Klimt painted with real gold leaf, and you'll find his Tree of Life on my Famous Works of Art page.
Every country gave the style its own name. In Germany it was Jugendstil, which means "youth style," after a popular magazine called Jugend. In Italy it was Stile Liberty, named after the Liberty shop in London that sold the fabrics. Different names, same idea: curves, nature and beautiful things for everyday life.
Famous Works of Art Stained Glass