Esquisse pour la salle des fêtes de l'Hôtel de Ville de Paris : La Ville de Paris conviant le monde à ses fêtes

This esquisse (preliminary sketch) for the Salle des Fêtes of the Paris Hôtel de Ville, dated 1893, relates to one of the major decorative commissions of the French Third Republic. The Hôtel de Ville had been rebuilt after its destruction in the Paris Commune of 1871, and its elaborate decoration program through the 1880s and 1890s enlisted the leading painters of the academic tradition to celebrate Paris as the cultural capital of the world. Benjamin-Constant received the commission to decorate the Salle des Fêtes ceiling, an enormous allegory depicting the City of Paris inviting the world to her festivities. The subject called for the kind of grand allegorical rhetoric at which he excelled, combining female personifications, architectural settings, and crowded processional movement into a coherent decorative whole. This preliminary sketch, held in the Petit Palais (Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris), provides an insight into his compositional process — establishing the main groups and color relationships before the full-scale execution. The commission represented the highest level of official recognition in Third Republic France.

As a preparatory sketch, this work shows Benjamin-Constant's thinking at its most fluid: he establishes color zones and compositional masses rapidly, sacrificing finish for structural clarity. The loose, gestural brushwork reads as confident shorthand for the elaborate allegory to be finalized at monumental scale.