In 1900, the Grand Palais had just opened for the Universal Exhibition, dedicated to a retrospective of the past century. A new palatial exhibition hall for the fine arts in the French capital, it was built to house artistic salons once the Universal Exhibition was over. In the mean time it staged the Centennale, a major retrospective of a century of French art, the Décennale, tracing the artistic developments of the last decade, and other art exhibitions organised by guest nations.
The Centennale presented a timeline of painting through the nineteenth century. Visitors entered the Grand Palais via a sumptuous lobby, the elliptical hall of the Palais d'Antin which, to mark the occasion, exhibited statues by major sculptors like Rodin, Carpeaux, David d'Angers, and Rude. The tour began in the ground floor room at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and avenue d'Antin (now avenue Franklin-D.-Roosevelt). The painters represented were no less than Ingres, Vigée-Lebrun, Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, as well as the impressionists: Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Berthe Morisot. In addition to the paintings, a large collection of drawings (Indres, Prud'hon) was displayed in the first floor side galleries.
Access to the Décennale and the foreign schools was from avenue Nicolas-II (now avenue Winston-Churchill). So many works were on show that to find space to hang the paintings, the nave had to be effectively narrowed by the addition of constructions decorated with lattice-work. The Nave itself was used for the centenary sculpture exhibition.
