Jacques Gruber, One of the "Renovators of Modern Stained Glass". The Collection of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs

The Department des Arts Graphiques of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs possess the largest set of cartoons by Jacques Gruber, major decorative artist of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods. The communication of this collection, donated to the museum in 1981, has been long awaited. The inventory, made in 2013, opens up stimulating perspectives for research. Nevertheless, in the absence of the studio archives, this set of about 250 stained glass projects, most often life size, forming a vast bulk, must first of all be the object of a fundamental evaluation. It is a matter of being able to characterize the very nature of the documents, to attempt as much as possible to place them in time and in space, in order to measure how representative they are of the studio production. These steps taken, the cartoons in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs open the way towards the discovery of the abundant work of Jacques Gruber from the 1920-1930s, at the moment when his contemporaries recognize him as the renovator of the art of stained glass. As remarkable as it is, this collection now needs to be completed by field work and meticulous archives, in order to fully affirm its value.