Victor Dargaud, L' Hotel de Ville en reconstruction, 1880, oil on canvas, Carnavalet, left. The Hotel de Ville, or town hall, was burned in 1871. You can see it after the fire by going to 1871. It is reconstructed along the lines of a Renaissance building. This picture is looking south, Notre Dame on Ile de la Cite is in the background. Work started in 1873 and was completed in 1883. This image is from Duby, L'Histoire de Paris par la Peinture.

Monet, Debacle sur le Seine, 1980, right. This is a hard winter for Monet. His wife recently died and his work is not finding favor with critics. He spends the winter at Vetheul, outside Paris. It is cold winter and the Seine freezes. In January, there is a partial thaw and this effect on the river inspires Monet to tackle this new ice/water subject.

The restaurant Drouant opens in Paris. (CHF)

Rodin does The Thinker (in plaster) (AF)

There is a general amnesty of the communards from 1871. There is the first commemorative of la 'semaine sanglante' at the Bastille and Pere Lachaise. Louise Michel returns to Paris from New Caledonia, where she was transported after the Commune collapsed. She is still an anarchist at heart and active in the movement over the coming years. (AF)
 

Gustave Cailbotte, The Balcony, 1880.

Emile Zola writes Nana. This is the story of a courtesan, daughter of Gervaise (see 1877). This description is of the Theater Varietes and is of an upper class experience on the Grand Boulevards. It is from Chapter 1 of Nana.

"At nine o'clock in the evening the body of the house at the Theater des Varietes was still all but empty.  A few individuals, it is true, were sitting quietly waiting in the balcony and stalls, but these were lost, as it were, among the ranges of seats whose coverings of cardinal velvet loomed in the subdued light of the dimly-burning luster.  A shadow enveloped the great red splash of the curtain, and not a sound came from the stage, the unlit footlights, the scattered desks of the orchestra.  It was only high overhead, in the third gallery, round the domed ceiling, where nude females and children flew in heavens which had turned green in the gaslight, that calls and laughter were audible above a continuous hubbub of voices, and heads in women's and workmen's caps were ranged, row above row, under the wide-vaulted bays with their gilt-surrounding adornments.  Every few seconds an attendant would make her appearance, bustling along with tickets in her hand, and piloting in front of her a gentleman and a lady, who took their seats, he in his evening dress, she sitting slim and undulant beside him whilst her eyes wandered slowly round the house."

"Downstairs, in the great marble-paved entrance-hall, where the box office was, the public were beginning to show themselves.  Through the three open gates might have been observed, passing in, the ardent life of the boulevards, which were all astir and aflare under the fine April night.  The sound of carriage wheels kept stopping suddenly, carriage doors were noisily shut again, and people began entering in small groups, taking their stand before the ticket bureau, and climbing the double flight of stairs at the end of the hall, up which the women loitered with swaying hips.  Under the crude gas-light, round the pale, naked walls of the entrance hall, which with its scanty First Empire decorations suggested the peristyle of a toy temple, there was a flaring display of lofty yellow posters, bearing the name of "Nana" in great black letters.  Gentlemen, who seemed to be glued to the entry, were reading them; others, standing about, were engaged in talk, barring the doors of the house in so doing, while, hard by the box office, a thick-set man with an extensive, close shaven visage was giving rough answers to such as pressed to engage seats."

"On the pavement outside, the row of gaskets, flaring on the cornice of the theater, cast a patch of brilliant light.  Two small trees, violently green, stood sharply out against it, and a column gleamed in such vivid illumination that one could read the notices thereon at a distance, as though in broad daylight, while the dense night of the boulevard beyond was dotted with lights above the vague outline of an ever moving crowd.  Many men did not enter the theater at once, but stayed outside to talk while finishing their cigars under the rays of the line of gaskets, which shed a sallow pallor on their faces and silhouetted their short black shadows on the asphalt."

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) : from Orsay, Georges Clemenceau, 1880. "Au Salon de 1880, deux portraits d'hommes politiques attirent l'attention du public : celui du nouveau président de la republique, Jules Grévy (1807-1891), par Léon Bonnat (1833-1922), et celui du chef de file de l'extrême-gauche radicale, Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), par le maître de l'avant-garde, Edouard Manet. Clemenceau est alors député de Montmartre, et à l'aube seulement de sa carrière de "tombeur de ministères". Il est lié à Gustave et Eugène Manet, frères du peintre. Eugène Manet, époux de Berthe Morisot, est conseiller municipal de La Chapelle (1878-1881), dans l'arrondissement (XVIIIe) fief électoral de Clemenceau. Manet évite toutes les anecdotes extérieures (pas de décor) au profit du portrait intime de l'orateur, aux pommettes saillantes, les bras croisés dans une position de refus. Il oppose le noir de la redingote au blanc de la chemise et des poignets. Après la mort de Manet, sa veuve offre ce tableau à Clemenceau." Orsay website

 More broadly:

There is a conference in Madrid on the status of Marocco. It ultimately came under the French sphere of influence. (CHF)

The tricolor becomes the official flag of France.

The Jesuits are expelled from France. (AF)

Founding of the Panama Canal Company. (AF)

France annexes Tahiti and the Society Islands. (CHF)

A tunnel through the Alps at St. Gothard between Italy and Swizerland opens. (CHF)