Napoleon III style
The Napoleon III style was a highly eclectic style of architecture and decorative arts, which used elements of many different historical styles,and also made innovative use of modern materials, such as iron frameworks and glass skylights. It flourished during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III in France (1852–1871) and had an important influence on architecture and decoration in the rest of Europe and the United States. Major examples of the style include the Opéra Garnier in Paris by Charles Garnier (1862–71), the Bibliothèque nationale de France. and the Church of Saint Augustine (1860–1871). The architectural style was closely connected with Haussmann's renovation of Paris carried out during the Second Empire; the new buildings, such as the opera, were intended as the focal points of the new boulevards.
Auguste Toulmouche
Toulmouche painted in an idealizing version of the dominant academic realist style, and his subjects were frequently Parisian women who belonged to the upper bourgeoisie. His work was popular in both France and America, and the emperor Napoleon III bought one of his portraits, "La fille" (The Girl), for his future empress Eugénie in 1852, with further purchases by the imperial family the following year confirming Toulmouche's status as a fashionable painter. He was generally approved by critics, winning medals at the Paris Salon in 1852 and 1861, and he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1870.. During his heyday, his reputation was comparable to that of artists like Alfred Stevens and Carolus-Duran. However, with their emphasis on sumptuous clothing and richly furnished domestic interiors, his paintings were also dismissed by some critics as "elegant trifles", and the writer Émile Zola referred somewhat dismissively to the "delicious dolls of Toulmouche". With the rise of Impressionism in the 1870s, his popularity suffered a decline from which it never recovered.