Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
The Two Friends
(1894)
Tate
Fin de Siècle is an umbrella term embracing symbolism, decadence and all related phenomena (e.g. art nouveau) which reached a peak in 1890s. Although almost synonymous with other terms such as the Eighteen-Nineties, the Mauve Decade, the Yellow Decade and the Naughty Nineties, the fin de siècle however expresses an apocalyptic sense of the end of a phase of civilisation. The real end of this era came not in 1900 but with First World War 1914.
