Fin de Siècle

Fin de Siècle is a French phrase meaning 'end of century' and is applied specifically as a historical term to the end of the nineteenth century and even more specifically to decade of 1890s

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.

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