La Fée Electricité and the 1937 Paris Exposition

City of Paris Museum of Modern Art

"La Fée Electricité" (The Fairy Electricity, also called The Spirit of Electricity) is an immense mural by artist Raoul Dufy, which depicts the history and application of electricity, including portraits of 110 scientists and inventors. This work is actually an oil painting on hundreds of canvases mounted on wood, and it may be the world's largest oil painting in some sense, but it's far from the largest mural. (For a list of much larger murals see "15 biggest Mural Painting Jobs in the World." For a full look at Dufy's entire painting, see this 360° image.)

The History of "La Fée Electricité"

The mural, which occupies six hundred square meters, was originally commissioned for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. The mural's original location was the exposition's Pavillon de la Lumière et de l’Électricité (Pavilion of Light and Electricity) near the Eiffel Tower. The architecture and design of this pavilion was very modern and impressive, including the world's most powerful searchlight and other effects that lit up the night during the exposition.

Paris Exposition, 1937: Pavilion of Light and Electricity.

Special effects at night at the pavilion.

A number of prominent artists were commissioned to produce works for several of the pavilions of the 1937 exposition. Of these works, the most lastingly famous is Picasso's Guernica, which was created for the Spanish pavilion. Guernica showed the massacre of the residents of Guernica, a Spanish town that supported the Republican side of the ongoing Spanish Civil War. The Republicans sponsored the pavilion but soon afterwards, lost the war to the Fascists. Picasso's painting remained a tribute to the Republicans and the victims of Fascism. It was on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1939 until the restoration of democracy in Spain in 1981.

In 1964, Dufy's enormous mural was installed in the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art, donated by the French national electric company, Électricité de France. Its vividness was restored by work done to it in 2021.

A few of the figures from "La Fée Electricité"

Members of the Royal Society

"Let there be light - and colour! How many Fellows of the Royal Society can you spot in Raoul Dufy’s fresco ‘La Fée Electricité?" is an article about some of the famous scientists in the mural who were members of the British Royal Society. It's fun to look for the famous and less famous scientists throughout history that appear in this amazing work of art. 

Benjamin Franklin
American but a member of the Royal Society.

Royal Society members including Franklin.

While I have seen this mural, I did not photograph it, but have used photos from the website of the owner, the  City of Paris Museum of Modern Art and from the website of the Royal Society. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, I did see a preliminary watercolor that Dufy made before creating the immense oil-painted mural.

Water Color Version at the Detroit Institute of Arts

Although much smaller than the mural in Paris, this sketch is actually quite large!

Detail of classical Greek philosopher/scientists in preliminary sketch.

Detail of Leonardo da Vinci and Gallileo.

We saw the water color version, which belongs to the DIA, in a wonderful exhibit called “After Cubism.”

Blog post by mae sander, shared with Sami's Monday Murals.