Maison
Monument
Maison, located in Dunkerque (Nord), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Dunkerque, Nord, Hauts-de-France
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 51.0484, 2.3937
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00107497
An Art Nouveau masterpiece from Dunkirk, this Ringot house features a faux-stone cement façade sculpted with allegories of Day and Night, including female faces, a solar rooster and a nocturnal owl.
History
In the heart of Dunkirk, amidst the scars and reconstruction of a city ravaged by war, the Ringot house stands out like a manifesto of stone and cement, a manifesto of ornamental beauty taken to its Art Nouveau paroxysm. Its facade, entirely sculpted in creamy white, slightly patinated, imitation-stone cement, catches the eye at first glance and makes you pause in your tracks. What makes this residence truly unique is the coherence of its iconographic programme. Everything here tells the same story: the cosmic cycle of time, the passage from Day to Night. Two female faces echo each other - one awake, luminous, turned towards the world, the other with closed eyelids, immersed in a dream - while a heraldic cockerel and a mysterious owl complete the symbolist bestiary. Each ornament is carefully thought out, each volute part of a story that sculptor Maurice Ringot has chiselled with a mastery worthy of the Parisian workshops of the Belle Époque. To visit the Ringot house is first to stop on the pavement and look up. The architecture imposes this ritual: the façade is a vertical painting whose levels can be read like stanzas. Vegetal curves, feminine mascarons and zoomorphic details are revealed gradually, inviting slow contemplation. Lovers of Art Nouveau will find here the spirit of Guimard or Vallin, applied to bourgeois domestic architecture in the North. Dunkirk's urban setting adds a melancholy dimension to the visit. In a city largely rebuilt after the bombings of the Second World War, the Ringot house is a miraculous survivor, a guardian of a bygone era when the façade of a bourgeois house was also an artistic statement. Its presence in today's urban fabric is all the more striking for that.
Architecture
The Ringot house belongs to the register of bourgeois domestic architecture of the early twentieth century, but its façade raises it well above the ordinary production of its time. Built in imitation stone cement - a modern material for its time, allowing great formal freedom and detailing comparable to direct cutting - it has an elevation made up of several levels punctuated by dense, controlled ornamentation. The sculptural programme, the work of Maurice Ringot, organises the façade around a strong symbolic dualism: Day and Night. Two female faces with contrasting expressions - one awake and luminous, the other asleep and dreamy - form the centrepieces of the décor. They are framed by plant motifs typical of Art Nouveau: undulating stems, stylised foliage and flowers in full bloom. The cockerel, symbolising sunrise, and the owl, embodying night and wisdom, complete this allegorical bestiary with remarkable iconographic precision. An oriel window - a projecting bow window - enlivens the depth of the façade, although its original coping was removed after 1970, diminishing the crowning effect intended by the designers. The central bell tower, which has now disappeared, gave the roof an additional verticality and a more picturesque silhouette, typical of the Flemish references that inform Art Nouveau architecture in the North. Despite these losses, the façade remains a first-rate architectural document, testifying to the vitality of the Art Nouveau movement in the port and industrial towns of northern France at the turn of the 20th century.
Related Figures
C. Ringot — entrepreneur, maître d'ouvrage de la maison (début XXe siècle)Maurice Ringot — sculpteur, auteur de la façade ornementale en ciment simili-pierreHector Guimard — figure tutélaire de l'Art Nouveau français, mouvement dont la maison Ringot est une expression régionaleÉmile Gallé — maître verrier et décorateur, figure de proue de l'École de Nancy dont l'influence rayonne sur tout l'Art Nouveau français
Tags
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Maison located?
Maison is located in Dunkerque, Nord department, Hauts-de-France region, France.
Is Maison open to visitors?
Maison is currently closed to visitors.