128 10
English Pages 272 [239] Year 2022
Iris Moon
LUXURY AFTER THE TERROR
Luxury After the Terror
Iris Moon
Luxury After
THE
TERROR
T h e P e n n s y lva n i a S tat e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , U n i v e r s i t y Pa r k , P e n n s y lva n i a
This publication has been supported by The French Porcelain Society. This publication has been supported by The Decorative Arts Trust. Publication of the book was supported by the Organization of Part-Time Faculty Adjunct Professional Development Fund at Cooper Union. Frontispiece: La Pensée Directoire ou la lanterne magique, ca. 1795. Fan with image of a couple contemplating the projection of a pansy, in the center of which are transparent profiles of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the dauphin. EV0169, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Moon, Iris, author. Title: Luxury after the terror / Iris Moon. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Explores the production, circulation, and survival of French luxury after the death of Louis XVI by focusing on makers of decorative art objects who had strong ties to the monarchy and how they navigated the French Revolution”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021048003 | ISBN 9780271091617 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Decorative arts—France—History—18th century. | Luxury goods industry—France—History—18th century. | France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799—Art and the revolution. | France—History—Revolution, 1789–1799—Influence. Classification: LCC NK947 .M595 2022 | DDC 745.0944 /09033—dc23/eng/20211115 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048003
Copyright © 2022 Iris Moon All rights reserved Printed in Lithuania by BALTO Print Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.
À L.M.
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xiii
introduction 1
1 Contents
Death and Dispersal: The 1793–94 Revolutionary Auctions at Versailles 17
2 Henry Auguste: Precious Metals in the Age of Terror 41 3
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc: Political Fantasies of the Arabesque 71
4
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent: Carving in Exile 107
5
Alexandre Brongniart: Fragile Terrains 135
Coda 171 Notes 175 Bibliography 187 Index 201
Color Plates (following page 112)
1. 2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
I l lu s t r at i o n s
9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
Jacques Gondoin and François-Toussaint Foliot armchair Louis-Léopold Boilly, assumed portrait of Maximilien Robespierre Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, Beauvais Manufactory, America from The Four Continents tapestry set Tapestry woven from needlepoint fragments by Marie-Antoinette and Madame Élisabeth, 1791–93 Henry Auguste, “Beckford-Béhague” ewer, 1790 François Gérard, Family of the Goldsmith Henri Auguste Joined Together Around a Table, 1798 Robert Jacques François Lefèvre, Jean-Baptiste- Claude Odiot, 1822 Henry Auguste (attributed), heart reliquary of Madeleine-Julie Coustou, ca. 1797 Henry Auguste, casket with figure of Morpheus, ca. 1793–98 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc and Urbain Jaume, advertisement for Nouvelles Cartes de la République Française, 1793–94 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, embroidery design for a pocket and vest, 1780s Jean-Démosthène Dugourc (design), wallpaper from the Hôtel Vaupalière, ca. 1790 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc and Urbain Jaume, “Egalité de Couleurs” card, 1793 Camille Pernon, Verdures de Vatican silk panel, ca. 1799 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, design for a decorative panel, 1787 and 1808 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, carving of Louis XVI, ca. 1795 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, Allégorie de l’amour de Louis XVI pour ses sujets, 1777 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, drawing of a vase on a classical pedestal, ca. 1784 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, floral still-life relief, 1784 Sèvres Manufactory, Louis XVI dinner service, 1783–93 Sèvres Manufactory, déjeuner (tea set), June–July 1794 Sèvres Manufactory, sundial, 1794–95 François Louis Swebach-Desfontaines, plate from Histoire naturelle, 1789
24. Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, plate with shells on the shore, ca. 1789–97 25. Étienne-Charles Le Guay, Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, portrait of Christophe Dihl, 1797 26. Sèvres Manufactory, color palette from year VI, 1798 27. Jacques Barraband, Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, Birds, 1798 28. Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, a pair of vases with landscapes, ca. 1797–98 29. Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart, Carte geognostique des environs de Paris, 1810 30. La Pensée Directoire ou la lanterne magique, ca. 1795
Figures
1. Villeneuve, Matière à reflection pour les jongleurs couronnées, 1793 2 2. Anonymous, Moyen expeditif du peuple français pour démeubler un aristocrate: 13 novembre 1790, 1790 5 3. Pierre-Adrien Pâris, Plan of a former dovecote transformed into a residence, 1793 14 4. Poster of the Auction of Furnishings and Precious Effects at the former Château de Versailles, September 30, 1793 18 5. Anonymous, Saule pleureur, 1795 25 6. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, drawing of the arrival of the funeral procession with the remains of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, 1815 26 7. Jean-Henri Riesener, drop-front secretary, 1783 34 8. Anonymous, Président d’un comité révolutionnaire, après la levée d’un scelé, 1794–95 35 9. Sèvres Manufactory, cup and saucer, ca. 1780–85 38 10. Jean-Guillaume Moitte, Jean-Baptiste Lucien, and Jean Louis Charles Pauquet, Hommage à la deuxième legislature, 1791 42 11. Henry Auguste, “Beckford-Béhague” ewer, 1790, detail 45 12. J. R. Lucotte, “Orfèvre Grossier,” 1771 47 13. Henry Auguste, design for a covered tureen on a footed stand 50 14. Jean-Guillaume Moitte, design for a ewer with a Grecian mask, ca. 1790 51 15. Henry Auguste, pair of candelabra bearing the arms of the duke of York, 1788 or 1789 52
x
Illustrations
16. Jean Baptiste Louis Massard and Jean Baptiste Félix Massard, Premier frise de l’arc de triomphe, 1790 53 17. Augustin de Saint-Aubin, Pierre Joseph Lorthior, assignat of 300 livres, April 16 and April 17, 1790 55 18. Revolutionary period marks of Henry Auguste, ca. 1794 59 19. Pierre Haly, Marie-Antoinette Sacrifices the Heart of the Nobility on the Altar of the French Republic, ca. 1790, or possibly 1793 62 20. Henry Auguste, oval tureen and stand, 1789/1804 66 21. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, The Garden Façade of Bagatelle, 1779 75 22. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, project for an ornament design for silk, ca. 1790 79 23. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, design for a chandelier, 1784 80 24. Jean-Ferdinand Schwerdfeger, jewelry cabinet of Marie-Antoinette, 1787 82 25. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, model for a royal jewel cabinet, ca. 1787 83 26. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, L’Air, from Arabesques, 1782 84 27. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, Venus ou la Coquetterie, from Arabesques, 1782 86 28. Donald W. Winnicott, squiggle game drawing 90 29. Anonymous, caricature showing Marie-Antoinette as a leopard, late eighteenth century 91 30. Textile fragment, ca. 1792 92 31. Anonymous, Madame Sans Culotte, ca. 1792 94 32. Stockings with “Necker” pattern, ca. 1788–93 95 33. Étienne Jolivet (attributed), silk assignat of 500 livres, ca. 1792 95 34. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, The Festival of the Federation, 1790 97 35. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc (letterhead design), circulaire du ministre de l’Intérieur, Laplace, 1799 98 36. Billet de confiance for three sols with Boutin’s signature, 1790–93 100 37. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, design for a chalet in Aranjuez, 1786–1803 104 38. Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, Napoleon Bonaparte at the Champ de Mai, ca. 1815 105 39. Hercy, Robespierre guillotinant le boureau après avoir fait guillot.r tous les Français . . . cy gyt toute la France, 1794 108
40. Pierre-Adrien Pâris, second project for a monument dedicated to the memory of Louis XVI, ca. 1818–19 110 41. Tilman Riemenschneider, seated bishop, ca. 1495 112 42. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, study of a nude seen from behind, 1783 116 43. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, Vase composé, posé sur un autel antique, 1788–89 117 44. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, carved relief with allegory of the constitution, 1791 119 45. Jean Démontreuil, still life of dead bird, ca. 1795 120 46. Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of dedication from Règles physiognomiques, 1795 124 47. Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of page from Règles physiognomiques, 1795 125 48. Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of auf Ludwigs, des Ermordeten, Sarg—von Aubert Parent (on reverse of plate 16) 127 49. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, Esquisse pour un projet de monument d’après l’idée de monsieur le ministre Lavater, 1793 [1795?] 129 50. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, carving of Louis XVI, ca. 1795, detail 132 51. Anonymous, revolutionary faience plate, end of the eighteenth century 138
52. Sèvres Manufactory, cup and saucer, 1794 141 53. Anonymous, Travaux du Champ de Mars pour la Confédération du 14 juillet 1790 par les citoyens de Paris, 1790 144 54. Anonymous, Le roi, piochant au Champ de Mars, 1790 145 55. Anonymous, faience plate with execution of Louis Capet, ca. 1793 145 56. Georges Cuvier, figure of the jaw of an Indian elephant and the fossil jaw of a mammoth, 1799 149 57. Duc d’Angoulême Manufactory, dinner plate, 1780–88 153 58. George Stubbs, Sleeping Leopard, 1777 155 59. Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, vase with landscape, ca. 1797–98, detail 157 60. Jean-Baptiste Coste, figures resting in a wooded landscape, 1794 157 61. Jean-Baptiste Coste, Jacques Marchand, Saule Pleureur, n.d. 158 62. Sèvres Manufactory, cup and saucer, 1804–5 162 63. Sèvres Manufactory, plate with cameo portrait of Moschion, 1811–18 163 64. Pierre Giraud, plan of proposed funerary monument, 1801 165 65. Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart, Corps organisés fossiles des couches marines des environs de Paris, 1811 168
Illustrations
xi
Countless individuals made this book possible. Early ideas began during a 2014–15 postdoctoral fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I have been fortunate to work in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts alongside exceptional colleagues, past and present. My special thanks to Ellenor Alcorn, Denise Allen, Sarah Bochicchio, Max Bryant, Elizabeth Cleland, Joseph Coscia, Jeffrey Fraiman, Nonnie Freylinghuysen, Sarah Graff, Marva Harvey, Roberta Haynes, Kristen Hudson, Ronda Kasl, Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, Wolfram Koeppe, Sarah Lawrence, Alicia McGeachy, Tommaso Mozzati, Jeffrey Munger, Jessica Ranne, Jessica Regan, Fredy Rivera, Allison Rudnick, Adrienne
Acknowledgments
Spinozzi, Elizabeth St. George, Juan Stacey, Karen Stamm, Denny Stone, Luke Syson, Wendy Walker, Melinda Watt, Sam Winks, Elizabeth Zanis, and Julie Zeftel. I presented parts of this book at conferences, lectures, and symposia beginning in 2014. The conference organized by Melissa Lo and Hector Reyes at the University of Southern California helped to jumpstart many of the ideas in this book, along with early advice from Charissa Bremer-David and Anne Dion-Tenenbaum. Events organized by Jörg Ebeling, Natacha Coquery, Anne Perrin-Khelissa, and Philippe Sénéchal in Paris, Richard Taws in Norwich, Katie Scott and Lesley Miller in London, and Christine Gervais in Houston helped to solidify the book’s direction, while Elizabeth Amann’s conference in Ghent provided the occasion to share thoughts on royalism with Allison Goudie, Katie Hornstein, Susan Siegfried, Rebecca Spang, and Tom Stammers. Julia Douthwaite and Cheryl Snay at Notre Dame University and Susan once again at the University of Michigan invited me to test parts of the book, while my students at Cooper Union proved to be
xiv
brilliant and challenging interlocutors on ephem-
treasures of Drawing Matter at Shatwell Farms.
erality, violence, and the art of meat sculptures.
In Aranjuez, Javier Jordán de Urriés y de la Colina
Parts of chapter 5 appeared in volume 51 (2016)
and Pilar Benito García were my erudite hosts
of the Metropolitan Museum Journal, where I have
at the Casa del Labrador. Matthew Shaw helped
been fortunate to work with Liz Block and Niv
decipher the sundial in the nick of (revolution-
Allon.
ary) time, while Joseph Guerdy Lissade provided
indispensable advice on the kingdom of Haiti at
Funding for this book was generously pro-
vided by the French Porcelain Society, the Dean F.
just the right moment. I am grateful to the two
Failey Fund from the Decorative Arts Trust, and
anonymous readers of the book manuscript for
the Cooper Union Adjunct Faculty Professional
their astute advice; Nancy Evans of Wilsted and
Development Fund. I am grateful to the officers
Taylor Publishing Services for her scrupulous
and council of the French Porcelain Society, the
copyediting; and the designers at Penn State
grant committee of the Decorative Arts Trust,
University Press. Ellie Goodman amazes me with
and Anne Griffin at Cooper Union. Collectors,
her sparkling editorial precision. Her persistent
dealers, curators, conservators, librarians, and
support made it possible to leap over many unex-
archivists granted access to works of art and
pected hurdles.
documents with open arms and consummate
expertise. Leon and David Dalva in New York
me to a warm community of scholars, dealers,
and Jeffrey Loman in Washington, DC, opened
specialists, and collectors. I owe special thanks
new avenues of research on Aubert Parent. The
to Diana Davis, the late Kate Davson, Aileen
staff of Waddesdon Manor, the British Museum,
Dawson, Mathieu Deldique, Oliver Fairclough,
and the Victoria and Albert Museum helped
Patricia Ferguson, Cyrille Froissart, Audrey
me explore prints, furniture, and textiles. I also
Gay-Mazuel, Sophie von der Goltz, Sebastian
thank the staff at the Archives départementales
Kuhn, Daniela Kumpf, Camille Leprince, Errol,
de l’Oise; Archives départementales de Val-de-
Henry, and Henriette Manners, Nette Megens,
Marne; Archives nationales; Archives de Paris;
Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, Tamara Préaud,
Bibliothèque nationale de France; Bibliothèque de
Pamela and Nick Roditi, Rosalind Savill, Philippe
l’Institut national de l’histoire de l’art; Cabinet des
Sacerdote, Adrian Sassoon, Gilles Waterfield,
arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre; and the Musée
John Whitehead, and Samuel Wittwe, who shared
des arts décoratifs, Paris. Hélène Lorblanchet at the
their passionate knowledge of “handling pots”
Musée Atget and Florence Hudowicz at the Musée
with good humor and steady hands. Anne Dion-
Fabre in Montpellier, Maximilien Durand at the
Tenenbaum, Jean-Philippe Garric, and Valérie
Musée des tissus et des arts décoratifs in Lyon,
Nègre, old friends and colleagues in Paris from the
and Pierre Emmanuel Guilleray and Marie-Claire
“Percier and Fontaine” days, along with my Seoul
Waille at the Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon
crew, Chungwoo Lee, MeeNa Park, SaSa, Jung
facilitated research. Niall Hobhouse generously
Jaeho, and Charles Kim, cheered me on during
welcomed my mother, son, and me to peruse the
much-needed breaks from both luxury and terror.
Acknowledgments
The French Porcelain Society introduced
Georgia Henkel, Brenna and Nate Hernandez,
Kim, Victoria Restler, and Rascal Stern, noth-
Eleanor Hyun, Cindy Kang, Joan Kee, Melissa Lo,
ing but love and respect. Maryann Demetrius,
Kit Maxwell, Margaret Michniewicz, Kelly Presutti,
Arumbakam Purush, and my growing family of
Vérane Tasseau, and Richard Taws are a rare and
Ballas, McGraths, Mins, Moons, Purushothams,
fragrant potpourri of empathy, curiosity, humor,
Rozowskis, and “stone-cold” Hwang Young-Ja have
and intellectual firepower. Though the pandemic
been a collective source of strength and hilarity.
brought many challenges, it also provided the
I have so much love, admiration, and gratitude
chance to meet new and cherished colleagues,
for my parents, Jai-ok Kim and Chung-in Moon,
particularly Adrienne Childs, Allan Isaac, Alicia
who showed me how to be fearless in the pursuit
McGeachy, Sequoia Miller, Linda Roth, Vanessa
of the unknown and how to be myself. To Ravi
Sigalas, Liz St. George, Karine Tsoumis, Chi-
Purushotham and my ravishing terrors (I use
ming Yang, and Yao-Fen You. Without the care of
that word in the best eighteenth-century sense)
Taylor Blackman, Patti Gross, Amanda Pacheco,
Immanuel, Felix, Egon, and Desmond—you are
and Malika Rathbun, it would have been impos-
worth more than the rarest of luxuries. I owe you
sible to find the time, space, and energy to write.
everything save for the mistakes in this book,
To Caitlin Bowler, Sophie de la Barra, Susan
which are entirely my own.
Acknowledgments
xv
L
uxury After the Terror explores the production, circulation, and survival of French luxury after the death of
Louis XVI by focusing on makers of decorative art objects with strong ties to the monarchy and how they navigated the Terror and the world that it remade. When Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, the king’s death was to mark the physical end of the monarchy in France and sever the vast networks of luxury that had provided
Introduction
splendor and sophistication to the royal court and constituted the source of its cultural legitimacy (fig. 1). Yet the remnants of the royal collection that were sold, circulated, and absorbed by the French state’s new institutions signaled neither a complete rupture with the past nor the total transfer of cultural authority to the body politic.1 Even as the king’s royal possessions—from drapery and tableware to clocks and porcelain services—were dispersed and destroyed, many of the individuals responsible for creating these forms of material finery found ways to survive regime change and forge new meanings for their works in the turbulent and rapidly shifting circumstances of revolutionary France and its aftermath. Covering the final two decades of the ancien régime to the beginning of the Napoleonic Empire, this book traces the ways in which the politics of dispersal, disinheritance, and dispossession conditioned new meanings for luxury. The five chapters function as case studies that investigate the work of specialists in gold, silk, wood, and porcelain. As elite patrons departed and markets dissolved, once-prized rarities became polemical objects of a contested past. While the French Revolution channeled a politics of regeneration into ephemeral materials—circulating patriotic ideals through paper pamphlets and prints, and building temporary festivals out of plaster and
Fig. 1 Villeneuve (publisher), Matière à reflection pour les jongleurs couronnées: qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons: lundi 21 janvier 1793 à 10 heures un quart du matin sur la place de la Revolution, ci devant appelé Louis XVI le tiran est tombé sous le glaive des loix, 1793. Engraving and etching, 21.5 × 17 cm. G 22985, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
wood—materials that had once been associated
with courtly splendor acquired complex layers of
disinheritance affected both people and objects
association with a repudiated and fetishized past.
to an unprecedented degree during the French
Loss, exile, and dispossession provided alternative
Revolution, yet how they did so has not figured
frameworks of meaning for objects that had once
prominently in recent art-historical narratives.
functioned as symbols of prestige bound to the
Driven by the vision of the French Revolution as
taste and identity of powerful patrons. During this
the foundational moment in political modernity,
period of intense political conflict and uncertainty,
art histories of the period, from Philippe Bordes
artisans, designers, and manufacturers embarked
and Régis Michel’s groundbreaking publication
upon unanticipated futures, forging new careers
Aux armes et aux arts! Les arts de la Révolution,
untethered from the prestige of the monarchy.
1789–1799 to the works of anglophone scholars
2
2
Luxury After the terror
The conditions of dispersal, dispossession, and
such as T. J. Clark, Thomas Crow, Ewa Lajer-
played by portraiture and prints, genres formerly
Burcharth, and Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, have
treated as ancillary to history painting, in rene-
primarily been structured around the strong artis-
gotiating political identities.7 Taws’s work on the
tic personalities of the period, chief among them
ephemeral has been instrumental in opening
the academic painter Jacques-Louis David. From
the way for thinking about images not as static and
his commanding position at the summit of radical
fixed forms disciplined by a “high art” discourse
politics, David, the “pageant master of the French
of salon criticism or swaggering patriarchal studio
Republic,” directed public festivals, designed
politics but as radically mobile and always in flux,
costumes for statesmen, and ran an influential
their meanings made (and unmade) by a wide
studio, all the while serving as a vocal member
variety of individuals outside the academy.
of the Committee of Public Instruction and the
Committee of Public Safety, voting alongside
arts of the French Revolution, the narratives pur-
the Jacobins Maximilien Robespierre and Louis
sued in this book do not settle neatly within the
Antoine de Saint-Just as a regicide, in favor of the
aesthetic paradigms set forth by the academy or the
3
While building upon prior scholarship on the
king’s death. Ideologically speaking, studies that
trenchant factional politics and ideological divides
position David and his studio as the source of an
of the period. I should state at the outset that the
avant-garde artistic genealogy align neatly with
goal of this book is not to offer a synthesized nar-
the institutional and discursive histories that have
rative of revolutionary luxury but a glimpse of the
focused on the founding of the Louvre Museum as
fractured forms of subjectivity and errant paths
a culminating moment in the formation of a ratio-
of individual experience that took shape after the
nal, liberated public sphere. Challenges to David’s
end of royal sovereignty and against the calls for
position as the founding father of modern art have
an art that would represent the collective will of
been accompanied by the “material turn” in the
the nation. Luxury and the decorative arts do not
discipline. Scholars have moved the field beyond
appear as obvious choices of subject for exploring
the academic and institutional milieu of paint-
a turbulent political culture, when unchecked vio-
ing to consider a wider field of production, from
lence became “the order of the day” and an institu-
Richard Wrigley’s sartorial studies in The Politics
tionalized part of revolutionary governance. After
of Appearances to Susan Siegfried’s consideration
all, no less a person than David himself targeted
of postrevolutionary female subjects through
luxury as anathema to the lofty didactic aims of the
the matrix of fashion; Siegfried in particular has
newly established Louvre Museum, which opened
drawn attention to the symbolic investment in
to the public on August 10, 1793, the first anniver-
4
5
costume and the parallel evacuation of the body as
sary of the fall of the monarchy and in the midst
a site of power after the Thermidorian Reaction.
of the Terror. The artist declared, “The Museum is
Beyond corporeal metaphors, architecture and
not supposed to be a vain assemblage of frivolous
ruins have come into focus in Nina Dubin’s work
luxury objects that serve only to satisfy idle curios-
on Hubert Robert, while Amy Freund, Anthony
ity. What it must be is an imposing school.”8
Halliday, Richard Taws, Rolf Reichardt, and
Hubertus Kohle have shed light on the active role
in the modern political culture that emerged at
6
Pace David, luxury undoubtedly had a place
Introduction
3
the end of the eighteenth century. The question
the museum? How did those who made luxury
of markets has primarily driven scholarship on
survive the Terror? In fact, the Revolution played
the dispersal of collections during the revolution-
an instrumental role in bringing objects like the
ary era.9 By contrast, the idea for this book began
former queen’s chair into the hallowed grounds of
in the dimly lit French decorative arts galleries
the museum; the American diplomat Gouverneur
located on the ground floor of The Metropolitan
Morris probably purchased the chair at the revolu-
Museum of Art (a universal collection modeled
tionary auctions held at Versailles after the king’s
on the Louvre), while I puzzled over how the very
death.11 Alongside ownership and provenance,
things that David had condemned as “frivolous
dispersal has shaped museum collections in untold
luxury objects” managed to survive his aesthetic
and obscured ways. Telling these stories allows one
purges and eventually arrive in New York. Walking
to begin the difficult task of acknowledging that
through the eighteenth-century period rooms,
museums are not neutral spaces but sites actively
one can encounter ancien régime royal splendor
shaped by the agonistic politics of the past and
in the form of a chair designed by the architect
present. The ideology of cultural belonging, which
Jacques Gondoin and constructed by François-
we consider so fundamental to the mission of uni-
Toussaint Foliot for Marie-Antoinette at Versailles,
versal museums today, emerged out of a dialectic
located today in the Cabris Room (plate 1). Both
relationship with the dislocations and dispersals
the architect and the chairmaker outlasted the
that took place during the Terror, which forcibly
monarchy and the execution of the queen on
sought to turn private possessions into shared
October 16, 1793. The story of their survival and
forms of national wealth. In this context, luxury
the turbulent circumstances of the queen’s death,
accrued different significations.
however, are nowhere to be found amid the elegant
setting in which the chair is now placed, composed
in the hushed eighteenth-century period rooms
of historical assemblages from different collec-
of museums in an entirely different scenario, in a
tions, sutured together to nostalgically evoke a lost
counter-image that is captivating for the many
world. What place does the violence of dispersal
ways in which it so forcefully visualizes luxury
have in the mythic narratives of the ancien régime
not as a thing of taste or value but as a repudiated
on display in this period room? While processing
“object of contempt,” against which forms of politi-
gifts that had been bequeathed to the museum by
cal violence were meted out.12 An illustration from
recently deceased donors, I also began to contem-
Camille Desmoulins’s radical journal Révolutions
plate how death can be the starting point for new
de France et de Brabant deliberately overturns the
trajectories. Dispersal, I realized, had shaped the
elements of the ancien régime interior, so beloved
historical trajectories of so many of the museum’s
by historians of eighteenth-century French decora-
objects, in equally important ways as commis-
tive arts and enshrined in period rooms as the site
sions and collections. Where did such things, with
of complex games of distinction, manners, and
their uneasy associations with the privileged world
seduction (fig. 2).13 In lieu of a wainscoted space
of the monarchy and the aristocracy, go dur-
organized on the basis of sets, symmetry, and
ing the Revolution, and how did they end up in
matching fabrics, the picture shows the French
10
4
Luxury After the terror
Picture, for example, the objects contained
Fig. 2 Anonymous, Moyen expeditif du peuple français pour démeubler un aristocrate: 13 novembre 1790, 1790. Engraving and etching, 17.5 × 12.5 cm. G 28272, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
people in the process of defurnishing (the démeu-
lampoons the elaborate seating games that took
bler in the print’s title) the home of an aristocrat,
place at court as members of the nobility jockeyed
in this case, the hôtel de Castries. Wrenched
for positions of royal favor (only those closest to
out of their carefully orchestrated architectural
the king and queen could be seated on proper
envelopes, the mismatched fragments of furnish-
chairs; lesser individuals were relegated to stools;
ings and decorative objects clutter the courtyard:
still others were forced to stand). The exaggerat-
one can detect among the scattered remnants a
edly jagged edges of splintered wood and shattered
veneered cabinet with floral marquetry, an oval
glass emphasize the brokenness of each symbol of
portrait of a family member intended to signal the
taste. At first glance, this image may be taken as
owner’s noble lineage, and an upholstered fauteuil
evidence of the horrific vandalism and desecra-
à la reine, a material “unseating” that perhaps
tion of private residences and public monuments
14
Introduction
5
wrought by revolutionary zealots that resulted
system of power established by his influential
in the loss of countless irrecuperable works of
minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the state control
art. But look again at the protagonists. Pause
of manufacturing at the Gobelins tapestry works,
in particular at the woman in the ground-floor
the Saint-Gobain royal glass works, and the
window on the far right, as she carefully regards
Savonnerie carpet manufactory rendered luxury
and gingerly fingers the heavy drapes, perhaps
as a strategic and unquestioned means for con-
made from an expensive and colorful brocaded
solidating the political, economic, and cultural
silk from Lyon that she has never before seen in
authority of the French crown.16 By the time that
her life except now, when she’s meant to yank them
Louis XV added the Sèvres porcelain manufactory
out the window. Her wistful countenance, filled
to his royal portfolio in 1759, luxury had become
with a mixture of appreciative wonder and a touch
less a symbol of royal magnificence and more a
of wrathful envy, suggests a moment of aesthetic
general and diffuse signifier of distinction wielded
contemplation at odds with the mindless acts of
by courtiers, aristocrats, and, perhaps most
destruction so often ascribed to spontaneous and
prominently, financial speculators and investors
typically popular forms of violence. She offers a
who eventually outspent the crown in conspicu-
window into the complex dynamics of desire and
ous forms of consumption. Social identities were
rejection at play in the dialectical relationship
thus shaped by the production, consumption, and
between the preservation and politicized disper-
connoisseurship of luxury in Paris among the elite
sal of luxury objects, and the mediated loss felt
of the ancien régime.17 As John Shovlin has argued,
by someone who did not possess the fine things
the growing awareness of a fiscal crisis during
within her grasp. Seeing her, I think about how our
Louis XVI’s reign placed the crown’s expenditures
possessions come to define us, and what parts of
on luxury production and consumption in the
ourselves we lose when things are taken away.
direct line of fire of fierce public debates about
the nation’s political economy. While British theo-
A concise definition of luxury always seems
elusive, even as the topic has gained the interest
rists such as Adam Smith saw luxury’s merits for
of economic and social historians as well as art
Britain’s national wealth, French pamphleteers and
historians in recent years. Rather than seeking
philosophers increasingly railed against it.18 Critics
to define such a capacious term, I use “luxury” to
pitted the corrupt and sterile luxury enjoyed by
refer to a category of theoretical discourse tied
speculators and wealthy financiers who funded the
to late Enlightenment culture and as a term that
debt-ridden crown against an agrarian virtue born
characterizes a material field of production outside
from the land itself.19
of the academy, which encompassed the decora-
tive arts. Though the temporal focus of this book
sociability, mondanité, and the rituals of social
resides in the last decade of the eighteenth century
climbing prior to 1789, luxury as an abstract cat-
and the years around 1800, the cultural position of
egory has principally been studied through eco-
luxury in the ancien régime constitutes a crucial
nomic vectors, its rampant consumption and pro-
touchstone for understanding the significance of
duction perceived in direct correlation to a nation’s
its survival. Under Louis XIV and the absolutist
wealth. When it is considered in the context of the
15
6
Luxury After the terror
Along with its strong associations with elite
Revolution, luxury is associated with economic
concise description, what effect the Terror as
liberalism’s process of depoliticization, an image
a “state policy during the period 1793–94 that
perpetuated, for example, in the Musée Carnavalet
used institutionalized violence and the threat of
exhibition of Directory period society, Au temps
violence—both to punish and intimidate the pur-
des merveilleuses (2005). Such frameworks do not
ported enemies of the nation”—had on luxury.23
account for the ways in which the weaponization
Prior to the Terror, passage of such laws as the
of luxury in the debates of the period transformed
d’Allarde law of 1791, which abolished corporations
the perception of objects, such as porcelain or
and guilds, and the emergence of new intellectual
furniture, into palpable threats that had the
property rights, which protected those work-
potential to corrupt the purity of civic virtue and
ing in the industrial arts as well as the fine arts,
patriotic taste. This is evident in the attacks on
had transformed the conditions of production
the first iteration of the Louvre. In the arrange-
in which furniture makers, designers, and por-
ment of art haphazardly organized by style rather
celain manufacturers worked. For example, they
than by school, the displays resembled, according
allowed a variety of artisans who had trained in
to one critic, “the luxurious apartments of satraps
one material to forge careers in areas of specializa-
and the great, the voluptuous boudoirs of courte-
tion that previously would have been policed by
sans, the cabinets of self-styled amateurs.” Luxury
the apprenticeship system of guilds. The political
was evidently so threatening to the vulnerable
ideals of the period promoted the arts in numerous
citizens of the French nation that the museum
ways, from the public competitions for architec-
committee decided to banish the scant examples
tural monuments and paintings in the year II to
of Sèvres porcelain initially at the Louvre, even
smaller commissions for commemorative busts
though some revolutionaries, such as the cunning
of revolutionary heroes such as Mirabeau, whose
dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, at one point
portrait was executed by the deaf-mute Claude-
placed in charge of selecting confiscated works for
André Deseine for display in the Jacobin Club
the museum, recognized exceptional examples of
(which ordered that the bust be destroyed after
Sèvres and sought to keep them on behalf of the
Mirabeau’s ties to the crown were revealed in
nation.
1792).24 Nonetheless, the end of major state com-
20
21
22
Part of what makes the image of the hôtel de
missions from the monarchy decimated centers of
Castries being “defurnished” so unsettling is the
luxury production and contributed to widespread
tendency to see luxury objects as firmly belonging
political and economic unrest. The silk industry
to the world of pleasure and seduction that existed
in Lyon, which had catered to the French court,
prior to 1789, not a part of the radical praxis of
collapsed after the 1793 Federalist uprisings devas-
violence that appeared afterward. The politicized
tated the city.
dispersal and recirculation of luxury acquired new
meanings during the Terror. And while historians
France in the summer of 1793, the revolution-
have sought to pinpoint the origins and sources
ary auctions at Versailles had a profound effect
of the Terror, as well as its aftereffects and agents,
on luxury by mobilizing dispersal as part of a
few have considered, to borrow Timothy Tackett’s
bureaucratic system of state violence intended to
Commencing as the Federalist revolts shook
Introduction
7
deprive the former monarchy, clergy, and aris-
comical character flaw in an erstwhile monstrous
tocracy—and subsequently anyone declared an
historical figure. Robespierre’s quirks also reveal
enemy of the state—of material possessions or
the ways in which luxury became less about elite
property. Because the authority of the new French
class formation or signifiers of Enlightenment
Republic depended on the liquidation of luxury
connoisseurship, and more about idiosyncratic,
rather than on its production, the definition of
radically subjective, and even irrational systems
what it constituted became subject to personal
of value that were in continual flux throughout
inclinations and private habits and eccentrici-
the revolutionary period.28 For example, Natacha
ties. For example, even with the implementation
Coquery points to one of the most surprising fac-
of the General Maximum Law on September 29,
ets of life during the Terror: the robust activity of
1793, which placed price regulations on all neces-
buying and selling during a period of intense polit-
sary foods and commodities, “the Incorruptible”
ical unrest and economic uncertainty: “Supported
Robespierre managed to sneak coffee and sugar
by the circulation of second-hand objects, the
onto the list of essentials, arguing, as Ruth Scurr
luxury market boasted an almost insolent vitality,
notes, that “these two products of colonialism
as proven by the press of the time.”29 In her analysis
were nevertheless addictive and the people would
of the Affiches, annonces et avis divers, ou Journal
be deprived without them.” In spite of a public
général de France, a widely circulated eighteenth-
image that preached austerity and moral virtues,
century periodical that devoted a large section to
Robespierre was a notoriously fastidious dresser
announcements and advertisements for the sale of
who wore formal coats and breeches throughout
goods, Coquery discovered that the height of the
the Revolution, as suggested by his purported
political crisis in 1793 and 1794 saw rampant sales
portrait by Louis-Léopold Boilly (plate 2). The
of goods, such as furniture, decoration, jewelry,
25
26
Incorruptible had a particular weakness for silk
silver services, porcelain, paintings, and particu-
stockings, which proved extraordinarily difficult
larly textiles, which took place on the secondary
to provision in the material scarcity caused by
market. Through auctions and the resale of goods,
the widespread political unrest and fiscal panic
“the French Revolution, a new regime that embod-
of the period. Hoping to secure a few clean pairs
ied modernity and the abolition of an inegalitarian
from Lyon, then in the midst of a Federalist revolt
ideology and order, far from completing this evo-
when the General Maximum Law was declared,
lution, appears to have helped strengthen tradi-
his close associate heralded the bad news that the
tional values and luxury.”30 The secondary market
Lyon postmaster general could not secure “hosiery
forms a rich and complex topic for understanding
for the Incorruptible and was sending some ham
fundamental changes in revolutionary history.
and sausage instead.”
But I want to slightly twist Coquery’s interpre-
tation of the auctions. Rather than helping to
27
8
Frivolity during the Terror, exemplified by
Robespierre’s hankering after silk stockings—hilar-
“strengthen traditional values and luxury,” I see the
iously swapped for sausages—or his declaration
auctions functioning as sites that allowed individu-
that coffee and sugar were necessities due to their
als to negotiate the material remnants of the recent
addictive properties, at first appears like a rare
past in deeply personal ways, which cut across
Luxury After the terror
the collective forms of aesthetic ideology being
dispossession played a part in undoing those
established at the national museum. Such personal
systems of knowledge upon which their social
reconfigurations of the term were part and parcel
identities had been constructed.34
of France’s revolutionary inheritance, and would
come full circle in the 1871 Paris Commune, which
La France à l’encan, 1789–1799: Exode des objets
sought to overturn the elite stranglehold over
d’art sous la Révolution. A remarkable piece of
luxury by declaring it communal. The question
scholarship written by an auctioneer with inti-
of what endowed a particular object with value
mate knowledge of the trade, La France à l’encan
was intimately tied to the question of how one
drew attention to the importance of the disper-
chose to view the past. Moreover, the buying and
sal of the royal collections within the political
selling of luxury objects presented a different yet
events of the period. Remi Gaillard has recently
no less related set of problems tied to the work-
advanced Beurdeley’s study by arguing that, far
ing through of revolutionary trauma. If, as Taws
from representing an embarrassing tragedy in
has argued elsewhere, trompe l’oeil images of
the loss of national patrimony, the revolutionary
paper money rematerialized memories of financial
sales actually demonstrated the workings of the
ruin, exquisite furnishings became reminders of a
government’s bureaucratic order and efficiency.35
prior ancien régime past that could never be fully
In other ways, the book’s narrative trajectories
recuperated.
overlap with the work of Tom Stammers, who has
31
32
The four protagonists of this book, though
This book is indebted to Michel Beurdeley’s
uncovered the role of nineteenth-century nostal-
joined by their ties to the French luxury industry,
gic amateurs and idiosyncratic collectionneurs in
present different aspects of what remained of the
constructing the history of the Revolution. The
complicated realm of production that unraveled
dispersal of the royal collections was seen as a
as the ancien régime world of the wealthy, the
“black legend,” equally traumatic as the penury
privileged, and the elite came undone and was
caused by the disastrous inflation of the assig-
remade by the politically volatile circumstances
nats and the vandalism meted out against price-
of the French Revolution. The decision to focus on
less monuments. Still, as Stammers points out,
the makers of luxury rather than its consumers
the sales made historical artifacts accessible to the
or patrons is deliberate. I do so in order to shed
same private collectors who deplored the prac-
light on how each protagonist’s lived experience of
tices of their revolutionary forebears.36 Similar
rapidly changing historical circumstances shaped
to the eccentric historical figures who populate
the interpretation of the works they made, manu-
his study—such as Pierre-Marie Gault de Saint-
factured, designed, and sold, at a time when the
Germain, “an anachronism caught between two
politicized redistribution of property and movable
worlds”—the individuals at the center of this book
goods dethroned the authority of taste that had
defy easy political categorization, nor do their life
once been granted to the patron rather than the
dates neatly coincide with regime change.37 Rather
makers of luxury.33 If collecting constituted a
than classifying the objects they made on the basis
primary means through which commerce shaped
of style or within the history of collecting or taste,
Enlightenment epistemologies, dispersal and
I view them as active agents that accrued a variety
Introduction
9
10
of shifting meanings, at times contradictory to the
Ancien Régime . . . left France in the entourage of
political positions their makers had claimed for
the Bourbons. Whichever artists left for foreign
themselves.
countries after 1789 remained autonomous. None
of them remained in the continuous services of the
What determined the value of luxury items
after the death of the king, whose privileges had
exiled French court.”38
provided their symbolic source of value? Politically
and economically speaking, regicide and the dis-
tionary history that begin with the meeting of the
persal of the royal collections created considerable
Estates General in 1789, the book opens with a
challenges for the specialist producers who had
chapter on the dispersal of the royal collections
made a living working for the court and for those
after the regicide of Louis XVI on January 21, 1793.
who had established their professional reputations
Each ensuing chapter explores the work and expe-
on the basis of their ties to the monarchy. The
rience of a single individual, rather than a syn-
sudden disappearance of strong state support did
thesizing account of luxury from the Revolution
not automatically mean the adoption of a reaction-
to the first years of the Empire, which has been
ary position in favor of the Bourbon monarchy in
investigated elsewhere.39 Dispersal and the political
exile. They instead turned to alternative mar-
meanings of liquidation are explored in the first
kets. Some makers left Paris in search of patrons
chapter, which focuses on the 1793–94 auction that
elsewhere, while others adopted the patriotic
took place at the Palace of Versailles. Organized by
language of the Revolution and duly recalibrated
the government in order to finance its increasingly
the nature of their work. A variety of artistic
expensive military campaigns, the liquidation of
experiences that might be called “nonaligned” with
the royal residence’s furnishings and mobile pieces
predominant political positions emerged out of the
of décor played a critical role in the formation of a
period, along with identities that proved resistant
royalist visual and material economy, transforming
to ideological factions. Gerrit Walczak has recently
the novelties of a past age into fetishized relics and
drawn attention to the artists who departed
historical souvenirs. The trial and beheading of
France and migrated to Florence, Rome, London,
the king are tied to the ways in which the gov-
Hamburg, and Saint Petersburg during the period.
ernment’s decision to auction off his possessions
Market considerations constituted a key factor in
transformed the systems of patronage, collecting,
their decision to depart France in search of other
and production that had defined the luxury indus-
places of habitation, in contrast to the reactionary
try of the ancien régime.
communities in exile populated by noble and
aristocratic patrons in royalist strongholds such
eighteenth-century Britain has recently been pro-
as Mannheim and Coblenz. Walczak carefully
ductively explored in unraveling capitalism’s role
distinguishes between those who identified them-
in the formation of “dispossessed” figures such as
selves as political émigrés with strong ideological
orphans, slaves, and prostitutes, who haunted the
ties to the exiled Bourbon monarchy and those
literature and cultural productions of the period.40
who were simply artistic “wanderers.” Importantly,
By comparison, in the French context it was not
he indicates that “none of the court artists of the
only the economically disenfranchised who were
Luxury After the terror
Eschewing the typical timelines of revolu-
The term dispossession in the context of
the subjects of dispossession but the king him-
by Katie Scott. And as the elite patrons, the court,
self, prompting a crisis of identity for his political
and the professional corporations were eliminated,
subjects. Although the full significance of the king’s
the individual makers fought for visibility in the
death on January 21, 1793, on the crowded time-
fiercely competitive marketplace of postcorpora-
line of revolutionary history marked by journées,
tion Paris. However, old relationships lingered
battles, and uprisings has been the subject of
on from the past. Amid the rapid dissolution of
heated debates, I follow Lynn Hunt’s assertion that
state sponsorship, the purported absolutism of the
“whether the king was symbolically dead in 1793,
French crown had been belied by a social order of
1789, or before, his actual death in 1793 drew atten-
the ancien régime that to a degree already func-
tion to a sacred void,” for, in spite of Louis XVI’s
tioned without the authority and presence of the
growing impotence in the face of events, “the king
French crown. Rebecca Comay has described this
had been the head of a social body held together
as the “originary vacancy” of power in her reading
by bonds of deference.” According to Hunt, prints
of Hegel’s philosophy of history as a response to
of his execution redoubled the political void after
the French Revolution: “Absolute monarchy was
his death by emphatically depicting the empty
already an ‘empty name,’ a heap of ornaments
pedestal on the Place de la Révolution, where a
clustering around an empty throne—legitimacy
statue of his grandfather Louis XV had once stood
shrinking even as the emblems and props of power
and had been forcefully removed by revolutionar-
multiplied. It is this originary vacancy that moder-
ies. Such acts of vandalism and the desecration of
nity both covers up and transmits. Revolutionary
monuments have been the foci of histories charting
purity brings into view precisely what it most
forms of violence against the memory of the French
denies: the emptiness at the heart of the sym-
monarchy. I suggest that we attend to the deliberate
bolic order.”42 The notion of the king’s portrait
and systemic confiscation and resale of the royal
as an empty signifier of a hollow monarchy even
collection after the death of Louis XVI as a palpable
appeared on the early forms of paper currency,
extension of state violence that transformed luxury
which were originally printed with Louis XVI’s
objects as royal expressions of legitimacy and
portraits in a manner similar to metallic specie.
41
power into polemical signifiers of loss.
However, his execution transformed the very sym-
bol of authority meant to provide the new paper
The severing of the symbolic relationship
between king and subjects and the break in courtly
money with credibility into a suspect form to
patronage coincided with the emergence of new
which no one wished to entrust their financial
understandings of art and authorship, predicated
transactions, as evidenced by the rapid inflation
upon changing commercial and legal concepts
that took place only a few short years after the
of intellectual property. As artistic privilege
assignats were first issued.
was replaced by rights in the course of the long
eighteenth century, commercially motivated court
ture the narrative of chapter 2, which considers
cases played an increasing role in adjudicating
the unlikely career of Henry Auguste, Louis XVI’s
aesthetic questions of value, authenticity, and
former goldsmith, during the Revolution. It traces
genius, a subject that has recently been explored
his transformation from a goldsmith assuming the
Money and its changing appearances struc-
Introduction
11
trade of his father to an experimental metallur-
of broken family ties, such as abandoned chil-
gist who participated in the public debates on the
dren, lost wives, and dead mothers, played a part
national debt and the creation of a paper currency.
in the professional identities of those who made
Though he was not directly involved in the govern-
the ambivalent forms of luxury that appeared
ment’s fiscal policies, Auguste’s activities reveal the
in the final decade of the eighteenth century and
ambiguous aesthetic values that had long condi-
the first one of the nineteenth century. Though the
tioned the making of art from precious metals.
artistic turn to paper as the medium of choice
It turns out that of all the luxury production at the
during the Revolution was undoubtedly driven
court, the work of goldsmiths had always been
by political ideology, economic uncertainty, and
the most threatened by money and the possibility
material scarcity, a maternal specter also haunts
of being melted down and used for currency.
the works on paper made by the designer Jean-
Démosthène Dugourc, who is the subject of
Auguste’s troubles during the Revolution
bring into view the politicized collective anxieties
chapter 3. From bronze fixtures and chandeliers
over money that plagued individuals throughout
to furniture, Dugourc designed an array of objects
the French nation, alongside the myriad “family
for the competitive luxury market based in Paris,
romances” that shaped artisanal identities. Hunt’s
gaining fame for the goût étrusque, a style that
reading of the fraternal politics of the Revolution
looked toward classical antiquity, although it was
through a Freudian notion of a “family romance,”
characterized more by fantastical associations and
which entailed childhood fantasies about rewriting
sleights of hand than by the hard and disciplined
the narrative of familial relations, has rightly been
reconstruction of archaeological fragments that
challenged. However, Auguste’s case shows how
characterized a subsequent generation of design-
luxury workshops were structured by kinship and
ers’ work. Dugourc’s sudden turn to works on
a family model of politics, at the moment when
paper, particularly the invention of a set of repub-
the heavily policed guild system during the ancien
lican playing cards in 1793, marked not only a
régime unraveled. Laboring on behalf of the king,
reversal of his previous political ties to the French
Auguste had also depended on the prior work of
crown but also a striking contrast to the sumptu-
his father to help establish his own reputation and
ous materials for which he produced designs.
name, both of which he had managed to squander
by the Empire period. The most surprising twist
enigmatic figure of the book; his family life, politi-
in Auguste’s story is his death in Haiti. Driven by
cal volte-face, and professional trajectories appear
a desire to escape his personal debts, this final
as tangled as the arabesque designs for which he
destination allows Haiti to appear on the histori-
became known. Designers are rarely granted the
cal horizon not as an island laid to waste by racial
same psychological complexity as painters such
terror and civil strife but as the site of postcolonial
as David, whose every aesthetic choice—each jab
futurity and freedom, removed from the bonds of
of the brush, every sinewy limb or swollen cheek
imperial authority.43
drawn—has been scrutinized and analyzed for its
Father figures were not the only ones who
ties to the cultural moment and collective uncon-
haunted lives during the Revolution. Other sorts
scious of the period and been read as a harbinger
44
12
In many ways, Dugourc constitutes the most
Luxury After the terror
of modernism. Dugourc’s designs evidence an
it was conceived on the heels of the Great Fear of
incredibly rich and complicated personality, one
1789, when rural peasants had vehemently attacked
less aligned to the rigid genealogies of modern-
actual dovecotes because they harbored such
ism and instead deeply enmeshed in the fac-
strong associations with seigneurial privilege.46
tional politics of city and court. In many ways,
While hiding in self-imposed exile, Pâris heard of
Dugourc’s professional identity was shaped by his
the king’s death and began working on a design for
close proximity to his more famous brother-in-
an expiatory monument to Louis XVI. Far from
law, François-Joseph Bélanger, and his slow climb
being a design commissioned by his exiled broth-
up the ladder of the royal administration, which
ers, this monument, subject to wistful memories,
he entered in 1784 as a designer at the Garde-
wrathful fantasies, and his architectural judgment
Meuble de la Couronne, which was in charge of
alone, gradually reached strangely overblown
the crown’s numerous residences and furnishings.
proportions and ultimately remained unbuilt, even
Dugourc’s activities during the Revolution form a
during the Bourbon Restoration.
direct contrast to the court designer Pierre-Adrien
Pâris, who had served as a head designer of the
as emblematic of the emergence of a royalist art
Menus-Plaisirs, the powerful administration in
made by former court artists seeking to com-
charge of festivals, public celebrations, funerals,
memorate the king. However, Walczak’s work sug-
and, in May 1789, the orchestration of the meeting
gests that any sense of a coherent royalist art and
of the Estates General. Pâris categorically refused
identity was primarily a retrospective act that took
the positions offered to him by the revolution-
place during the Bourbon Restoration, as former
ary government, choosing instead to go into
court artists and their widows sought to recuper-
self-imposed exile, first in Normandy and later in
ate financial support from the crown by shaping
his native Besançon. Fleeing the capital after the
“émigré” identities.47 It should not surprise us that
execution of the king, Pâris went into hiding in
Dugourc, too, refashioned his artistic identity
Colmoulins, near the northwest coast of France,
during the Restoration by emphasizing his links
where he drew the plan of a residence for himself
to the court in order to secure a royal pension,
Pâris’s monument to Louis XVI might be seen
in the former dovecote of an aristocrat (fig. 3).
despite the notoriety he had gained as a republi-
Shaped as a hermetically sealed, nautilus-like shell,
can designer during the Revolution. He died in
Pâris’s rural residential project instinctively reverts
poverty.
to the complex, fussy rococo planning of ancien
45
Mourning and the politics of exile are central
régime architecture, at once a reminder of the out-
to chapter 4, which explores the work of the
rageously expensive speculative residential projects
wood-carver Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, who
that crowded the neighborhood of the Chaussée-
left Paris and traveled in 1792 to Switzerland,
d’Antin and a repudiation of the revolutionary
where he became an architect. Unlike Pâris, Parent
public festival’s vast open spaces and monuments.
was a relatively marginal figure at the court of
In repurposing a dovecote as a space of habitation,
Louis XVI. Nonetheless, he chose to identify
Pâris’s drawing simultaneously functions as a reac-
strongly with the monarchical regime following
tionary form of symbolic architecture, given that
the king’s death in 1793. In many ways, Parent’s
Introduction
13
Fig. 3 Pierre-Adrien Pâris, Plan of a former dovecote transformed into a residence, by and for Pâris, at the château d’Escures (near Havre), 1793. Ink and watercolor on paper, 43 × 23 cm. Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon, Collection Pierre-Adrien Pâris, vol. 484, no. 45. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon.
14
carving practice constituted the hallmark of a
ceremony, how did one grieve Louis XVI? More
fragmented royalist political culture that drew
generally, how did forms of mourning take place
upon forms of early modern visuality and reli-
at a time when time itself was continually being
gion in Germany and Switzerland. Given that
rescheduled and remade through a republican
it was impossible to provide the dismembered
calendar that separated the year into a series of sci-
king with a lengthy, somber, and majestic funeral
entifically measured instants? I explore his reasons
Luxury After the terror
for doing so by focusing on his transformation of
nor a maker with deep ties to the court. However,
the king’s image into an aesthetic symbol of loss,
with the death of the king, the emigration of elite
mourning, and religious faith, one that would be
patrons, and continual worker unrest, the reputa-
legible to his Swiss and German clientele.
tion of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory shifted
from its distinguished patrons to its highly visible
Scholarship on the visual, medical, and
political aftereffects of the guillotine has attended
director. Motivated by his interests in the sci-
to what made the machine so shockingly mod-
ences, particularly chemistry, natural history, and
ern.48 I suggest instead that the guillotine and the
mineralogy, Brongniart managed to revive the
death of Louis XVI also prompted a recursion to
factory and transform it into a center of research
older forms of mourning and memory among
and learning; he conveyed the knowledge he accu-
the royalists witnessing the spectacle. Within
mulated during his long tenure in the magisterial
France, remembering the king had to be a private
Traité des arts céramiques, which encompassed
endeavor, since doing so publicly would have
the history, practice, and theory of ceramics
amounted to treason. Beyond the nation’s borders,
across multiple times and geographies.49 At the
commemorating the king took place by means
same time, through his parallel research with his
of private devotional objects that mingled early
collaborator and friend Georges Cuvier in the
modern ways of religious beholding with politi-
emerging field of geology, he inadvertently intro-
cized forms of vengeance. In contrast to the instant
duced ideas of extinction into the production of a
of death made radically visible by the guillotine’s
material no longer as rare and precious as it had
punctum temporis, invisibility and hidden forms
once been during the ancien régime. The chapter
reemerged as signs of monarchist memory rooted
also explores how the competing private firm Dihl
in a language of mourning, where the dead royal
et Guérhard contributed to the changing aesthetics
family was often featured as spectral presences
of porcelain. Images of nature as a source of regen-
haunting the peripheries of the Revolution’s all-
eration and extinction appeared on experimental
seeing eye of transparency—or, somewhat incon-
works that both channeled the political turbulence
gruously, silhouettes of the dead king were hidden
of the city and gave birth to new visions of the his-
in fashion items such as fans.
tory of the Earth.
How the tensions between a political language
This book is an avowedly polemical, at times
of regeneration and extinction reshaped the mean-
idiosyncratic text that argues for the centrality of
ings of porcelains are explored in the final chapter,
the decorative arts in understanding the French
which turns to the unique circumstances that led
Revolution and the fractured forms of individual
the naturalist and polymath Alexandre Brongniart
subjectivity that emerged against (and sometimes
to take over the Sèvres porcelain manufactory in
alongside) narratives of collective experience.
1800. In many ways, Brongniart is distinguished
My aim in studying this group of individuals is
from the other protagonists in this book not only
not to establish a new “canon” but to both broaden
because of his interest in, and continuing ties with,
and complicate our understanding of the constel-
the revolutionary scientific community based in
lation of makers who shaped the material culture
Paris but also because he was neither a designer
of the French Revolution and thereby deepen our
Introduction
15
comprehension of the period. I draw upon a broad
cultural heritage belonging to the privileged few.
range of disciplines outside of art history, such
It would remain an undisturbed fairy tale about
as anthropology, literary theory, psychoanalysis,
things that used to belong to the wealthy, the elite,
and history—and even fiction—with the desire
and the powerful. Surely there must be other ways
to break open a decorative arts field that tends to
of telling this narrative. There must be a thread
be dominated by a closed discourse premised
that is not solely about exclusive ownership or pos-
upon exclusionary and homogeneous notions
session but about makers taking unexpected tra-
of French style, belonging, and taste. To get to
jectories and works arriving in unexpected places,
my protagonists, I felt the need to write honestly
about private objects becoming public things, once
and with a sense of urgency, against the grain of
removed from their original circumstances, and
history from my own incongruous subject posi-
being encountered by unforeseen viewers. Telling
tion.50 Otherwise, the story of French decorative
that story is crucial to Luxury After the Terror.
arts would stay the same: a tale of exclusivity and
16
Luxury After the terror
T
he rush of blood to the head and the pounding heart; the nerves twitching in anticipation of entering a bid on the right
foot: all of the thrills and terrors familiar to those who buy at auction must have reached a fever pitch among the crowd of merchants, pawnbrokers, artisans, and secondhand dealers who gathered at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, August 25, 1793, at the former lodgings of the Princesse
Chapter 1
Death and Dispersal The 1793–94 Revolutionary Auctions at Versailles
de Lamballe at the Palais de Versailles, to bid on sumptuous lots that had belonged to the ci- devant king of France. Less than six months after Louis Capet, formerly known as King Louis XVI, was guillotined at the Place de la Révolution on January 21, 1793, the government passed an official decree approving the sale of the contents of his royal residences of Rambouillet, Versailles, and Marly, sites that had been placed on the civil list and absorbed into the national domain.1 From that August to the following year on 24 Thermidor, year II (August 11, 1794), a total of 17,182 lots were put up for auction, netting the revolutionary government 299,902 livres (fig. 4).2 Among the items up for sale were women’s chemises, sleds, books, weapons, furniture, and bottles of wine from the “cave Capet,” offered in a haphazard array of lots. At the end of the year-long sale, the furniture of the auction site itself was sold to the highest bidder (citizens Curé and Garrat were the proud winners).3 The year-long sale at Versailles initiated a wave of government-sponsored public sales that dispersed the seized possessions of the court, church, and émigrés throughout the revolutionary period. Bidders took advantage of the low prices of objects sold in assignats, the newly issued national paper currency, to buy low and resell high.
Taking place throughout the Terror, the
1793–94 Versailles auctions formed part of a larger
Fig. 4 Poster of the Auction of Furnishings and Precious Effects at the former Château de Versailles, September 30, 1793. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
set of governmental policies that aimed to get rid
traditionally been interpreted as a tragic loss for
of the material traces of the monarchy, deemed
France’s cultural heritage. Michel Beurdeley and
despotic and inimical to the new French Republic.
Pierre Verlet lamented the staggering losses of the
For the nostalgic collector-historians of the nine-
royal collections in the great “exodus” of national
teenth century, the Versailles auctions, writes Tom
patrimony during the Revolution, with a number
Stammers, marked a “symbolic terminus of the
of the rarest furnishings and decorative arts objects
old regime,” a point of no return that simultane-
finding their way into museum collections in
ously reframed the relationship of collecting to
England and the United States in the course of the
“historical consciousness and the revolutionary
nineteenth century.5 Pondering the reasons behind
politics of heritage” by allowing individuals to
the government’s “brutal decision” to sell off the
literally own a piece of history. The auctions have
royal furnishings, Verlet suspected that the aim
4
18
Luxury After the terror
was to “empty and diminish the royal châteaux and
with the means to seize control of their financial
render them unsuited to the installation of a fresh
destiny by attempting to rid themselves of past
tyrant”; such foresight, the author notes, failed to
debts that were oftentimes the monetary inheri-
predict the arrival of Napoleon.6
tance of the ancien régime.
This chapter adopts a different approach to
Of course, this was not the first time that
the Versailles auctions by considering the ways in
material dispersal closely followed abrupt
which the dispersal of royal possessions staged a
regime change; the execution of Charles I, and
spectacle of loss in the wake of the king’s death.
the sale of his exceptional collection during the
Rather than speak of the loss of royal furnishings
Commonwealth, is perhaps among the best-
and decorative arts objects from the palaces solely
known examples.8 The auction of Louis XVI’s
in terms of a tragedy for the national patrimony
collections took place within a remarkably differ-
of France, I view this unusually lengthy sale as
ent political milieu, when the Revolution sought
a pivotal turning point in the history of French
not only to depose the monarchy within France
luxury and, following on from Stammers’s insights,
but also to make its principles of equality univer-
as a generative source of collective memories and
sal. These aims, however flawed and hypocritical
historical consciousness of the Revolution in the
they may have ultimately been (particularly in
course of the nineteenth century. Liquidation pro-
the exclusion of women and enslaved Blacks from
vides a starting point for reevaluating the mean-
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
ings of works of art in a revolutionary context.
Citizen), endowed the activities and mission of
The protagonists found in the subsequent chapters
the governing bodies with a symbolic dimension,
of this book keenly felt the loss of the monarchy
one that extended to the auctions. Rémi Gaillard
as a source of patronage, financial support, and a
writes that the auctions, though ostensibly trans-
social matrix upon which to map out their works
actional, were “invested with a strong symbolic
and professional identities. The absence of a single
dimension—essentially consisting of the ‘material’
protagonist in this chapter forms a deliberate con-
liquidation of royalty, after which it had been polit-
trast to the rest of this book in order to indicate the
ically and physically decapitated.”9 As will become
ways in which the revolutionary auctions opened
apparent, liquidation did not necessarily mean
up the place of luxury by evacuating the “sover-
complete annihilation. Even as the dispossession
eign” position of the patron as subject in determin-
of the royal collections was part of the Terror’s
ing the aesthetic parameters of artistic commis-
policies, a redistributive justice predicated upon a
sions (in a process not entirely unrelated to Slavoj
politics of retribution, the auctions shaped the col-
Žižek’s canceled Kantian subject).7 The symbolic
lective memory of Louis XVI by displacing power
liquidation of the monarchy also transferred aes-
from the king’s body onto the objects that had
thetic authority from the court to the open market
once been royal possessions through the associa-
in Paris, where the absence of the king forced art-
tive power of provenance. Subsequently enshrined
ists to capture new audiences for their work. As we
in the nineteenth-century imagination as a lieu de
will see in the ensuing chapters, auctions provided
mémoire, the Versailles auctions brought the public
individuals such as the goldsmith Henry Auguste
face to face with the stubborn material remainders
Death and Dispersal
19
of the monarchy that resisted being transformed
ramshackle palace had been chased out a few
into abstract principles or liquid assets and defied
hours before the family’s arrival, and they encoun-
the museum’s systems of rational classification.
tered a confused mess at the Tuileries, with the
Said otherwise, the auctions rendered decorative
apartments “topsy turvy, full of workers, with lad-
art objects and luxury into aberrant remainders
ders in every corner . . . , all of the most basic fur-
of the past that did not settle comfortably within
niture was missing, and those that were found in
revolutionary narratives.
disrepair.”11 Only a small suite of apartments on the first floor had been refurbished in 1784 for Marie- Antoinette’s visits to the opera in Paris. The dau-
Royal Remnants
phin and his sister occupied the rooms, while their parents used the queen’s apartments on the ground
Prior to the liquidation of the king’s possessions
floor.12 Over the next few weeks, after the journées
that took place in 1793, the symbolic evacua-
of October 5 and 6, Louis XVI settled into the new
tion of power had already commenced in 1789,
residence in Paris. The king chose his quarters on
when the royal family had been removed from
the ground floor, off the central pavilion. Close to a
the court of Versailles and forcefully brought to
small space for his office, he requested the creation
Paris. Commemorated in the popular imagination
of a forge, where he could continue tinkering on
through prints and pamphlets and subsequently
the locks and ironwork he had enjoyed making at
marked as a revolutionary journée, or significant
Versailles with his teacher, the serrurier François
day, the family’s arrival in Paris was a tumultu-
Gamain. Over the next few weeks, the Garde-
ous affair. On October 6, 1789, an angry crowd
Meuble de la Couronne, the royal administration
led by working-class women forced its way into
in charge of royal furnishings, sent pieces from
the Palace of Versailles, following rumors that the
unoccupied residences, including the château de
king had participated in a banquet for royal
Choisy and the newly abandoned Versailles.13 The
bodyguards and loyalist troops where the national
royal family expended 280,000 livres on refurbish-
cockade, symbol of the new egalitarian ideals of
ing the palace, in spite of the fact that the king,
the Revolution, had been trampled on. The mob
believing he would eventually return to Versailles,
only agreed to return to Paris with the royal family
hesitated to spend so much on temporary
in tow. The cortège of royal carriages, the Paris
accommodation.
National Guard, and the marquis de Lafayette
took seven hours to travel from Versailles to Paris.
glance as minor details, but it should be recalled
Upon their arrival, they encountered large crowds
that the interiors of palaces functioned as sites
before taking up residence at the dilapidated Palais
of royal representation, carefully maintained and
des Tuileries.
staged by the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne.
Work at the royal manufactories continued on
10
20
Though the arrival of the royal family in Paris
The family’s furnishings may appear at first
symbolically merged the crown and city at the
major commissions, such as a set of tapestries
Tuileries, the palace was far from a magnificent
of The Four Continents by the Beauvais factory,
site for royal representation. The squatters in the
designed by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier.
Luxury After the terror
Initiated as a project in 1783 after the Treaty of
on expenses, the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne,
Versailles concluded the American Revolution and
still responsible for furnishing the royal palaces,
commissioned in 1786, the tapestries were meant
ordered wallpaper from Arthur et Robert to
to instill patriotism and fulfill the wish to see more
update the dilapidated palace.17 The appearance of
topical subjects made by the royal manufacto-
wallpaper in official ceremonial rooms, such as the
ries, since the public was, according to the comte
king’s study, was unusual for the period, indicat-
de Vergennes, the foreign minister who had sup-
ing a new use for material that had until then been
ported financing the American war, “dégoûté des
reserved for informal, private spaces.18 The embel-
anciens genres.” The tapestry America from the
lishment of the king’s study and bedchamber at the
set incorporated the most distinctive iconography
Tuileries with arabesque wallpaper signaled the
(plate 3). Though America is still shown wearing
adoption of a decorative motif that had formerly
the characteristically exotic costume accorded
been reserved for feminine or informal spaces
to allegorical depictions of the continent, she is
such as the boudoir, perhaps inadvertently rein-
somewhat remarkably shown next to the figure
forcing the image of an impotent, effeminate king
of Liberty, who holds an enormous American
that circulated in the libels of the period. Even
flag, featuring a fleur-de-lis hidden amid the stars
in the king’s bedchamber, traditionally the most
and stripes, and is capped by a Phrygian bonnet.
important ceremonial space in royal palaces, the
France is depicted as a winged warrior, holding a
Garde-Meuble resorted to using twelve panels of
shield decorated with fleur-de-lis and striking the
colored arabesque wallpaper. A vestige of ceremo-
enemy Britannia, who has fallen to the ground.15
nial magnificence was preserved through the ship-
The plethora of symbols, particularly the fleur-de-
ment of a set of nine Don Quixote tapestries from
lis, would have outdated the tapestry by the time
Versailles, which covered the bare walls in the
of its completion in 1791, and the set, like many
bedchamber.19 On January 4, 1790, three mahogany
other incomplete royal commissions, ended up in
commodes made by Jean-Henri Riesener arrived
the storeroom. When the minister of the interior
from Versailles, along with two rosewood corner
of the revolutionary government sent a letter on
tables.20 Bernard Jacqué has argued that the promi-
9 Pluviôse, year IV (January 29, 1796) requesting
nent use of arabesque wallpapers at the Tuileries
the use of the Beauvais tapestries for furnish-
signaled the growing acceptance of wallpaper as
ing the seized Luxembourg Palace, he evidently
a decorative element suitably sumptuous for use
had a change of heart after noticing that not only
in royal palaces. Conversely, one could say that
was the size of the tapestries too small for the pal-
its incorporation as a substitute luxury material
ace, but also the four tapestries were “stained with
for silks and other textiles that would have taken
several signs of feudalism difficult to remove.”
longer to produce signaled an awareness of the
ephemeral nature of royal space.
14
16
The continuance of costly and lengthy royal
commissions contrasted with the increasingly
strained circumstances of the royal family’s con-
personal significance for the royal family, par-
finement at the Tuileries and their growing reli-
ticularly as popular support for a constitutional
ance on provisional forms of luxury. To cut down
monarchy waned and their public role diminished.
Instead of public ostentation, luxury acquired
Death and Dispersal
21
At the Tuileries, Marie-Antoinette and her sister-
of the crown. The meager last will and testament
in-law, Madame Élisabeth, began working on a
left behind by Louis XVI on the eve of his death
needlepoint floral tapestry to pass the time, which
formed a stark contrast. It constitutes an impor-
they would continue to work on after their incar-
tant prelude to the royal auctions that took place
ceration at the Temple. The needlepoint fragments
after his death by investing royal furnishings and
were carefully preserved by Madame Dubuquoy-
precious objects with historical significance as
Lalouette, who had originally supplied the materi-
artifacts of a bygone age.
als and subsequently wove them together into a
larger tapestry during the Restoration (plate 4).
Tuileries coincided with the growing recognition
A far cry from The Four Continents expertly woven
that Louis Capet could no longer serve as the head
by Beauvais, the needlepoint piece functioned as
of state after the family’s flight to Varennes. Attacks
a personal souvenir of royal captivity, a sentiment
against the monarch culminated with the journée
that probably also colored Louis XVI’s request for
of August 10, 1792, when an insurrection orga-
fourteen vases of Sèvres porcelain to be sent from
nized by the Paris Commune entered the Tuileries
his private chambers at Versailles on December 27,
demanding the king, resulting in the massacre
1791, to the Tuileries, six months after the royal
of the Swiss Guards who were left behind to defend
family’s failed escape and capture at Varennes.
the palace. The royal family had fled next door to
In this context, such luxury objects would have
seek protection from the National Assembly. The
been requested as forms of private delectation
September Massacres were followed by fears of a
rather than official symbols of the monarchy.
foreign attack and the radicalization of the gov-
By that point, popular support for the king had
ernment with the rise of the Jacobin faction and
dwindled to a few loyalists, whose outward dem-
the expulsion of the Feuillants, or constitutional
onstrations of fealty would have been treacherous.
monarchists. In rapid succession, Louis XVI was
In May 1792, he requested that two torchères,
imprisoned at the Temple, placed on trial, found
or standing candelabra, be sent from the Hall of
guilty, and condemned to die at the guillotine for
Mirrors at Versailles. Objects bore the burden
treason. As scholars have noted, although due
of signifying the last flickering vestiges of royal
process was essential to establishing the legitimacy
majesty and etiquette, since the architecture of
of regicide, the trial took place with remarkable
the Tuileries, cohabited by the National Assembly,
speed, a radical acceleration of time that evoked
could no longer impose it.
not only the mechanical deaths produced by the
21
The dwindling material majesty of the
guillotine but also, more broadly, the ways in which the Revolution itself sped up history. Last Will and Lost Bodies
The details of the king’s arrival at the Place
de la Révolution have been rehearsed many times,
22
For centuries, royal inventories had taken stock
as if it resembled the denouement of a play.22
of the magnificent joyaux of the kings of France,
He rode in a carriage, visible through its window.
carefully weighing, describing, and itemizing the
Soldiers lined the streets of Paris. Around 20,000
myriad treasures that materialized the majesty
people gathered at the Place de la Révolution,
Luxury After the terror
where the execution was scheduled to take place
theory of monarchy that ensured the sanctity
on a platform raised six feet from the ground.
of royal sovereignty. As Michael Walzer writes,
The executioners attempted to remove the former
“Kings may return for a time, but . . . ‘they are
king’s coat, which he chose to unfasten himself.
never more than phantoms.’ Majesty cannot be
Wearing a white shirt, breeches, and white stock-
restored. Though they called themselves godlike,
ings, he mounted the steps of the scaffold next
there was no resurrection for kings.”25
to his priest. Charles-Henri Sanson, the execu-
tioner, cut his hair. The king had protested the
a direct contrast to the lavish funerary processions
binding of his hands with a rope but then acqui-
that had traditionally marked the death of the king
esced. He attempted to address the crowd with a
in ancien régime France. Far from representing an
speech but managed only the words “People! I die
end, the death of a monarch provided the oppor-
innocent! I pardon my enemies and hope that
tunity to signal the stability of the institution of the
my blood will be useful to the French, that it will
monarchy in the transmission of power to the next
appease God’s anger,” before being drowned out
generation. During the ancien régime, funerals
by the sound of drums. Placing him horizontally
had been lavish spectacles that occupied the entire
into the guillotine, the executioner dropped the
kingdom of France. The art of dying well demon-
blade at 10:22 a.m. Sanson’s assistant picked up his
strated a sovereign’s ultimate mastery over human
head and held it aloft for all to see. Cries of “Long
frailty and a sign of his divine ability to control his
live the Republic!” emerged from the crowd.
body with his spirit. Highly orchestrated events
transmitted to the public through stylized récit
23
The public execution of the king had the goal
The end of Louis XVI on the scaffold formed
of ending the myth of the king’s two bodies and
narratives, the deaths of kings were described in
with it both the fundamental idea behind royalism,
terms of triumph over suffering, piety and com-
that he alone embodied the sovereign authority to
munion with God, and putting one’s affairs into
rule, and the institution of divine kingship.24 When
order.26 The grand and lengthy funeral proces-
the members of the National Convention decided
sion held on the king’s behalf assured the public
to try Louis XVI like any other citizen, they were
of the smooth transition of power. Organized by
fully aware of the English precedent for regicide
the Menus-Plaisirs, the royal administration in
with the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649.
charge of celebrations for births, marriages, deaths,
A king had never been put on trial on the grounds
and other events, royal funerals had two express
of treason in France, where the sanctity of the laws
functions: “one, religious, to accompany the
had been invested in and were dependent on the
deceased to the other world, the other, political,
sovereign inviolability of the king. The mobiliza-
to announce the transmission of power.”27 Hence,
tion of a legal process was aimed at demonstrat-
when a vast funeral cortège was held on the death
ing the French Republic’s radical transparency
of Louis XIV to place his remains in the royal
and that all, including the king, were equal under
sepulcher at Saint-Denis, the long and meander-
the law. Perhaps more than the execution of the
ing procession signaled the health of monarchical
king, the mundane order of due process destroyed
succession and the rightful transfer of power to his
the sense of mystery at the heart of the political
great-grandson Louis XV and the regent Philippe,
Death and Dispersal
23
duc d’Orléans. Somewhat curiously, the Bourbon
since it is unclear to whom and from what position
monarchy never established a grandiose funer-
the king writes. Lacking any pretense at hero-
ary monument at Saint-Denis. Gérard Sabatier
ics, the pious Louis XVI wrote to God alone, since
suggests that this lack was linked to a new image
he had been “deprived of every communication
of the living monarch, where “the preoccupation
whatsoever, . . . and besides being involved in a
under the exceptionally long reign of the two
criminal prosecution, of which it is impossible,
Louis XIV and XV, went from the exaltation of the
considering the passions of men, to foresee the
dead king in a secluded place turned towards final
event; for which no existing law can furnish any
ends, to that of a living king and the demonstra-
pretext or precedent.”31 Offering his soul to God
tion of his authority over the living.”28 No funeral
and extending forgiveness to those who “with-
was held for Louis XVI after his death on
out any cause given them by me, have become
January 21, 1793 (and there would not be one until
my enemies,” he entreated his son and potential
some twenty-two years later).
successor to show mercy to those who showed
hatred to him and advised him that “if he should
Louis XVI’s will, penned just before his
death, left little space for material possessions,
have the misfortune to become king, to remember,
let alone sumptuous furnishings. On the morn-
that he owes himself entirely to the happiness of
ing of January 21, 1793, on the way to the Place
his fellow-citizens.”32 What little Louis XVI had
de la Révolution, Louis XVI asked that it be
in terms of material possessions, he gifted to his
given to his wife, Marie-Antoinette, the former
personal valet, Jean-Baptiste Cléry: “I ask the men
queen of France. He had written the document
of the Commune to send him my garb, my books,
on Christmas Day the year before, weeks before
my watch, my purse, and the other small effects
the National Convention reached a final verdict
that have been deposited at the Council of the
on the king’s trial, voting in favor of regicide on
Commune.”33 Books, watch, purse: the meager
January 20.29 Known as the last will and testament
possessions that hewed close to the mortal body of
of Louis XVI, the document was read by the Paris
Louis XVI at the Temple stood in marked con-
Commune immediately after his execution and
trast to the vast array of “precious furnishings and
was published and translated the same year. Louis
effects” for sale at Versailles that Sunday morning
XVI’s last will and testament has often escaped
in August 1793. The last will and testament could
notice, even as the document bore lasting associa-
be interpreted as the attempt to seize control over
tions with the collective memory of a king more
the narrative of his end before the spectacular
often remembered for how he died rather than
death of the author at the scaffold.
how he reigned. It was used in commemorative
works such as François-Joseph Bosio’s sculpture
visual spectacle, drawn up by revolutionaries as the
in order to transform the dead monarch into a
necessary and exemplary sacrifice that had to be
Christian martyr, where, according to Emmanuel
made to ensure the future survival of the French
Fureix, “the representation eludes the crime and
Republic. Prior work to dehumanize the royal
all historicizing aims, in favor of an allegorization
body had been achieved by political pamphlets
of death.” Nonetheless, it is a curious document,
and satirical images that denigrated the king and
30
24
Luxury After the terror
Regicide was inevitably a highly publicized
queen, so that by the time each went on trial for their crimes against the French nation, they had already been transformed into an animal and monstrous other.34 In contrast to the corpulent and fleshy depictions of the king and queen while they were alive, royalist propaganda depicted the couple after their deaths in the form of phantom presences and specters, hidden in silhouette profiles, which closely embraced the animated figures of a dancing sansculotte, evoking the crowds who were said to have danced to “La Marseillaise” after the king’s execution, while others dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood and clambered for a piece of his cut-up brown coat and its enamel buttons.35 A stock royalist image that emerged in 1795 featured a female figure in mourning, bereft with grief, next to a weeping willow protecting a funerary urn and tomb. The silhouetted portraits of the king and queen, as well as the other executed members of their family, could be found lurking in the voids hidden amid the landscape, the spectral presences hugging and haunting the outlines of mournful urns, tombs, and Elysian landscapes of rest, the material trappings of funerary rites that had been denied to them (fig. 5). Such royalist prints drew attention to the fact that, while the
Fig. 5 Anonymous, Saule pleureur, 1795. Engraving, 26 × 16.9 cm. Bequest of Mary Martin, 1938, 38.145.437. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
king’s and queen’s deaths may have functioned as public spectacles at the Place de la Révolution and witnessed by large crowds (possibly including the
“put in his place,” positioned among his citizens,
French goldsmith Henry Auguste, whose work-
“buried between the bodies of those who died at
shop was nearby), their dismembered remains
the time of his marriage and the Swiss killed on
were quickly made away with and buried in the
August 10.”36
mass graves at the nearby Madeleine Cemetery to
prevent any proper commemoration. The king’s
Sophie Wahnich has argued for the collective
body, once decapitated, was put in a wicker basket
necessities of political terror and vengeance, for
before being transferred to an open wooden coffin
the philosopher Immanuel Kant, regicide marked
that was lowered into the ground and covered
a point of no return, a moral crime from which
with quicklime. The former king had finally been
the Revolution and its subjects could never be
While the contemporary radical theorist
Death and Dispersal
25
Fig. 6 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, drawing of the arrival of the funeral procession at the Abbey of Saint-Denis with the remains of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette on January 21, 1815. Pen and black ink, 32.3 × 45.7 cm. On loan from the Département des Arts Graphiques du Musée du Louvre, MV 5653; INV Dessins 287; RF3724. Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Gérard Blot).
26
absolved.37 In the Metaphysics of Morals (1797),
recalling “such scenes as the fate of Charles I or
Kant writes that the people did not have a legal
Louis XVI. But how are we to explain this feeling,
right to resist the authority of the sovereign
which is not aesthetic feeling (sympathy, an effect
without throwing themselves into moral peril.
of imagination by which we put ourselves in the
Evoking the regicide of the English king Charles I
place of the sufferer) but moral feeling resulting
in the same breath as the executed French sov-
from the complete overturning of all concepts
ereign, Kant described the feeling of horror in
of rights? It is regarded as a crime that remains
Luxury After the terror
forever and can never be expiated (crimen immor-
the drawn-out commemorations of the king and
tale, inexpiabile), and it seems to be like what
queen like scythes that cut through forms of revo-
theologians call the sin that cannot be forgiven
lutionary and Napoleonic collective memory.41 Yet
either in this world or the next.”38 For Kant, regi-
it was a style without a body, haunted by specters,
cide completely reversed the relationship between
speculations, and missing corpses. Moreover, the
an inviolable sovereign and his people: “Like a
mysterious circumstances of the dauphin’s death at
chasm that irretrievably swallows everything, the
the Temple in 1795 led to a host of imposter dau-
execution of a monarch seems to be a crime from
phins. Their continual reappearances throughout
which the people cannot be absolved, for it is as if
the nineteenth century filled the varying political
the state commits suicide.” The revolution after
regimes with dread by raising the prospect of a
regicide could not possibly provide the legitimate
legitimate heir to the Bourbon throne.42 Twenty-
foundations for a functioning state. The illegality
three years after the death of Louis XVI, the
of regicide not only tainted the government with
Bourbon Restoration held a ceremony of return-
the guilt of killing the king but also, more impor-
ing the king’s body to the royal tombs at Saint-
tantly, with upending the moral inviolability of
Denis, despite the fact that the bodies of the king
sovereignty.
and queen had never been found with absolute
The spectacle of the king’s death had the
certainty. Depicted by Jean-Démosthène Dugourc,
paradoxical effect of transforming secular decora-
the former royal designer whom we will encounter
tive objects such as furnishings into royal relics,
in a subsequent chapter, the pomp of the funeral
simultaneously divesting monuments of the ability
cortège appeared to compensate for the specter of
to transmit royal authority. In one sense, the royal-
doubt that loomed regarding the whereabouts of
ist visual economy, expressed in oblique forms
the once sacred king’s body (fig. 6). The royalist
such as the silhouette image discussed above,
fiction of the king’s two bodies had come to an
represented the ways in which the royal presence
end, just as loyalists enshrined the material relics
of the king and queen, hovering in spectral form,
of the Bourbon monarchy—from the queen’s silk
had been exiled from material embodiments of
shoes to strands of the king’s hair—as historical
sovereign authority. Court artists in exile, such
talismans that could summon forth the past.
39
as the architect Pierre-Adrien Pâris, constructed fictive funerary monuments to the dead king, which grew in scale and somberness even as
Spectacular Dismantlings
the possibilities for realizing a commemorative monument to the dead king within the internecine
Let us return to the immediate aftermath of the
politics of the Bourbon Restoration diminished.
king’s death, as the revolutionaries confronted the
The nostalgic remembrance of a sacrificed king,
concrete problem of what to do with the king’s non-
coupled with a strong dose of vengeance, laid the
bodily remains in the form of his possessions, lux-
foundations for a reactionary politics in exiled
ury objects and furnishings that filled the palaces
royalist strongholds, which returned to France
and royal buildings that had recently been seized as
during the Bourbon Restoration and brandished
biens nationaux (national property), as well as the
40
Death and Dispersal
27
storerooms of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne.
that took place in conceptions of property, were
On June 10, 1793, the National Convention, moti-
not new. Deriving from the Latin word for
vated by a desire to “put the sumptuous furnish-
increase, auctions had played an instrumental role
ings of the last tyrants of France, as well as the vast
in the translation of objects, goods, and, more
possessions they reserved for their pleasure, at the
nefariously, enslaved people from one owner to
service of the defense of liberty and the growth
another. In antiquity, auctions served as ruthless
of national prosperity,” issued an official decree
and public forms of political dispossession, func-
regarding the sales.43 By placing the king’s former
tioning within the economic life of ancient Rome,
possessions on the auction block, the National
where the praeco, or herald, oversaw the transac-
Convention aimed at the complete liquidation of
tion of money and goods by conducting sales,
the French throne, along with its matching foot-
taking offers, and declaring the winning bidder.46
stools, carpets, and tapestries. Selling off the king’s
While Romans across a broad spectrum of socio-
possessions on the civil list enabled the govern-
economic backgrounds bought and sold items at
ment to financially support its military campaigns,
public and private sales, emperors and politicians
following France’s declaration of war against
used auctions as platforms for displaying power.
England and Holland in February 1793. In another
Prominent individuals sold off the goods of
sense, the former royal possessions partook in a
defeated military enemies, purchased the effects of
broader transformation of private property recently
rivals or condemned citizens, or sold off their own
described by historian Rafe Blaufarb as the “great
personal goods in a display of magnanimity.47
demarcation.” Ancien régime understandings of
property depended on a feudal system where public
utilized auctions in order to disinherit rivals and
power in the form of venal offices and seigneuries
consolidate the cultural power of the French state.
was privately owned, and real estate in the form of
In 1661, Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s ambitious
land, buildings, and annuities was divided up into
finance minister, was arrested for embezzlement
a shared but hierarchical ownership “standing in
and misuse of funds. Shortly after, the jealous king
relations of domination and subordination to one
reserved a number of objects from the financier’s
another.” The monarchy rested at the top of the
possessions before they were sold off, including a
feudal hierarchy, “which asserted that its sover-
bed of green velvet embroidered in gold and silver,
eignty gave it a general right of proprietary supe-
and a set of Brussels tapestries.48 After Fouquet
riority, a kind of universal lordship, over the land
was found guilty and creditors seized his goods
44
of the entire kingdom.” By turning the crown’s
and placed them at auction in 1665, Louis XIV
possessions into biens nationaux along with selling
purchased crystal platters and cups at the sale,
them to the public, the revolutionary government
as well as Nicolas Poussin’s painting Gathering
sought to separate sovereign powers from private
Manna in the Desert.49 Auctions were not always
property, making possible the full ownership
politically motivated affairs. The head of the
of property by a single individual.
Garde-Meuble de la Couronne under Louis XV
sold off old-fashioned or damaged goods from the
45
Paradoxically, the political use of auctions,
persisting alongside the more sweeping changes
28
Prior to the Revolution, Louis XIV had
Luxury After the terror
royal household to make space for and fund new
furnishings—what museums today might describe
Cynthia Wall has described as the “narratives of
as a deaccessioning policy. Held in Paris at the
dismantlings” that shaped the precarious discourse
Tuileries and the Louvre, the officially approved
of the secondary market.52 In France, artists such
auctions included upholstered furniture, wood
as Gabriel de Saint-Aubin recognized the comic
furniture, and lacquered objects. The bidders
potential of the numerous sales that took place
were for the most part pawnbrokers, mercers, and
during his lifetime, when connoisseurs admired
upholsterers, who could reuse the damaged objects
his work as a peintre brocanteur (painter dealer),
for raw materials that could be reincorporated
annotating works of art for sale in unillustrated
into new items or refashioned and remounted
auction catalogs.53 His description of the human
according to the modern tastes of the day. Buyers
comedy that paraded past him during the famous
also included a few members of the nobility. The
sales held in the Paris auction houses is fittingly
royal provenance of objects did not always guar-
found as an addendum to a catalog: “You imagine
antee high prices. A number of lots failed to sell,
that I must take a lot of interest in the price varia-
including pieces of Boulle furniture that would,
tions, the progress of the arts, in the profit or waste
during the Revolution, become valued as works
of the merchants; not at all, the sales for me are a
of art worthy of being included in the new public
comedy, where each actor naively plays his role;
museum at the Louvre.
the vanity of some, the cupidity of others, the ruse
of one, the suspicion of another, I recognize pretty
50
51
Auctions throw into question issues of owner-
ship and inheritance, severing a particular work
much all of it, and see the different motives that
of art from its prior context by augmenting or
make them move; all of this amuses me and allows
decreasing its monetary value after the death or
me to pass the time at little expense.”54
impoverishment of a previous owner. By tempo-
rarily placing the value of an object on hold, the
tions became sites that revealed the crown’s
auction might be described as a temporal rupture
entanglements with Parisian luxury and all that
that severs an object’s time of possession under
it signified. The highly publicized sale of the duc
one owner from that of another later possessor.
d’Aumont’s collection in 1782 revealed how the lux-
Such changes in ownership became forms of public
uries that had been accumulated within the hôtels
spectacle in the eighteenth century, as connois-
of plutocratic financiers and grand courtiers such
seurs, collectors, and artists sought to outbid one
as the duke had come to surpass the king him-
another. The “English style auction” was popu-
self. Such collections were the topic of both scorn
larized by James Christie, the British auctioneer
and admiration in a prerevolutionary press that
whose seductive and elegant oratories tempted
positioned luxury at the center of debates about
potential buyers into imagining new lives made
corruption, patriotism, and virtue. At the sale
possible through the purchase of rare and tasteful
of the duc d’Aumont’s collection at his residence
objects. All the while, the silver-tongued Christie
beginning on December 12, 1782, a large crowd of
took care to draw attention away from the fact that
visitors gathered to see the lots offered during the
death or bankruptcy would ultimately lead to
nearly month-long exhibit. Spectators included
the dispersal of purchases, forming part of what
members of the king and queen’s households,
In the final years of Louis XVI’s reign, auc-
Death and Dispersal
29
as well as dealers who purchased items on behalf of
the royal residences of Saint-Cloud and Bellevue
the royal couple. The duc d’Aumont was renowned
in 1794 and 1795) to assess the furnishings that
for his furnishings and carved and mounted hard-
would go up for sale.58 As Gaillard emphasizes,
stone vases on columns, objects that were lavishly
those tasked with coordinating the auctions were
and precisely illustrated by the architect Pâris in
deputies from the Convention who considered
the catalog edited by the dealers Claude-François
themselves “représentants du peuple en mission.”59
Julliot and Alexandre-Joseph Paillet.55 Several
Divided into seven sections, the published decree
bidders could not actually afford to pay for the
for the dispersal of the royal collections included
works they had won. Buyers rarely paid for works
meticulous orders for the organization, invento-
in cash and often relied on endorsed promissory
rying, and estimation of furnishings and other
notes. The great expert and dealer Pierre Rémy,
effects found in the houses of the former royal
for example, procured promissory notes of 6,000
family and those in their retinue, as well as the sale
and 1,000 livres guaranteed by the goldsmith
of the properties transferred to the state. During
Robert-Joseph Auguste, along with shares of the
the inventorying process, commissioners were
Compagnie des Indes worth 2,575 livres. In a far
to take stock of what could be sold, what should
cry from Louis XIV’s sequestration of Fouquet’s
be reserved for the use of the new government,
goods, the royal couple discreetly purchased fifty-
what were considered artistic monuments, and,
six objects out of the 447 lots offered, for 220,000
finally, which items could be used by the army.
livres. These included an antique lidded vase with
Haste was imperative for a new nation burdened
mounts of a siren and a female faun by the gilder
with debt seeking to finance wars against the rest
and chaser Pierre Gouthière, bought for 5,000
of Europe. Article XI of the National Convention’s
livres, and a pair of serpentine vases mounted
official decree declared that once commissioners
with ram’s heads. Amid the mounting criticism
had determined which items could be sold for less
against the national debt and the crown’s expenses,
than 1,000 livres, they were to “gather, as soon as
Louis XVI did not have long to enjoy his purchases
possible, in the same place, the small portions of
before the narrative of dismantlings separated the
furnishings that may exist in different houses and
king from his possessions, many of which ended
belong to the former civil list, in order to accelerate
up as treasures of the French nation at the Louvre
the sales, to evacuate the said houses in the short-
Museum.
est amount of time and to suppress or diminish the
costs necessitated by the upkeep of the furnishings,
56
57
30
Bureaucracy rather than taste governed the
revolutionary auctions, which benefited from the
as well as the houses, parks and gardens.”60
many task forces established by the republican
government to supervise the liquidation of the
prized collection of paintings to the new national
crown’s assets. To oversee the vast array of objects
museum, luxury occupied an ambiguous place,
to be sold at the revolutionary auctions in 1793,
with some objects being sold in massive lots, while
the National Convention elected a ten-person
others were reserved for display in the Louvre.
committee, which fanned out across the properties
Much of the government’s criteria for determin-
of Versailles, Rambouillet, and Marly (followed by
ing what was to be sold or kept was driven by the
Luxury After the terror
While the government transferred the king’s
need to fill the nation’s coffers rather than careful
aesthetic consideration. For example, all silver-
for the museum made the cut. When Jean-
ware that was “not precious by its workmanship,
Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, the shrewd art dealer
as well as the copper and bronze that could not
and ex-husband of the exiled painter Élisabeth
be viewed as monuments of art,” was to be sent
Vigée Le Brun, encountered a Sèvres porcelain
to the mint to be turned into currency. Pearls,
garniture—comprised of a ship potpourri, a pair of
diamonds, and other precious jewels met a similar
pink elephant-head vases, and two lobed vases that
fate. Those found by the commissioners in the resi-
had belonged to the prince de Condé and were
dences were to be sent to experts to be weighed,
confiscated from his former residence at the Palais
classed, and evaluated, after which they would be
du Luxembourg when he fled into exile—he placed
combined with the confiscated jewels of émigrés
the set on the reserve list for museum objects.
and secured in a triple-locked coffer at the revenue
Despite this initial designation, the govern-
office near the administrator of the National
ment bartered the rare set of soft-paste porcelain
Domains in Paris. These would then be offered at
vases in 1795 to Citoyenne Marguerite Suzanne
a separate auction overseen by joailliers experts
Denoor (sometimes spelled Denor), a marchande
(jewelry specialists) in Paris.62 Other furnishings
d’estampes et de curiosités, in exchange for her
and objects that remained in the storage of the
husband’s natural history cabinet, demonstrat-
Garde-Meuble de la Couronne were repurposed by
ing the strange equivalences that emerged as the
the revolutionary government in the offices they
cash-strapped government sought to bargain with
occupied in former royal palaces. In Section IV
suppliers through the confiscated remains of royal
on the “conservation of monuments of art, and
and aristocratic patrons.64
furnishings necessary to different parts of public
service,” those placed in charge of the sales were
of objects and the financial turmoil caused by
to work with members of the Commission des
the quick deflation of the assignats, the sales
monuments to reserve a number of pieces to be
records from the years 1793 and 1794 housed at the
either placed in the collections of the new national
Archives de Seine-et-Oise have the appearance of
museum or used by members of government. The
an orderly list of carefully transcribed transactions,
only named furniture makers in the inventory
neatly bound into notebooks. The registers contain
of objects reserved for the national Muséum was
the date of each sale on a title page along with the
the cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle, whose
auctioneer placed in charge of that week’s sale. The
furniture inlaid with tortoiseshell, precious woods,
lot number of each item is listed in a left-hand col-
and gilded bronze signaled his work as “museum-
umn, accompanied by descriptions alternatingly
quality” pieces. As Marianne Clerc writes, “the
lengthy and pithy, depending on the item for sale.
complex motifs of marquetry in precious materi-
The buyers and final price are listed at the bot-
als requiring dexterity, the monumentality of the
tom. The same names, such as Geoffroy, Rouger,
smallest piece shaped from ebony and the sump-
and Rocheux, reappear, alongside more surpris-
tuous gilded bronzes designated a work of art
ing names like the famed cabinetmaker Riesener,
without the risk of error.”
who from the September 30, 1793, sale is listed
61
63
Not all the decorative arts objects set aside
In contrast to the radically fluctuating value
Death and Dispersal
31
as purchasing lot number 2340, a writing table
at the shockingly low price of 8,000 livres, even
with gilt bronze mounts and a mosaic tabletop,
though they had been estimated at 150,000 livres.68
for 3,210 livres. Lacking an overall order, the lots
The commission rectified the misjudgment by
intermix paintings with furniture and porcelain,
hunting down the tables and buying them back.
with a number of paired items split into separate
Other objects left France, never to return.
lots, even as each register is insistently methodical.
For example, the October 7, 1793, sale lists a pair
to forty lots, with the objects of lesser value sold in
of gouache paintings by Jean Pillement (lots 2771
the morning and more valuable items offered in the
and 2773), sold for 354 and 381 livres, respectively,
afternoon. Although two auctioneers oversaw the
separated by velour stools and a bed (lot 2772).
sales and a huissier-audiencier, or bailiff, recorded
65
The process of liquidation gains a rhythm
the sales in a procès-verbal, mix-ups regarding
and order in a perusal of the sales registers, where
who bought what often occurred. Names were
luxury items that had once occupied royal spaces
misspelled. A slip of the pen turned J. H. Eberts,
are retranslated into the abstract and tabular
the author and inventor of the Athénienne, a type
format on the space of the page, with no room
of furniture, into the sansculotte journalist Jacques
reserved for the place of the patron. Inventories,
Hébert, founder of the radical journal Le Père
from the medieval treasuries fastidiously kept
Duchesne.69 The participants included merchants,
by the Burgundian courts to the vast machinery of
furniture makers, secondhand-clothing dealers,
the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, had tradition-
and those who dealt in bric-a-brac, alongside
ally functioned as the instruments by which keep-
buyers from the public. Some bidders offered false
ers took stock of royal collections and measured
names, promising to procure payment for objects
the wealth and value of the kingdom. Historians
they could not afford, while others joined small
have claimed that bureaucratic order, rather than
associations that bid communally on objects that
the chaotic atmosphere of the market, defined the
were later sold in each other’s shops. Agents, too,
nature of the sales, which depended on a process
circulated at the sales, which turned titular book-
of rapid decision-making and the coordinated
sellers and publishers, such as Treuttel and Würtz,
implementation of policies that marked a new level
into dealers of art and porcelain.70 The merchant
of administration by a newly centralized govern-
Rocheux purchased objects on behalf of a group of
ment based in Paris. However, one could argue
buyers in Strasbourg, including the Eberts broth-
otherwise that the secondary market at Versailles
ers. Furnishings they purchased, including a set
represents the very space at which revolution-
of a bed and chairs made by the furniture maker
ary time encountered and sought to process the
Georges Jacob for the queen’s bedroom at the Petit
material remains of the past. Given the enormity
Trianon, ended up in Strasbourg.71 Meanwhile,
of the sales, the commissioners were bound to
a trapezoidal console by the queen’s cabinetmaker
make a few mistakes, especially when it came to
Ferdinand Schwerdfeger was exported to Hamburg
the misevaluation of objects, such as a set of four
and eventually ended up in Saint Petersburg in the
tables in petrified wood. The large tables had once
palace of Prince Youssoupoff.72 Many more distin-
belonged to the “wife of the tyrant,” and were sold
guished objects ended up in private collections in
66
67
32
Each session of the auction comprised thirty
Luxury After the terror
England, which was the home of émigrés who had
fraction of the price they had been promised but
fled France during the Revolution. Objects were
never paid after the expiration of the monarchy.
exported to England after the Terror, when buyers
In the case of Riesener, former ébéniste, or cabinet-
could not be found in France, and generally arrived
maker, to the French court, he repurchased pieces
across the Channel through Holland or Hamburg,
of furniture he had originally made for the king
serving as the foundation for an Anglo-French
and queen. At a sale of furnishings from the
taste invented by nineteenth-century dealers.
château de Saint-Cloud in 1794, “citoyen Riesener”
acquired a lavish secretaire that he had delivered
73
Although the primary objective of the auc-
tions at Versailles was to finance France’s ongoing
less than fifteen years earlier, in 1780, to Marie-
wars during the Revolution, the use of assignats
Antoinette for her use at Versailles. Found today
in transactions meant that the prices were incred-
at Waddesdon Manor, the drop-front writing desk,
ibly low. It is difficult to estimate the exact price
with its heavy gilt-bronze corner mounts and mar-
of lots, given that the value of assignats fluctuated
quetry, features a French cockerel. Considered out-
daily before they were eventually taken out of
moded by the time it was delivered to Versailles,
circulation by the government in 1796. A number
the desk was quickly relegated to the château
of objects that failed to reach their low estimate
de Saint-Cloud, where it served as part of the
were withdrawn from the sale, only to be reoffered
temporary furnishings for the country residence
at a much higher price a few months later and
purchased by the queen in 1785. At the auction,
purchased. The government also offered works
Riesener bought the piece for a paltry 3,500 livres,
that failed to find bidders to individuals whom it
less than half the amount he had been paid.77
could not afford to compensate in cash. Along with
the aforementioned Citoyenne Denoor, Jacques
secondhand dealer who saw money to be made
de Chapeaurouge, a businessman from Hamburg,
amid the bric-a-brac objects offered at incred-
was paid in 1796 with more than 250 objects from
ibly low prices, there was a former royal artisan
the royal collections for supplying grain to the
who sought to recuperate the results of his labor,
French government. It paid the military contrac-
transforming the auctions into spectacles of loss.
tor Abraham Alcan with exceptional pieces of
While it is probable that the cabinetmaker merely
furniture and tapestry. In lieu of assignats, Alcan
sought to resell his works in the knowledge of their
received rare works of art, including the Beauvais
true worth, seeing his craftsmanship purchased by
tapestry that had been designed by Le Barbier
any bidder must have at least aroused the memory
and a richly lacquered drop-front secretary and
of the original commissions, perhaps leading him
commode that Riesener had made for Marie-
to contemplate the question of whether patrons
Antoinette (fig. 7).
equivalent to the monarchy could be found once
Hidden amid the secondhand dealers and
more during the Revolution. Outside of the auc-
intermediary bidders for distinguished foreign
tions, the new government’s requests could have
clients were former court artisans who risked
hardly raised the confidence of artisans hoping to
a chance at securing objects they had made in
secure major commissions. The work of Guillaume
their own workshops, which were being sold for a
Beneman, a former cabinetmaker to Louis XVI,
74
75
76
Riesener’s purchase is poignant. For every
Death and Dispersal
33
Fig. 7 Jean-Henri Riesener, drop- front secretary (secrétaire en armoire), 1783. Oak veneered with ebony and seventeenth- century Japanese lacquer; interiors veneered with tulipwood, amaranth, holly, and ebonized holly; gilt- bronze mounts, marble top, and velvet, 144.8 × 109.2 × 40.6 cm. Bequest of William K. Vanderbilt, 1920, 20.115.11. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
is a case in point. After the National Convention
to the committee with Phrygian bonnets replac-
issued an official decree on July 4, 1793, banning all
ing the royal insignia. In the recollections of Paul
exterior signs of despotism found on buildings and
Barras, Robespierre was said to have lain on the
churches, Beneman found himself in the extraor-
same table after attempting suicide at the Hôtel
dinary position of working at the Conciergerie
de Ville while fighting off his arrest and eventual
prison, where he applied himself by removing the
condemnation by the Revolutionary Tribunal.79
royal insignias that had decorated the confiscated
furniture of royalist émigrés. On 15 Messidor, year
on objects sold at the auctions emerged only in
II (July 3, 1794), the Committee of Public Safety
the course of the nineteenth century, the Versailles
sent a large desk that had originally been made
auctions fed the voracious appetite for secondhand
for the château de Choisy in 1744 to Beneman,
goods in Paris, regardless of political affiliations.
requesting him to “remove the feudal signs that
When the royal privilege granted to the guild of
prevailed in the bronze embellishment.” Eleven
auctioneers was abolished in 1793, new auction
days later, the cabinetmaker sent the table back
houses in Paris appeared overnight, competing
78
34
Luxury After the terror
Though legends regarding the cut-rate deals
to sell off confiscated and possibly stolen goods. One upholsterer competed with the official sales in Versailles by offering the sale of “the furnishings and effects from the condemned,” while a furniture maker transformed his shop into an auction house, charging a 6 percent commission on everything.80 At places such as the hôtel Bullion, everything on display was for sale. With so much material on the market, buyers rarely exercised caution in determining whether objects had been legitimately purchased or had simply been pillaged. Even those holding political office were implicated, as suggested by a print representing the president of a committee making off with silverware after the removal of seals, referring to the seals that were placed upon a suspect’s domicile (fig. 8). In the words of Louis Sébastien Mercier, from wigs to beds to clocks, all were sold at a low price “by dealmakers, by intriguers who had the secret of fabricating assignats . . . who hoarded priceless masterpieces for useless pieces of paper.”81
Fig. 8 Anonymous, Président d’un comité révolutionnaire, après la levée d’un scelé, 1794–95. Color engraving, 19.5 × 16 cm. G 25948, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
Even for those who managed to escape execu-
tion, disinheritance proved a fatal blow and was intended to prevent émigrés from returning to
my mahogany furniture . . . provisions of all
France. Such measures were subsequently taken
sorts, tableware, paintings, busts, jewelry and
against anyone deemed an enemy of the state.
precious effects . . . all of my correspondence,
No one was immune, and dispossession affected
my manuscripts, and many papers that friends had
several notable figures who had been hailed
entrusted to me . . . all of this was taken and trans-
as celebrities during the ancien régime. Baron
ported to I know not where, or was sold at auction,
von Grimm, the catty Enlightenment journalist
or removed by those who had long prepared for
and contributor to the Encyclopédie, recalled the
this underhanded pillaging.”82 Though colored in
horrors of discovering that his own property had
part by his paranoia and distrust of the servants in
been seized while he was in exile in 1793, just a
his own household, Grimm’s statement nonetheless
few months after Louis XVI had been guillotined.
illustrates the ways in which the secondary market
He recalled, “I was two hundred leagues away
worked in tandem with revolutionary confisca-
from Paris at the time, and they needed less than
tions to liquidate the past luxuries of the ancien
three weeks to clean out my entire house. All my
régime. With no possibility of returning, Grimm
possessions, clothes, bed linens and bedclothes,
lived for the remainder of his years in Gotha.
Death and Dispersal
35
Many of the wealthy and elite who had
prospered under the crown never returned to
and a false passport. Despite returning to France
reclaim their possessions. This was the case for
briefly from 1790 to the spring of the following
Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billarderie, the comte
year, d’Angiviller was forced to leave for a second
d’Angiviller, the directeur général des Bâtiments
and final time; his valet described France as full
du Roi, who served as Louis XVI’s culture min-
of “revolutionary anthropophages, more set upon
ister and close confidante on the crown’s many
dismembering the skeletal remains of this country
artistic and architectural projects, from the Royal
than their claims to regenerate it.”85 Before fleeing
Academy to the plans to redesign Versailles. The
France a second time, d’Angiviller entrusted his
engraver Johann Georg Wille recalled a par-
silver plate to the American diplomat Gouverneur
ticularly memorable evening on September 13,
Morris, a known sympathizer of Louis XVI and
1787, just two years before the start of the French
admirer of Marie-Antoinette, who managed to
Revolution, when he and other members of the
remain in Paris despite the increasing political
Royal Academy were invited to dine at the Parisian
unrest of the Terror. The rest of the former min-
residence that the comte d’Angiviller shared with
ister’s belongings at Versailles had quickly been
his wife when he was not at the court of Versailles
placed under seal after his departure and claimed
for official work. As a military man, courtier, and
as national property.86 In 1794, Morris found him-
minister for Louis XVI, he had amassed a con-
self in the difficult position of having to hide the
siderable fortune and art collection, while the
disgraced minister’s plate in his home and wrote
salons overseen by his wife at the hôtel d’Angiviller
to the exiled count of the dangers of keeping such
on the rue de l’Oratoire were lively affairs where
hefty and visible forms of luxury concealed: “You
artists, men of letters, and elite cultural figures
can imagine how often I wished to be relieved of
conversed in a spirited manner: “We were, if I am
the trust. My servants had seen the plate brought
not mistaken, 36 to 38 persons at table. The meal
in, they knew that it was still in the house, and
was of an extraordinary magnificence, served in
I had reason not to trust them.”87 Whereas Wille
an immense and most superb silverware. Nothing
had reveled in the dazzling effects of the count’s
was out of place.” For a member of the Academy,
tableware, Morris sought in vain to find an agent
having a seat at the table of the count would have
or accomplice willing to relieve him of this bur-
been particularly impressive, since d’Angiviller
densome trust: “There was at the time no money
not only oversaw the crown’s major artistic and
exchange with foreign countries, all operations
architectural commissions as head of the building
of the kind having been forbidden under penalty
works but also commanded the royal manufac-
of death.”88
tories, the royal academies of painting, sculpture,
and architecture, and also the Observatory and the
converting the currency first into assignats, Morris
Académie de France in Rome.
finally managed to obtain 47,272 livres after the
sale of the silver. Even as he counseled George
83
84
36
abuses and fled to Spain with only his loyal valet
On July 28, 1789, two years after the magnifi-
Through a complex transaction that involved
cent repast, d’Angiviller abandoned his post after
Washington to develop a plain and simple taste fit-
a series of public accusations of corruption and
ting the new president of a young republic, Morris
Luxury After the terror
was a lover of luxury who sought to retain some of
van mode en smaak from 1794, discovered by Jean-
the ancien régime splendor he had enjoyed while
Charles Davillier, which described the auctions
stationed in Paris, bringing back a considerable
for Dutch readers. It described thirty-seven lots
number of French furnishings to his New York
offered at the Versailles auction, in the belief that
estate at Morrisania, including Marie-Antoinette’s
the list would serve “as an enduring souvenir of the
armchair. While Morris may have been able to
incredible luxury of the richest Court in Europe,
freely enjoy the delights of ancien régime France
of which no trace remains of its grandeur today.”92
in the context of a newly established United States,
Sèvres porcelain in particular was singled out as
luxury objects such as d’Angiviller’s silver service,
representative of the luxury of the extinguished
once viewed as key to the social rituals of the
French court. Porcelain cabarets, or sets for drink-
ancien régime, had transformed into burdensome
ing coffee and tea, clocks, and garnitures reap-
and dangerous reminders of the recent past in the
pear again and again amid a sea of beds, chairs,
context of the new French nation; the count died
commodes, and desks in the offered lots described
in exile in Germany in 1810, never to return to
by the journal. As we will see in chapter 5, ancien
France.
régime porcelain would look remarkably different
89
from the kinds of luxuries produced at the Sèvres manufactory after the Revolution. The wistful, ekphrastic descriptions and the attention to each
Luxury Lost and Found
itemized object betray a knowledge of the true Dispersal, no matter how forcefully undertaken
worth of such objects and a wonder at the lost
by the French government, could never fully
splendors of the monarchy. The vocabulary used
eradicate the material traces of the recent past.
is a far cry from the succinct statements in the
Moreover, the recirculation and redistribution of
official registers of the revolutionary sales kept in
objects transformed the exclusivity of luxury from
the archives. For example, the journal described
singular possessions intended for a specific archi-
a cabaret, or tea and coffee service, from the sale
tectural setting into a participatory and collective
of furnishings of the Petit Trianon, in the follow-
“purchase of the past.” The auctions made pos-
ing manner: “A cabaret or déjeuner, consisting of
sible the redistribution of luxury from elite spaces
a tray decorated with two cups and their saucers
to the bric-a-brac shops filled with ancien régime
with a sugar bowl, all of it of the finest Sèvres
goods that would colonize the literary imagina-
porcelain, in a blue ground, with incrustation of
tion of the early nineteenth century. According to
garlands in pearls and enamel gems, as well as
Stammers, history, too, was a product of the auc-
the medallion in little gold plaques. Represented
tions, where the Revolution’s “disruptive fury—pil-
on each of these pieces in miniature, in the most
laging chateaux, dissolving monasteries, disman-
beautiful and latest finish, is a historic scene
tling clerical libraries—helped redistribute and
taken from the Adventures of Telemachus, which
reclassify a whole host of historical souvenirs.”91
comprises nine little superb tableaux. One of these
cups represents Venus receiving the apple, and the
90
The sense of lost splendor conjured by the
auctions is evident in a journal article in Kabinet
saucer adds: To the most beautiful. L. 3000.”93
Death and Dispersal
37
Fig. 9 Sèvres Manufactory, decorated by Étienne-Henri Le Guay, cup and saucer, ca. 1780–85. Soft-paste porcelain decorated in polychrome, jeweled enamels, and gold, 6.8 × 9.4 × 6.9 cm (cup); 3.5 × 13.9 cm (saucer). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Forsyth Wickes—The Forsyth Wickes Collection, 65.1808a-b. Photo © 2022 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The subject matter and distinctive jeweled
decoration can be connected to the incomplete
38
agate designs after the Revolution (fig. 9).94 If this cup and saucer once formed part of the cabaret
service made by Sèvres for Louis XVI’s use at
described in Kabinet van mode en smaak, it sug-
Versailles, which will be discussed in the context
gests that individual lots may have been divided
of chapter 5. A cup and saucer with the inscrip-
and sold off separately, dismantling the “joy of
tion “To the most beautiful” in Boston has a
sets” so integral to the ancien régime arrange-
similar decoration with imitation agates and
ment and delectation of luxury objects, into single
strands of pearl, coral, and gold, a delicate jew-
collectibles.95 The author’s detailed description of
eled style of decoration that would ultimately be
the service evokes in full the lost splendor of the
replaced by trompe l’oeil marble, hardstone, and
French court; while the architectural settings of the
Luxury After the terror
ci-devant monarchy may have been repurposed to
moment of the first universal public museum.
revolutionary uses, the fragments of luxury that
Part of this may be explained by scholarly inter-
were available for purchase became souvenirs of
est in the formation of a “patriotic” taste and the
the past. Materials once dismissed by eighteenth-
reception of art during the eighteenth century in
century critics as inimical to the lasting founda-
the creation of a national patrimony. By contrast,
tions of patriotic virtue ended up outlasting the
histories of the market have tended to focus on
regimes and patrons for whom they had once been
the identities of patrons and how their personali-
made, becoming superfluous relics of their age.
ties shaped the particular contours of a collection,
while neglecting to mention the ultimate dispersal
Porcelains, tables, chairs, and bureaus present
a peculiar problem for the study of the French
of such collections through auctions, which have
Revolution. On the one hand, the possessions liq-
been dismissed for the most part as transactional
uidated at auction constituted part of the broader
events in the movement from one private collec-
political debates on the national debt and finance
tion to the next, and in the fluctuating price of an
that changed ideas about what money was and
exceptional work of art. Nonetheless, the auctions
whom it was for. On the other hand, royal luxury,
introduced sites for beholding art that emerged at
as a potent signifier of the recent past, continued
the intersection of two different political regimes
to persist even after the removal of the symbols of
and systems of value. In lieu of the discerning
despotism and feudalism had been called for, and
vision of the connoisseur and his collection that
long after the king and queen had been executed.
had done much to drive the artistic discourse
Enabling a liquidity through the liquidation of
and market of ancien régime France, the forced
material possessions, the revolutionary auctions
dispersal of art and luxury shaped alternative
represented the ways in which the art market
forms of artistic evaluation. Within the political
participated in and profited from political and
culture of the period, the auctions can be posi-
economic change, functioning as a nexus between
tioned as a counter-site to the national archive
privately held works of art and the public. Certain
created at the same moment. For if the archive
objects, such as the rare furnishings by the ébéniste
depends on a mechanism of accrual and perpetual
Boulle, were culled from the lists and carefully
reorganization to deal with the unending “fever” of
kept and preserved in the national museum at the
documents that fill its spaces—all the while accu-
Louvre and thus were transformed into a form of
mulating the dust of history ardently inhaled by
national patrimony. The lots that were released
Jules Michelet—auctions operate as the merciless
for resale at the auctions had unstable meanings;
mechanism for a letting go of the physical remains
their worth and value were determined not only
and remainders of the past, liquidating in turn
by the market or collective politics but also by the
any personal meaning they may have had for their
personal and highly idiosyncratic systems of belief
former owners.97
96
(and purse strings) of the most determined bidder.
Disinheritance is not often considered a
primary legacy of the cultural politics of the Revolution, which is seen instead as the founding
Death and Dispersal
39
O
n September 22, 1789, with France’s fear of its debt crisis reaching a fever pitch, the Bastille already in crumbled
ruins, and the royal coffers nearly empty, King Louis XVI sent his precious plate to the royal mint. In a letter he had addressed to the clergy of France three weeks earlier, he wrote of his willingness to sacrifice all he could for the economy and for the happiness of his people, including the “pomp and
Chapter 2
pleasures of the throne—which have become bit-
Henry Auguste
and gold vessels, even the knife handles from his
Precious Metals in the Age of Terror
ter to me for some time.”1 The king sent his silver cutlery, to be melted down and converted into bullion in order to replenish the nation’s dwindling coffers. These were followed by the offerings of Queen Marie-Antoinette, the king’s aunts, his brothers and sister, and other noblemen. Prior to the king’s sacrificial gesture, Adélaïde-Marie- Anne Castellas, the patriotic wife of the sculptor Jean-Guillaume Moitte, had already led a delegation of women to the National Assembly decked in elegant Roman tunics; they solemnly offered their jewels to be sacrificed to the national debt in a casket that contained “93 silver tokens, three silver goblets, 24 silver buttons, four pairs of gold bracelets, three gold medallions, eight gold rings, three pairs of hoop earrings, five thimbles, two purse strings (coulants de bourse), a watch strap, a souvenir, five cases (étuis), an embroidery needle, two women’s boxes, a medal of Frédéric V, king of Denmark, all in gold, and a purse holding sixteen louis d’or coins” (fig. 10).2 These small but precious tokens of patriotism were supplemented elsewhere in France by nuns and clergymen who offered up their church plate. The city of Issoudun collected shoe buckles in the hope that “all of the silver shoe buckles in the realm would amount to 3 million.”3 The total sum melted in the hope of easing France’s
Fig. 10 Jean-Guillaume Moitte (artist), Jean-Baptiste Lucien (engraver), and Jean Louis Charles Pauquet (engraver), Hommage à la deuxième legislature: première bas-relief placé sur l’Arc de Triomphe elevé au Champ de Mars, pour la Fédération Générale des Français, célébrée à Paris le 14 juillet 1790, 1791. Engraving, 24.2 × 43.5 cm. G.28212, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Paris Musées.
debt burden weighed an estimated 54,857 kilos of
financial ruin and debt, and, of course, paper.
silver and 187 kilos of gold. It was not enough.
Officially taken out of circulation on January 30,
All the king’s gold and silver could not put France
1796, the assignats had a longer print run in their
back on its feet again. In December 1789, with nei-
afterlife, in the form of trompe l’oeil engravings
ther authority nor a constitution, the newly estab-
that pictured the various iterations of the paper
lished National Assembly began issuing assignats,
currency amassed in illusionistic piles as madden-
interest-bearing printed bonds initially backed
ingly flat and valueless as the actual money itself.5
by the sale of property seized by the govern-
ment. These eventually became the country’s first
of the past have become a source of fascination
national paper currency, which went into and out
for scholars of revolutionary France seeking to put
of circulation in less than a decade, leaving behind
the recent events of our own late capitalist crises,
a devastating trail of speculation and inflation,
such as the financial crash of 2008, into historical
4
42
Luxury After the terror
The economic traumas and monetary crises
perspective.6 In the attempts to signal how the fis-
to traditional luxury materials, particularly gold,
cal debates over the assignats constituted a point of
and gave rise to alternative significations of a
origin for our modern political culture, few have
distinctly irrational nature. While France invested
considered the materials that suddenly became
paper money with its hopes for a new economic
a part of “outdated” value systems of the ancien
future out of the national debt, it was through the
régime, especially gold. Indeed, the revolutionary
medium of print, according to Richard Taws’s work
scenarios of precious plate being sacrificed on the
on trompe l’oeil prints of assignats, that the French
altar of patriotic duty, muse-like women throw-
“acted out” their economic traumas in the postrev-
ing gold boxes, hoops, thimbles, and needles into
olutionary period.8 Given the symbolic importance
the fiery furnace of the mint, and a paper money
of paper as a medium, what then was the place of
fresh off the press resemble less of the image of
gold, a material that the French by turns fetishized,
a modern political culture based on a reasoned
hoarded, and fantasized about, even as their day-
discourse of political economy, and more of a
to-day monetary transactions took place through
return to the base language of fetishism, which
paper? This charged context makes the gold ewer
the Enlightenment writer Charles de Brosses
that Auguste executed in 1790 for the English
viewed as the irrational source of all religion.
collector William Beckford particularly unusual,
Across times and cultures, humans had invested
not only because of the purity of the gold used to
gold with extraordinary powers, which made its
fashion it during a time of material scarcity but
sacrifice all the more striking, as de Brosses wrote
also because of the ways in which the vessel figures
in recalling an encounter between the “savages”
the aesthetic anxieties that emerged about value
of Cuba and the Spanish: “no Divinity was more
with the demise of royal sovereignty (plate 5). The
harmful to Savages than gold, which they certainly
ewer remains one of the only surviving examples
believed to be the Fetish of the Spanish. . . . The
of eighteenth-century French goldsmiths’ work to
Barbarians of Cuba, knowing that a Castilian fleet
be fashioned from pure gold. Its survival cer-
was about to land on their island, decided they
tainly depended on the fact that it was intended
had to appease the Spanish god in order to be rid
for Beckford, an English connoisseur and lover
of him. They gathered all their gold in a basket. . . .
of French art who profited from revolutionary
They danced and sang around it according to reli-
instability by purchasing a number of works once
gious custom, then threw it into the sea.” Hidden
in the French king’s possession and absconding
and hoarded during the financial panic, gold was
with them back to England.9 Beckford was clearly
everywhere on everyone’s mind, yet scarcely to be
fond of the ewer, keeping it at his estate at Fonthill
seen, its absence palpably felt each time an assignat
Abbey until his death in 1823. Passed down in the
changed hands as a form of payment.
family until the twentieth century, it then entered
the collection of Martine-Marie-Pol de Béhague,
7
This chapter explores the work of the Parisian
goldsmith Henry Auguste within the financial
comtesse de Béarn.10 While scholarship on the
tremors and terrors of revolutionary France, and
ewer has focused on its dazzling provenance, turn-
how the introduction of a paper currency desta-
ing our attention to the maker will reveal the trans-
bilized the symbolic value that had been granted
formations that took place in artisanal identities.
Henry Auguste
43
Alongside the dispersal and dispossession
remains scarce. In stark contrast to the migrations
of the royal collections (the focus of the previ-
to Florence, Rome, Hamburg, London, and Saint
ous chapter on the auctions), the dissolution of
Petersburg of French artists who went in search
the monarchy prompted other forms of profes-
of markets for their work after the Revolution,
sional dispossession, specifically for artisans
Auguste’s voyage to Haiti, the site of the world’s
whose mastery of costly materials had closely
first successful slave revolt, is a historical aber-
depended on the sovereign, who had symbolically
ration. His demise there, after his rejection and
guaranteed the standard and worth of precious
condemnation by the French state for refusing
metals. Auguste’s work as a goldsmith at the end
to pay his mounting debts, casts the arc of his
of the monarchy occurred at a moment when he
professional life in a different light by unraveling
sought to untether his career from commissioned
the “grand narratives” of the French Revolution
works to objects of a more experimental and
and the recuperated meanings of luxury during the
idiosyncratic nature, particularly a reliquary he
Napoleonic period. Whereas mastery, craftsman-
made for his wife after the Terror. Though he was
ship, and trust had functioned as the hallmarks of
far from a sophisticated financier or tax farmer,
the goldsmiths, one of the most prestigious and
Auguste nonetheless plunged into the heady world
powerful guilds in Paris since the medieval period,
of making money, turning from a goldsmith with
Auguste’s dispossession is tied to the dissolution
artistic pretensions into something of an amateur
of the guild system, the monarchy, and the very
economist and inventor, an engraver of medals,
language of mastery itself.
and an author. The same year Auguste created the gold ewer, he began publishing a series of pamphlets that engaged with the heated public debates
Auguste Makes His Mark
on the national currency. While the Revolution
44
provided him with a period of personal reinven-
Auguste executed the golden ewer for Beckford
tion, it also marked a regressive materiality in his
in 1790, when he was at the height of his pow-
works, as he returned to the alchemical roots of
ers and recognized for his ability to translate the
goldsmithing—except that here, the goal was not
language of antiquity into precious vessels of
to transform base materials into gold but to con-
exceptional beauty and expense. Weighing a hefty
vert church bells and other vestiges of the despotic
857 grams, or 30.226 ounces, the ewer was raised,
past into metallic currency.
chased, and cast from a gold of a higher standard
of purity than the 24-karat gold typically used to
My account of Auguste is indebted to the
extensive biographical and archival research
make precious jewelry today. Two bands divide the
undertaken by Yves Carlier, though it highlights
ewer’s lip, neck, and body, while a calyx decorated
somewhat differently the speculative and phantas-
with acanthus leaves separates the body from the
magorical end of Auguste’s life in Port-au-Prince,
foot. Based on a design by the sculptor Moitte, the
Haiti. His death in the former French colony
piece’s sharply chiseled profile evokes the austere
merits our historical consideration, even if the
vases of classical antiquity, which also provided
archival documentation of his final years in Haiti
the inspiration for the ornamental frieze found at
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 11 Henry Auguste, after a design by Jean-Guillaume Moitte, “Beckford-Béhague” ewer, 1790, detail. Gold and ebonized fruitwood, 29 cm, 857 g. Private collection.
the shoulder of the vessel, set with motifs of seated
griffons and foliage, the double-headed profile
narratives of the French Revolution. While the
of Janus, Roman god of thresholds, and the face of
national debt formed the immediate context for
Mercury, god of commerce, communication, and
the patriotic bonfires of precious metals that this
Goldsmiths are largely absent from the artistic
eloquence, but also of deception and trickery
chapter began with, a longer history of the precari-
(fig. 11). The ebony handle coils around the Spartan
ous nature of gold made it the least commemo-
body of the vessel; the two are attached by means
rative of media at a time when revolutionaries
of a cast female head turned outward, gazing upon
sought a language of permanence and immuta-
the handle wriggling out of the top of her head like
bility. As Carlier writes, “Rare are the Parisian
one enormous ebony lock amid her tresses of gold.
goldsmiths whose names have withstood time
Auguste Orfèvre du Roi A Paris 1790 is proudly
and have not been forgotten, as a consequence of
incised inside the foot and next to the marks.
the disappearance of their productions by being
Henry Auguste
45
melted down during times of crisis or because
authority upon the self-organized and -governing
of the caprices of fashion.” Out of all the distin-
artisanal communities of Paris.15
guished artisans who worked for the French court,
goldsmiths’ productions were nearly always threat-
goldsmiths’ guild and its stringent regulations.
ened with annihilation, among the most infamous
To become a master and open a shop, a boy around
instances being Louis XIV’s massive destruction
the age of ten to sixteen had to undertake an
of his silver furniture in 1689. Such circumstances
apprenticeship in the workshop of a master, serv-
have made the reputations of certain goldsmiths,
ing for two years as a journeyman or compagnon.
such as Benvenuto Cellini, all the more excep-
Once the training had been completed, he had to
tional. Cellini’s artisanal knowledge enabled him to
wait for a mastership to be made available, since
transform objects such as the saltcellar he made for
memberships in the guild were strictly limited.
Francis I into masterpieces displaying a salty man-
When a spot opened, the candidate would take an
nerist wit. Even in his case, the taboo of money
oral exam before the wardens: potential goldsmiths
haunted his reputation, for goldsmiths are typically
were asked about the table of weights, the price
treated by art historians as little more than glori-
and qualities of gold, and how to alloy pure silver
fied bankers or money changers, the artistic worth
to make it to the right Paris standard. Questions
of their labor secondary to the monetary value of
about moral integrity were also posed, in order
their raw materials.
to determine whether an individual was honest
A crowned fleur-de-lis, two crossed palms
enough to uphold the standards of the trade.16
with two grains on either side, and the initials H A:
Next came the chef d’oeuvre, an object that was
this was the mark that Henry Auguste deposited
produced before the judges to prove one’s skills.
at the royal mint in Paris on April 20, 1785, when
This was often a modest piece, such as a spoon or
he was accepted into the goldsmith’s guild, adding
simple vessel, that could be executed within a few
one extra palm to the mark of his equally famous
hours in front of the judges who were inspecting
goldsmith father. Auguste was born on March 18,
the candidate.17 If deemed successful, the wardens
1759, to Louise-Élisabeth Barge and Robert-
took the candidate to the mint, where he pledged
11
12
13
14
46
Fear of fraud drove the heavy policing of the
Joseph Auguste, goldsmith to Louis XVI. As gold-
an oath to uphold the standards of the guild, and a
smiths, Auguste père et fils were members of one
security was paid by a sponsoring master. Finally,
of the most powerful and prosperous corporations
the goldsmith registered his marks with the royal
in Paris, and one of the most heavily policed since
mint by striking them on a copper plaque kept
the medieval period. By 1260, the trade’s official
there. The workshop was to be located in a place
statutes had been codified in writing by Étienne
visible to the public, and, as Faith Dennis notes,
Boileau, the provost of Paris, in order to protect the
even “the forge had to be in full view of customers,
reputation of goldsmiths. The Paris municipal stat-
passers-by, and the zealous wardens of the guild,
utes were replaced in 1679 by a royal statute issued
as a precaution against fraud” (fig. 12).18 Trust was
by Louis XIV, which effectively placed the guild
paramount to a goldsmith’s reputation.
under the surveillance of the crown in Versailles,
pointing to the increasing encroachment of royal
upon his acceptance into the guild, guaranteed
Luxury After the terror
Marks, such as the one deposited by Auguste
958/1,000 pure silver, a higher level of purity than sterling silver today. The standard for gold was set at 916/1,000 for large pieces, and 843/1,000 for small pieces.20 Paris silver had four primary marks. The first was the warden’s mark, known as the poinçon de jurande, which followed a letter- date system that allowed one to identify which warden had certified the piece’s standard of purity and when. These marks usually featured a crown with a letter underneath that changed each year. The next two marks were the charge and discharge marks, known respectively as the poinçon de charge and the poinçon de décharge, which served to officially register and assay the raw material used, and to levy tax on the completed work. After the marks, the goldsmith would take the piece of silver intended for use to the farmer-general, or tax collector, to whom the right to collect taxes was farmed out by the royal government. He would then place the charge mark. After the piece was finished, it would be taken back to the tax farmer, the duty would be paid, and the discharge mark Fig. 12 J. R. Lucotte (engraver), “Orfèvre Grossier,” plate 1 from Encyclopédie dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 1771. Engraving. Gift of Mrs. George A. Kubler; 1949152-2, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.
would be added to the finished piece to certify that the tax had been paid. Last but not least was the maker’s mark, the goldsmith’s personal mark that had been deposited with the office of the royal mint.
While marks and vigilant surveillance may
have protected the Parisian goldsmiths’ guild from the purity of the metal used to make a piece and
fraud, they did not prevent their work from the
also functioned as indicators of the date and place
constant threat of monetary crisis. The pressure
of its fabrication, the identity of its maker, and
of money affected Paris goldsmiths acutely in
a certification that duties had been paid to the
two ways. First, the regulations imposed by the
mint. Known as poinçons in French, these marks
Bureau de la Marque were constantly opposed
were placed in specific locations on an object,
because of allegations of the abuse of office, with
depending on its size and type. In Paris, marks
goldsmiths accusing officials of selling their
guaranteed that the work was made from a metal
services to fraudulent practitioners and permit-
that was an alloy up to the city standard, set at
ting metals of lesser quality to officially circulate
19
Henry Auguste
47
on the market.21 Second, objects could always
of Louis XIV’s courtiers, was gone in a blaze of fire
potentially be melted down and sacrificed in times
by May 1690.
of war, debt, or with the arrival of new fashions.
The work of royal goldsmiths was particularly
would have been well aware of both the pres-
vulnerable to destruction at any moment, since
tige and the precarity of toiling on behalf of the
their labor was simply a placeholder, a means
French crown. His father had worked for Louis XV
of holding currency in reserve before it was
alongside the Roettiers family and had ushered
melted down for the king’s use; an object’s weight
in a new taste for precious vessels inspired by
would be liquidated into louis d’or in a process
classical antiquity, a direct contrast to the rococo
of conversion that would ultimately render the
pieces favored just a few decades earlier. Auguste
cost of craftsmanship worthless. Such destruc-
senior was in such demand that the royal mint
tion was often conceived as an act of royal power,
had a special account for him. In April 1778 alone,
as exemplified by the melting down of Louis XIV’s
he brought 4,000 marks of silver to be marked,
precious silver furniture in 1689. When Louis XIV
attesting to the large number of works he executed
decided to commission nearly two hundred pieces
for his distinguished clientele.26 In an age of luxury
of silver furniture for his newly refurbished palace
and publicity, Auguste’s name signified a status and
at Versailles, the decision was clearly an attempt,
quality apart from the other goldsmiths active
in the words of Béatrix Saule, at “the sacralization
in Paris, to the degree that even a small object,
of power.” Although Spain’s colonies in the New
such as a gold box decorated with pilasters and
World created a glut of precious metals circulating
bas-relief figures, sold at the 1767 auction of Jean
throughout seventeenth-century Europe, silver
de Jullienne’s collection, was described as “parfaite-
was most commonly used as currency and was
ment exécutée par M. Auguste.”27 Working under
rarely used to create residential furniture, with
his father’s tutelage granted Henry privileged access
the exception of its incorporation into liturgical
to royal commissions, allowing him to execute
spaces. Human-scale ewers and vases, candela-
works for the royal family even before he had offi-
bras, chandeliers, and tapestries woven of silver
cially gained entrance into the Paris guild.28 In 1784,
decorated the spaces of Versailles, culminating in
he accompanied his father to the Garde-Meuble
the Sun King’s throne room in the Salon of Apollo.
de la Couronne, where he witnessed the melting
The awe and envy of distinguished visitors to
down of textiles woven from threads of gold and
Versailles, the silver furniture disappeared virtu-
silver; the remaining precious metals were sold to
ally overnight on December 3, 1689, when the king
“Auguste père et fils.”29 A year after his mastership,
had his pieces sent to the mint in order to finance
Auguste had become a celebrated goldsmith in his
the War of the League of Augsburg. His court-
own right, lauded for his “talent that is perhaps
iers were naturally expected to follow suit. As one
superior to that of his father.”30 He took over the
commentator noted, “So much silver is taken to
family workshop near the Place du Carrousel and
the mint that it could not melt down all that was
began to establish his own name as a goldsmith in a
taken there.” All of the royal silver, including that
city that was on the verge of a financial breakdown.
22
23
24
25
48
As the son of a royal goldsmith, Auguste
Luxury After the terror
noted, he effectively channeled the spirit of the
Gold in the Dry Manner
classical past with what he called his “dry” manIn order to keep up with the demands of fash-
ner of drawing: “The dryness [sécheresse] found
ionable Paris, the Auguste workshop relied on
at times in his nudes announces him as a dis-
the designs of artists to update their models and
ciple of the ancients, who captured their allure,
decorative motifs. While Robert-Joseph prob-
practiced their studies, and intensified their
ably utilized designs supplied by the sculptors
theory.”35 Perhaps a subtle play on the sculptor’s
Augustin Pajou and Étienne-Maurice Falconet,
name (“moist” in French), the purported dry-
Henry turned to Moitte, a younger and lesser-
ness of Moitte’s technique was first recognized
known sculptor at the time. Fourteen years older
by critics in the models for vessels he produced
than Auguste, Moitte was the son of an academic
for Auguste. The sculptor likely began supplying
engraver and received his training at the Royal
the Auguste family with designs after his return
Academy. From an early age, the young sculptor
from Rome during the 1770s, when his ill health
was so sickly and fragile that his first teacher, Jean-
made it impossible for him to chisel larger forms
Baptiste Pigalle, forced him to study under his own
in marble.36 According to one account, Moitte
teacher, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, because Pigalle’s
produced “perhaps more than a thousand draw-
studio was too far and Lemoyne was located much
ings in this genre,” although it is more likely that
closer to the frail pupil’s home. Moitte showed
his designs for tureens, boxes, wine coolers, bowls,
exceptional promise by winning the prestigious
and ewers were mixed in with models already cre-
grand prix for sculpture in 1768 for a relief of
ated by Robert-Joseph and his son.37 The majority
David holding the head of Goliath in triumph. The
of the drawings by Moitte in the Auguste work-
subject must have resonated with him after he was
shop were subsequently bought by Jean-Baptiste-
chased down by other students, who felt that he
Claude Odiot, a rival goldsmith to Auguste, who
31
32
purchased them at auction in 1809 and 1812, and
did not deserve to win the prize. The attack was violent enough that Pigalle had to rescue Moitte.
whose workshop stamp firmly marks the draw-
He eventually traveled to Rome in 1771 after win-
ing sheets that had once belonged to the Auguste
ning a royal pension, and undertook sketches of
family.38 It takes a bit of detective work to sort out
sarcophagi, vessels, and monuments. He stayed in
which drawings were done by Moitte, which were
Rome until 1773, unable to execute a single sculp-
by the goldsmith’s own hands, and which sketches
ture while there because of constant sickness. His
were subsequently executed in the workshop of
ill health continued in Paris, where he recuperated
Odiot. A rare drawing signed by Henry suggests
amid his family, producing little until 1777.34
a stylistic difference between the sculptor’s more
dramatic renderings, with sections of wash applied
33
In striking contrast to his own fragile health,
Moitte’s compositions often picture heroic, virile
in distinctive layers and splotches, and the gold-
figures inspired by classical antiquity and depicted
smith’s more annotative method of drawing, where
in bold contrasts using wash and strong outlines.
greater attention has been paid to his signature
As the critic Toussaint-Bernard Eméric-David
than the object to be executed (fig. 13).39
Henry Auguste
49
Fig. 13 Henry Auguste, design for a covered tureen on a footed stand. Pen and brown ink, brush and gray-brown wash, 19.9 × 14.9 cm. The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1978, 1978.638.2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
50
Moitte’s designs for the Auguste workshop
and oftentimes tortured by serpentine handles that
combine stern, classically inspired forms and
seem to wriggle past their function as grips, snakes
writhing ornaments, creating a style that is alterna-
on a plane that undo the flatness of the surface,
tively dry and wet, stiff and sinuous, highly unlike
as seen in a workshop drawing for a ewer by
the designs that the architect Charles Percier and
Moitte that was very likely the source for the ewer
his student Louis-Hippolyte Lebas provided for the
created for Beckford (fig. 14).41 One could perhaps
goldsmith Martin-Guillaume Biennais.40 Unlike
interpret these tormented designs as the sculptor’s
the architectural rigor of Percier and Lebas’s
personal desire to create larger, more heroic forms,
designs, which appear more like miniaturized
but in reality being restricted to models for decora-
monuments than vessels for the table, Moitte’s
tive objects for the table because of his health. For
models carry pinched, petrified faces with long
as one biographer noted, although Moitte achieved
aquiline noses positioned in profile, accompanied
early success as a draftsman working for the
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 14 Jean-Guillaume Moitte, design for a ewer with a Grecian mask, ca. 1790. Black lead, pen and black ink, gray and black wash, 33 × 22.9 cm. © Christie’s Images Limited (2008).
Auguste workshop, “he had a first-rate reputation
depth across a plane.43 This technique bestowed
as a designer in terms of style, purity and compo-
Auguste’s executed works with a chiseled precision
sition: but it was not statuary.”42 Moitte’s great-
quite different from that of his father, since Henry
est contributions to the designs of the Auguste
readily embraced Moitte’s language of dry auster-
workshop consisted in the sophisticated orna-
ity. The similarity in drawing styles suggest the
mental bands that recall his mastery of sculpted
ways in which the goldsmith’s workshop absorbed
bas-reliefs and printed vignettes. In contrast to
the sculptor’s rendering manner, like a snake swal-
three-dimensional sculptures around which the
lowing its prey whole.
viewer can move, bas-reliefs and vignettes require
a different set of visual strategies, particularly the
discerning eye and led the English connoisseur to
subtle modulation of light and cast shadows in
commission an extraordinary range of metalwork
order to build narrative tension and a sense of
from the French goldsmith, including the gold
The chiseled look of antiquity drew Beckford’s
Henry Auguste
51
Fig. 15 Henry Auguste, after a design by Jean-Guillaume Moitte, pair of candelabra bearing the arms of the duke of York, 1788 or 1789. Silver gilt, 60.6 × 37.5 cm. Rogers Fund, 1921, 21.162.1a–c, .2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ewer, while visiting Paris. Banished from England
was not alone in his admiration for Auguste’s
in 1784 because of a homosexual affair, Beckford
work. Other English buyers had a penchant for the
spent time on the Iberian Peninsula, where, in 1787
French goldsmith, such as Frederick, Duke of York,
while in Madrid, he encountered Auguste’s toilet
who commissioned a number of pieces, includ-
service for the Countess of Aranda. The work
ing a pair of candelabra marked with his coat
piqued his curiosity enough to lead Beckford to
of arms and his motto, Quo fas et Gloria ducunt
commission pieces directly from the goldsmith
(where right and glory lead) (fig. 15). Unlike the
while he was in Paris, buying twelve dessert plates
armorial candelabra, the gold ewer was a particu-
44
and a stand in 1788. The following year, he pur-
larly extravagant object that was probably never
chased four ewers.45 He reveled in Auguste and
meant to be used in any practical sense.48 That it
Moitte’s work and described it as “worthy of the
was crafted during a time of intense fiscal crisis in
best period of Grecian art.” It has even been sug-
France made it an especially prodigal work of art.
gested that one of Auguste’s creations was shown in
the painting of Beckford on his deathbed, indicat-
personal taste for English collectors, France’s adop-
ing the spiritual quality that exquisite craftsman-
tion of classical antiquity as the collective political
ship had for the English connoisseur. Beckford
language of revolution provided Moitte with the
46
47
52
Luxury After the terror
While the look of antiquity was a matter of
Fig. 16 Jean Baptiste Louis Massard (engraver) and Jean Baptiste Félix Massard (engraver), Premier frise de l’arc de triomphe elevé au Champ de Mars pour la Fédération du XIV juillet MDCCXC du coté de la Seine: présenté l’Assemblée nationale, 1790. Engraving, 19.5 × 70 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
opportunity to turn his sculptural talents to public
subsequently destroyed; small-scale terracotta
monuments and festival architecture. The same
models are often the only remnants of grander
year the ewer was executed for Beckford, the sculp-
schemes for large bas-reliefs that would edify
tor provided designs for the bas-reliefs decorating
the public. This was the case with his destroyed
the arch of the 1790 Fête de la Fédération (which
decorations for the Fête de la Fédération, which
included the bas-relief depicting his wife sacrific-
are preserved in the prints of Jean Baptiste Félix
ing her jewels that began this chapter). These were
Massard and his brother Jean Baptiste Louis, who
set into the two sides of the temporary wooden
showed the river-facing side in an engraving that
triumphal arch built by Jacques Cellerier on the
included the National Guard, Louis XVI, and citi-
Champ de Mars to commemorate the one-year
zens swearing an oath to an altar of the Fatherland,
anniversary of the fall of the Bastille and to mark
alongside allegorical figures of the law, as well as
the swearing of oaths by the new National Guard
Mercury—the same face shown on Auguste’s ewer,
to protect the nation. Circulated widely in prints,
but this time holding a liberty bonnet and a pike
Moitte’s reliefs and the triumphal arch they deco-
(fig. 16). On the side of the arch facing the Champ
rated participated in the paper propaganda used
de Mars, Moitte depicted “Aristocracy and its
to transform a temporary festival into a repeatedly
Agents being buried by the ruins of the Bastille” as
reproduced mythic vision of national unity, where
well as the arrival of Louis XVI and his family into
the monarchy, the military, and ordinary citizens
Paris to take up residence, an idealized portrayal
joined together as a single body taking an oath
of that event, which marked the beginning of
in perfect unison. Several of his bas-reliefs were
the royal family’s symbolic demise in chapter 1.
49
Henry Auguste
53
The section of the greatest interest is the homage
passed on June 14, 1791, prevented workers from
made to the second legislature, for it celebrates the
organizing and striking, suggesting that collec-
episode of Moitte’s own wife and her act of sacri-
tive action was the price to be paid for protecting
ficing her jewels to the nation. For all the heroic
individual ideas and forms of intellectual property.
messages advanced by Moitte’s neoclassical bas-
Charge and discharge marks no longer guaranteed
reliefs, the sculptor’s work could also be seen as a
the Paris standard of gold and silver.53 In lieu of
commercial advertisement that transformed the
purity, goldsmiths like Auguste invested in mixing
festival’s architecture into a site of prime real estate
new alloys and undertaking conversions of one
for displaying Auguste’s unlikely forms of revolu-
form of metal into another. The absence of guild
tionary luxury. Amid the offerings by the women
restrictions encouraged experimentation with new
garbed in Roman tunics are ewers and vessels that
production methods for working metals.54
bear a strong resemblance to the objects being
designed by Moitte and executed by Auguste in his
abolition of the guild system. Among the most
shop at the Carrousel, where, beginning in 1792,
successful of Auguste’s cohorts was Martin-
as one contemporary witness casually recounted,
Guillaume Biennais. Five years younger than
“executions generally took place.”51
Auguste, Biennais had started his career in 1788
50
Other goldsmiths took advantage of the
as a tabletier, a craftsman who specialized primarily in making games for the table: dominos, Liquidity/Liquidation
solitaire, trictrac, and bilboquet, which feature prominently on his professional trade card. Such
Extravagant as it is, the gold ewer for Beckford
trifles, executed from the modest materials of
represented one of a dwindling number of
wood, ivory, and paper, made Biennais a for-
commissions that Auguste oversaw during the
tune, to the extent that, by 1800, he was able to
Revolution. The emigration of elite patrons meant
sell pieces of mahogany furniture and became a
that goldsmiths not only lost the possibility of
specialist in nécessaires—traveling cases filled with
future commissions but also confronted bills
toiletries, tea sets, and other necessities (hence
that had not been settled, leading to widespread
the name)—and by 1801 or 1802, had deposited
debt, bankruptcy, and financial ruin. Moreover,
his official mark as a goldsmith.55 In contrast to
the mere association with royal and noble cli-
the commercial route of Biennais, the goldsmith
ents made goldsmiths particularly vulnerable to
Marc-Etienne Janety became a member of the
political denunciations, as we saw in the case of
scientific community after discovering the process
Morris’s attempts to unload the silver of the comte
for making platinum malleable led him to collabo-
d’Angiviller. The Revolution also brought new
rate with revolutionaries seeking to establish new
freedoms for artisans. The passage of the d’Allarde
scientific standards.56 In Saint-Domingue, both
52
54
law on March 2, 1791, officially abolished corpora-
André Rigaud and Alexandre Pétion, leaders of the
tions and guilds and, along with them, the system
Haitian Revolution, had trained as goldsmiths.57
of tax farmers, heavy duties, and regulations.
By contrast, the closely related Le Chapelier law,
one who entered the public fray over the national
Luxury After the terror
Out of these goldsmiths, Auguste was the only
paper currency. In 1790, he published a pamphlet titled Moyens de faciliter l’échange des assignats proposés au Comité des monnoies, or “Means of facilitating the exchange of assignats proposed at the Currency Court,” in which he still identified himself as Auguste orfèvre du roi.58 The debates on money attracted a number of unlikely contributors in print, such as the goldsmith, who published his text on September 27, 1790, just a few months after the first assignats, still featuring the portrait of King Louis XVI, in imitation of metallic specie, had been issued. When the National Assembly began issuing assignats at the end of December 1789, they circulated as provisional bonds, backed by or “assigned to” nationalized clerical lands that would be used to pay off the debt. They were not
Fig. 17 Augustin de Saint-Aubin (engraver), Pierre Joseph Lorthior (engraver), assignat of 300 livres, April 16 and April 17, 1790. Engraving, 14 × 20 cm. GB 123, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
conceived as replacing wholesale the many different kinds of metallic currency, bonds, and bills of exchange that had made up the complex and territorially fractured financial system of ancien
saw a future of bankruptcy, ruin, and social disor-
régime France. The gravity of France’s shortage of
der. Regardless, the official law to issue the paper
metallic currency escalated, along with its mount-
currency was passed on April 17, 1790.
ing debts. It quickly became clear toward the end
of 1789 that the royal treasury was nearly empty.
workshops around the Imprimerie nationale,
As one commentator noted, even if everyone who
headed at the time by the royal printer Étienne-
owned any plate contributed, it would still not
Alexandre-Jacques Anisson-Dupéron, whom
be enough to circulate enough metallic specie to
we will encounter again in the next chapter.61
resolve the national debt. In this context, Jacques
The portraits of the king on each assignat were
Necker, the Swiss banker and finance minister,
engraved by Augustin de Saint-Aubin, whose soft
suggested in November 1789 the short-term intro-
copper plates allowed only a few thousand print-
Initially, assignats were printed by diverse
duction of bills in limited circulation. From there,
ings before they became unusable (fig. 17). Rebecca
these temporary bonds quickly transformed into
Spang vividly described these early experiments in
forms of paper money, acquiring a value of what
the assignat as hybrids, chimerical monsters that
one finance committee member designated as
“combined the solidity of land with the liquidity
“hard cash” (espèces sonnantes). The prospect of
of circulating media; they were interest bearing
circulating paper money raised immediate anxiet-
and they were cash; they looked like coins but they
ies. Some deputies feared inflation, while others
looked also like bills of exchange.”62 The same fears
worried about deflation. Still more revolutionaries
of fraud that had plagued the goldsmiths of old
59
60
Henry Auguste
55
haunted the production of the assignats, which
however, as Auguste indicated, resided in the pro-
eventually had to spell it out on paper: rewards to
duction of small denomination coins necessary for
the denouncers, and death to counterfeiters.
minor transactions on the street or in the market.
The cost of making the coins often outweighed
The new fiscal policy was accompanied by
both anxieties about the future and memories
the actual worth of money that was “so worn and
of the past, particularly the earlier failures that
discolored it could pass for nail heads.”65 At a point
surrounded the attempts of John Law to intro-
when the paper assignats were still very much in
duce a paper currency during what escalated into
the air and the subject of intense public debate,
the fiscal crisis known as the Mississippi Bubble.
Auguste proposed converting recently requisi-
During the Regency, the Scottish banker had
tioned church bells taken from clerical property
begun issuing a form of paper currency backed by
into coins for common use. Criticizing what he
the French state and promises of riches found in
condemned as a “theory of assignats,” he wrote
Mississippi (hence the name) to finance his joint
that the problem with paper money was not only
stock company, only to see the “bubble” burst
the material’s fragility but also that the values
and the value of the company’s shares tumble, and
assigned to it tended to be so large and abstract
along with it, confidence in the crown’s fiscal poli-
that it could not actually be used in day-to-day
cies. According to Spang, the ghost of Law was
transactions for what he called “les petits détails de
on the minds of revolutionaries, who recalled the
commerce.” What was required instead was “real
dangers of speculation and of “paper money iniq-
cash (numéraire réel), adapted to the circumstances,
uitously substituted for coinage, an inconceivable
and which through its subdivision is given as pay-
delirium that can only be explained by a schem-
ment for the smallest of commodities.”66 France
ing and desperate Minister’s swindles; and in the
needed to touch its money in the form of “palpable
end, a scandalous and grievous bankruptcy.”
currency,” what he described as “une monnoie sans
63
56
64
Though speculation, corruption, and the worth-
abstraction” that “carries its mortgage (hypothèque)
less nature of paper have tended to function as
in itself and which owes its deposit, value, and
the lasting associations with Law’s name, what is
guarantee to its material.”67 Instead of purchas-
often forgotten is the fact that the Scottish banker,
ing gold and silver bullion from abroad, at prices
speculator, and gambler was also the son of a
subject to fluctuations in the market, Auguste
goldsmith—which raises a host of more personal
proposed turning the abundance of copper found
questions about why he turned from gold to paper
in church bells into forms of small change that
as a primary means of securing his reputation.
would circulate with ease among the population.68
Given Auguste’s job as a metal refiner for the mint,
Auguste’s own currency proposal focused on
the issue of small change, which posed a significant
he probably wrote the pamphlet in the hope of win-
problem for those seeking to invest the new paper
ning the bid to produce the new coins himself after
money with an intrinsic value. Paper had not been
conducting chemical experiments in minting coins
a completely alien concept for those used to ancien
and medals in his workshop.
régime systems of commerce that depended on bills
of exchange and promissory notes. The problem,
how monetary policies became the collective
Luxury After the terror
The proposal provides a unique glimpse into
worry of artisans and economists alike and the
of the National Assembly attempted to reestablish
degree to which France’s national currency also
the marks system, saying that it was a matter of
became a subject of intellectual and material
taxation that adversely affected only the rich and
speculation. The sense of unease created by the
left the poor untouched, and that it “was less a
uncertain worth of paper is particularly pal-
tax and more of a form of security for the price
pable in the goldsmith’s text, a position that was
of gold and silver materials for which the govern-
understandable for an individual who was used
ment owes the same guarantee as that of money.”70
to handling money in terms of its precise weights,
Although a provisional system of marks was put
alloys, and measures, secure in the knowledge of
in place in September 1791, and Jean-François
its heft. Arguing at length for why this church bell
Kalendrin retained his post as the head of the
money would promote equality, Auguste wrote:
Bureau de la régie until his departure sometime
“The volume of this money would pose invincible
in May 1792, the office was liquidated in October
barriers to hoarders. Four or five hundred francs in
1792, coincidentally the same month that Auguste
copper would become truly cumbersome; it would
presented his observations on the newly estab-
be impossible to secretly transport it. Avarice,
lished monetary commission’s decision to recast
distrust, or the desire to harm public safety would
coinage.71 An official system of marks or an admin-
prevent burying this money in the ground, where
istration in charge of it would not be restored until
one knows that a verdigris would immediately
the law of 19 Brumaire, year VI (November 9,
alter it.” Money appears in his treatise not so
1797).72
much as the tool of rational calculation, abstract
numbers, or debates about political economy but
to have shed his professional cloak and trans-
as a magical panacea for France’s money shortage,
formed into an alchemist of sorts, a mercurial
and a chemically alterable substance that degen
figure ready to take advantage of the revolution-
erates when buried in the ground like some kind
ary upheavals and turn base materials into gold.73
of avenging fungus that punishes hoarders by
Setting up a chemical laboratory in his prosperous
emitting a poisonous verdigris.
workshop, he endeavored to explore other activi-
ties, such as engraving medals, a distinguished art
69
The goldsmith’s second and final publica-
After the second publication, Auguste seemed
tion on money, regarding the recasting of money,
form that would have been off-limits to a gold-
dates to October 30, 1792, just after the September
smith within the strict divisions that had existed
Massacres signaled the official end of the mon-
between those professions governed by corpora-
archy and the start of the French Republic.
tions and those reserved for the Royal Academy.
One by one, the institutions of the monarchy
He was also alleged to have participated in the
fell, and along with them the standards that had
ransacking of churches after the suppression of the
guaranteed the quality of gold and silver work.
religious orders in September 1792, which called
In January 1791, the Cour des aides, the tax court
for the melting down of church silver to support
in charge of assaying precious metals and admin-
the war against Austria. Auguste was said to have
istering marks, was placed under seal, and it was
helped destroy the reliquaries of Sainte-Chapelle in
officially abolished in March of that year. Members
1792 and stashed church relics at his country home
Henry Auguste
57
in L’Haÿ on the outskirts of Paris. Though there is
could be opened with a skeleton key. As Andrew
no definitive proof, he was probably involved in
Freeman notes, “there was little point in putting
the melting down of church silver, since he was
an expensive lock on the armoire. Once it was
named head of the refinery of the Paris and Lyon
discovered, the armoire was essentially useless. Its
mint in 1787, a post to which he was reelected
only raison d’être was its secrecy, and a ‘security
in both 1791 and 1797. In any case, he appears
lock’ would not protect it against a determined
to have courted controversy, as suggested by the
assailant.”77 The shroud of secrecy surrounding
paper trail of court cases that followed him in his
the armoire ultimately allowed it to function as a
role as the head of the refinery.
symbol of a corrupt monarchy, dependent upon
hidden machinations rather than political trans-
74
75
58
Though heading the Paris refinery at one time
would have enabled Auguste to wield exceptional
parency. In such a political context, figures like
power during the ancien régime, gold had been
Gamain, as the master of locked and sealed spaces,
eclipsed by the power of steel and paper, and
gained power as a symbolic figure who could pro-
the privilege of royal goldsmiths replaced by the
vide transparent access to the hidden secrets of the
terrifying powers of the locksmith during the
monarchy.78
Revolution.76 In 1792, the maître serrurier (master
locksmith) François Gamain had a star turn in
Louis XVI’s name had thus been liquidated as
the Armoire de Fer scandal, a crucial episode that
a sign of prestige and guarantor of value by the
revealed the secret collusion between the king
same individuals who had formerly purchased
and the politician Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte
the privilege to use his name. No longer styling
de Mirabeau. Gamain revealed the compartment
himself as the orfèvre du roi, Auguste continued to
that Louis XVI had had him build behind a wall
sell works from his shop at the Carrousel. In 1793,
of the Palais des Tuileries to hold his clandestine
he sold a gold tazza to Beckford, who remained in
correspondence with Mirabeau. The event helped
Paris during the first months of the Terror before
to seal the king’s fate, leading to his trial at the end
he was publicly denounced and forced to sneak
of the year. On November 20, 1792, Minister of the
out of the city dressed as a frumpy book clerk.79
Interior Jean-Marie Roland discovered the cache of
Alongside the workshop at the Carrousel, Auguste
letters and documents in the safe, which Gamain
undertook experiments on coinage, developing
revealed after the storming of the Tuileries. The
methods to strike money from pure copper rather
shocking discovery was publicized in prints that
than making it from a molded alloy. He submitted
showed the once portly comte de Mirabeau (who
the results of his chemical research to a concours
had died in April 1791) appearing as the proverbial
monétaire held in year XI.80 As evidence of his
skeleton in the closet, holding a bag of money in
outsized ambitions, he also tried his hand at medal
one hand and the crown in the other to spell out
engraving. Doubts quickly surfaced about whether
Seen as untrustworthy and conspiratorial,
his collusion with the monarchy. There was noth-
he could claim any merits as a medal engraver,
ing complicated about the king’s safe in terms of
with one official remarking, “Citizen Auguste is
locks, and Gamain had done nothing more than
seen as nothing more than a merchant of gold-
fit a simple warded lock onto a wooden door that
smiths’ objects and engravings on metal; they say
Luxury After the terror
that the medals published by him were engraved by others.”81 The accusations certainly placed Auguste’s prior activities in perspective. In ancien régime France, it was not a crime to assume the style of another artist who worked within one’s workshop. During the Revolution, new intellectual property laws and a patenting system that replaced royal privileges made the usurpation of others’ work an affront to the new rights accorded to inventors.82
The mounting suspicions about Auguste’s
unsavory reputation during the Revolution led Moitte to distance himself from the goldsmith. In an unaddressed petition in the late summer of 1794, the sculptor portrayed himself as a victim of the period’s economic upheaval and sought to minimize his activities in the goldsmith’s work-
Fig. 18 Revolutionary period marks of Henry Auguste, ca. 1794. Photo courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art.
shop. He wrote that, contrary to what had been published, neither he nor his wife was rich. At the time, he had been paid 4,000 livres by Auguste to
the Napoleonic period. His skills found a natural
“give good taste to his workshop, where I was sum-
place amid a Directory Paris hungry once more
moned no more than once a week; the revolution
for gold and silver and the refined pleasures of
made me lose this advantage.” The sculptor was
life. Auguste appears to have been so confident
not the only one who sought to sever his ties to the
of his successes as a goldsmith after the Terror
past. After the Terror, Auguste changed his marks.
that he commissioned François Gérard to paint a
He replaced the regal crown and palm fronds
portrait of his family, which the artist displayed at
with a wolf ’s head and a boar’s head impaled by a
the Paris Salon of 1798. It has been argued that the
downturned spear, a mark that appeared as heads
Salon that year marked the decline of the radi-
were placed on pikes and paraded through the
cal politics of the Revolution and the rise of the
streets of Paris during the Terror (fig. 18).
private market dominated by petit-maître sub-
83
jects, even as Gérard was still at work that year on completing a history painting depicting the events Gothic Romance
of August 10, which he had been commissioned to paint after winning a prize for his composition in
Auguste’s work has often been characterized in
1795.84 Ultimately abandoning the state-sponsored
terms of the stylistic continuity of neoclassicism,
history project, Gérard began specializing instead
which persisted in French goldsmiths’ work before
in bourgeois portraits such as those of the Auguste
and after the fall of the ancien régime and well into
family. Known today through an oil sketch, the
Henry Auguste
59
conversation piece shows the goldsmith presid-
goldsmith Odiot, proudly seated before a table
ing over his family at a table on the porch of his
laden with large silver and gold vessels, the fruits
property at L’Haÿ near Bourg-la-Reine, at dusk
of his labor rather than his loins (plate 7). Instead,
(plate 6).85 Leaning into the light of the table,
he stands near the real focus of the painting: his
Auguste hovers above the head of his wife, who
wife, Madeleine-Julie Coustou, wearing a shawl
is turned somewhat stiffly in profile. Seated at the
and seated at the table, quite oblivious to the gaze
table, she reads a book to her sons, Charles-Louis
of the viewer. As the daughter of a prominent royal
Auguste and his younger brother, Jules-Robert.
architect, Coustou brought financial security and
While the four faces are rendered more clearly
social connections to her husband’s household
in the skilled engraving of the painting by Pierre
when they married in 1782. And although the wife
Adam, the lamp casts an unusual penumbral light
of a goldsmith did not generally sign her husband’s
that obscures rather than reveals the sitter’s faces.86
work, a figure like Coustou would have undoubt-
Critics marveled at Gérard’s novel handling of
edly helped to run the workshop. According to
chiaroscuro lighting. As Charles Blanc noted, the
Auguste’s biographer, Charles Saunier, the arti-
lamp “barely grazes the second, only lights a part
san’s wife “was almost always an indispensable
of the father’s face and entirely casts in shadow the
collaborator. While the husband received the
head of the young mother, who nonetheless has
clientele, studied a project or worked the metal,
the central place in the composition, and upon
she balanced the books and looked over the cor-
whom the light, as well as the interest should be
respondence. She was the confidante and the
concentrated.”87 This unusual compositional effect
moderator. . . . She monitored the entrances and
has led to accusations of Gérard’s weaknesses as a
exits, fixed the rates, and avoided risky schemes.”89
painter, namely his lack of concern in conjuring
What critics of Gérard’s painting rarely mention is
the psychological depth of his sitters in favor of
that Coustou had died in 1795, several years before
fussing over the material details and trappings of
the portrait was displayed at the 1798 Salon.90 This
their social position. For Xavier Salmon at least,
might explain the painter’s decision to depict her
the Auguste family portrait exemplifies Gérard at
as a ghostly, melancholic figure, rather than a
his most superficial, where “one could perceive the
maternal presence made of flesh and blood.
unpleasant tendency of preferring a piquant effect
to the unity of the ensemble, of drawing attention
began to feel the weight of all his debts, but one
to certain aspects of mediocre interest to the detri-
could surmise that the death of his wife had an
ment of the actual subject.”
adverse effect on his workshop, not to mention
his familial bonds. The inventory drawn up after
88
60
When the portrait is seen solely in terms of
It is hard to know exactly when Auguste
Gérard’s painterly touch, it may indeed appear
her death, on 7 Pluviôse, year IV (January 27,
lackluster. From the vantage point of the subject
1796), betrays little in the way of her personality.
matter’s life, the painting gains the air of mystery.
It does, however, enumerate Auguste’s heteroclite
Auguste is not portrayed hard at work next to his
belongings, suggesting a mercurial man with many
tools or alongside the products of his trade, as,
scattered interests, easily led astray into pursuits
years later, Robert Lefèvre would show the rival
other than his day job. Listed are agates, crystals,
Luxury After the terror
corals, and other mineral and rock specimens;
The ring at the top and the shape suggest that the
while these were possibly part of his tools of
reliquary was meant to be hung like a large locket.
the trade, they were supplemented by scientific
instruments such as Leyden jars; a copper électro-
paraded around during the Terror, particularly
phore (a machine used to generate an electrostatic
that of the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat. After
charge); a pneumatic pump such as those used in
his assassination at the hands of the Girondin
scientific experiments on air; a telescope; and a
Charlotte Corday on July 13, 1793, his funeral
microscope by Delbarre “en mauvais état.”91 This
became a festival. While his body was interred
scientific debris indicates the range of Auguste’s
in the garden of the Cordeliers Club, where he
activities, depicting a man who kept abreast of
had once held court, his heart was suspended in
enlightened learning and who eagerly pursued
an urn inside the middle of the former convent
the scientific fads of the period, perhaps only to
turned radical meeting hall.95 At the same time,
abandon experiments once his instruments had
counterrevolutionaries in the Vendée adopted
broken. Alternatively, the inventory conjures the
the sacred heart of Jesus as a symbol of royalist
92
Better-known hearts than Coustou’s had been
somewhat manic image of a mad scientist’s labora-
sympathies, a political view perhaps obliquely
tory more than the fastidious site of a trustworthy
expressed in Pierre Haly’s haunting glass sculp-
goldsmith’s workshop, delineating a man who
ture of Marie-Antoinette walking through a
perhaps had more in common with the alchemical
ruined landscape carrying the sacrificed heart of
experimenters of the early modern period cooking
the aristocracy (fig. 19).96 Few would have seen
homunculi than those of a bourgeois gentleman
Coustou’s heart, because it lay hidden and buried
capable of dutifully balancing his books.
under the pavement of the choir of the parish
church of Saint-Léonard until 1972, when reno-
93
Coustou’s posthumous face cloaked in shadow
while reading to her pensive children in the pre-
vation works unearthed the reliquary. After the
ternatural light of the lamp acquires an eerie poi-
Ministry of Culture officially classified the heart
gnancy when viewed alongside the gilded copper
as a monument historique on March 29, 1977,
heart reliquary made, in all likelihood, by her
it was transferred to the department archives of
grieving husband (plate 8). Located in a box kept
Val-de-Marne, where it rests as a strangely three-
today at the archives of the Val-de-Marne in L’Haÿ-
dimensional object stuffed amid the dusty paper
les-Roses, the heart is made of gilded brass. The
documents and correspondence of the quiet
heart is heavy. Weighing several pounds, it is filled
archive (today engulfed by an enormous suburban
with lead, though it is unclear when it may have
centre commercial).
replaced the remains of Coustou.94 If Auguste him-
self raised the heart (which seems likely), it can
your beloved? Even in a sentimental age—when
hardly count among the most sophisticated of his
readers’ hearts brimmed over with the words of
works. File marks and the unsmoothed blows of
Rousseau’s romance novels, billets doux filled
the hammer are visible on the puffy, curved sur-
paintings and prints, and eye-shaped miniatures
faces of each ventricle. Two crudely made hinges
made for lovers’ gazes were secreted into pockets
seal the halves of the organ-shaped vessel shut.
and hands—secular, heart-shaped reliquaries for
What do you do with the material remains of
Henry Auguste
61
Fig. 19 Pierre Haly, Marie-Antoinette Sacrifices the Heart of the Nobility on the Altar of the French Republic, ca. 1790, or possibly 1793. Lampworked glass, 22.5 × 28.2 × 21.2 cm. 2003.3.35, Collection of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Photo: Corning Museum of Glass.
62
dead wives were rare. In the past, such forms had
left behind. The civil registers of L’Häy-les-Roses
typically been made to contain the body parts of
mentioned the transfer of her remains to the
saints and clergy, or royalty, such as the sixteenth-
church of Saint-Léonard on 27 Frimaire, year IV
century heart-shaped reliquary made for Anne of
(December 18, 1795), followed by a section of text
Brittany and venerated by faithful pilgrims and
struck out of the registers describing the wishes
royal subjects.97 Retaining their religious and royal
of the family “that the said deceased should be
associations, reliquaries were rare in the context of
inhumed in the chapel of ______, situated to the
revolutionary France. Coustou’s heart-shaped box
right of the choir in the church of l’Häy.”98 Tellingly,
was clearly intended as a personal memento for
there is no mention of God or Christian spiritual-
her close friends and family. The message writ-
ity on this heart-shaped memento mori. Instead,
ten on the bicuspid surface spells out the familial
we see the genealogical knots that bound her to
relationships that the once-living Madeleine-Julie
the family: as daughter, niece, granddaughter,
Luxury After the terror
wife, and mother: “Here is the heart of Madeleine
one is reminded of an older classical economy of
Julie, deceased in 1795, daughter of Charles-
writing epitaphs. Anne Carson called the ancient
Pierre Coustou, architect to the King, died in
Greek poet Simonides of Keos’s exacting and
1797, niece of Guillaume + 1778, granddaughter
calculating care with words an “economy of the
of another Guillaume + 1746 and granddaugh-
unlost,” a skill that was physically marked by his
ter of Nicolas + 1733, all celebrated sculptors who
work as a composer of epitaphs. Chiseling his
rendered the name Coustou illustrious; she mar-
poetry on headstones, Simonides (the same poet
ried in 1782 Henri Auguste, goldsmith to the King
who miraculously escaped an ill-fated banquet that
and was the mother of Charles-Louis and Jules-
gave birth to the use of memory palaces) charged
Robert, whom she left behind at a young age. May
his clients per word.100 This material economizing
her children one day reap the inheritance of such
forced the poet to “measure his inspiration against
talents and virtue.” The chiseled epitaph is both
the size of his writing surface. Out of this mate-
an incredibly moving and macabre tribute and an
rial fact—which is also an economic fact because
archival record providing clues to the complexi-
stones and stonecutting cost money—evolved an
ties of Auguste’s relationship to his in-laws and
aesthetic of exactitude.”101 Auguste was no poet.
his children. Promising a familial inheritance
As head of the mint and a cost-calculating maker
shaped by generations of artists and artisans to the
of things, he was, however, always mindful of just
deceased Madeleine-Julie’s children, the reliquary
how much gold would have to be expended in
is also a political document of the fierce refusal to
order to coat the surface of his wife’s brass heart-
sacrifice the goldsmith’s family—or even the royal
shaped box, an object for which he would receive
associations of its lineage—to the patriotic fervor
no recompense save for the promise of an inheri-
of the state.
tance to be collected by his children.
99
Lacking the polish of a piece like the gold
Casting a gloomy shadow over the work of a
ewer, the heart’s text provides a rare glimpse of the
nominally neoclassical artisan, the heart reliquary
private forms of mourning that took place in the
can be situated in the broader cultural moment of
immediate postrevolutionary period. The elegant
gothic Thermidor, where anecdotal recollections
cursive script fades into a series of hastily chis-
of the bals des victimes—dances that admitted
eled marks, with the lines of the compass used to
only those whose relatives had been guillotined
discipline the lettering into rows still visible on
during the Terror—and fantastic tales of the dead
the surface. The sizes of the letters are uneven,
coming back to life allowed the French collective
large and proud at the top and smaller toward the
imagination to work through the traumas of the
tapered bottom of the reliquary, as if the inheri-
recent past by means of a “guillotine romanti-
tance of talent and virtue has diminished, leaving
cism.”102 Coustou’s heart reliquary gains added
little in the way of rewards for Auguste’s sons to
significance when considered in light of the mass
reap. Certain words carry calligraphic flourishes,
graves and disorganized burial practices during
with coeur finished off by a curlicue reminiscent
the Revolution, which included the unceremoni-
of the ewer’s frivolous wooden handle. Parsing
ous interment of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette,
the text on the limited space of the metallic heart,
whose remains were never found (although
Henry Auguste
63
speculation on their whereabouts persists to this
orientalist fantasy novel Vathek.107 On a broader
day).103 From the posthumous family portrait
level, the language of gothic literature with
to the heart reliquary, the evidence of Auguste’s
which Beckford experimented channeled collec-
earnest, uxorious expressions of love for his dead
tive European anxieties about love and posses-
wife do not settle neatly within the narratives of
sion, with the specter of colonialism and human
postrevolutionary material culture, just as histo-
property never far from stories of the super-
rians never quite know what to do with Georges
natural (particularly for someone like Beckford,
Danton’s intense mourning after the death of his
whose family had amassed its wealth through
first wife, Gabrielle Danton, alongside the many
Jamaican sugar plantations), where, according to
acts of radicalism that made him such a tower-
Joan Dayan, “Fictions of sentiment and idealiza-
ing public figure of the Paris Commune and the
tions of love are linked in unsettling ways to the
Cordeliers Club before his execution on April 5,
social realities of property and possession.”108
1794. Discovering that Gabrielle had died while
Together, the heart reliquary and the Morpheus
he was on campaign in Belgium, Danton went
box represent two gothic aberrations amid the
straight to her grave after his return to Paris and
more typical lineup of Auguste’s goldsmith work,
dug up her body to hold her one last time, before
demonstrating the ways in which a strict neoclas-
commissioning the deaf-mute sculptor Claude-
sicism could be diverted from narratives of public
André Deseine to create a bust of his dead wife
virtue and patriotism to encompass the personal,
on the spot (and promptly remarrying Louise
the perverse, the hermetic, and the melancholic.
Sébastienne Gély).104
Coustou’s heart in particular functions as an abject
container, mourning undoing the mastery that
Of course, funereal motifs were part and
parcel of the neoclassical repertoire. In fact,
Auguste, as the former orfèvre du roi, should have
Auguste himself had brandished deathly themes
shown in the execution of any piece shaped by his
for commercial gain, such as the casket that he
own hands.
made once again on behalf of Beckford (plate 9).
105
Known as the Morpheus box, Auguste made the silver-gilt casket either during the period of 1793
Gilded Futures
to 1798 (based on the marks) or as late as 1804 and
64
decorated it on the side with chiseled moths and
The gilded splendor of the Empire marked both
extinguished torches, motifs taken from classical
the zenith and the nadir of Auguste’s career,
Roman funerary tombs. The top contains a cast
which appeared to have been regenerated under
recumbent figure who is sleepy but not quite dead,
the reign of Napoleon and an imperial court that
suggesting that he may represent Morpheus, the
incorporated an increasingly lavish set of ceremo-
ancient god of slumber and dreams who did not
nies, costumes, and social orders. Requiring new
typically figure among the cast of antique deities
trappings of authority and despising anything
used in decorative arts motifs.106 The enigmatic
that smacked of either the ancien régime or the
themes and function of the casket befit the quirky
Revolution, Napoleon made goldsmiths once more
imagination of the author of the early gothic and
in demand. His cultural advisor Vivant Denon had
Luxury After the terror
medieval relics planted in the ground and “discov-
the French monarchy of the ancien régime and the
ered” as signs of providence auguring the success
newly self-crowned emperor, perhaps serving
of Napoleon’s military expeditions; he commis-
as a harbinger of Napoleon’s eventual decision
sioned Biennais to create the imperial scepter
to divorce Joséphine and wed Marie-Louise, the
for the coronation based on the example made for
grandniece of Marie-Antoinette, thereby marry-
Charlemagne and asked the furniture maker
ing into the Habsburg dynasty.110 Unsurprisingly,
Georges Jacob to construct an entirely new throne.
Charles X had most of the imperial grand vermeil
The imperial retinue’s appetite for tea sets, table-
melted down in order to fashion a new service
ware, nécessaires, and toiletry sets fashioned from
during the Bourbon Restoration.111
gilded silver kept Biennais busy and required the
services of goldsmiths who had been active during
not enough to secure a goldsmith’s reputation after
the ancien régime, such as Odiot and Auguste.
the end of the guilds, and Auguste felt compelled
While the crowned heads of Europe repudiated the
to display his works at the Exposition des produits
false majesty of the Napoleonic court, the formerly
de l’industrie française, an exhibition venue that
enslaved Black and mulatto generals in Haiti
emerged in the postrevolutionary period as luxury
watched closely and imitated the gilded figure of
makers sought to obtain public acclaim on the
authority they overthrew in the former colony
same level as fine artists. First established in 1798,
of Saint-Domingue, the same year that he crowned
the annual exhibitions provided artisans with
himself emperor of the French, cognizant of the
publicity for their works. In turn, the Napoleonic
fact that gold served as the omnipresent symbol of
regime used the displays to promote the indus-
the new empire.
trial arts, which were deployed as ideological and
As the former orfèvre du roi, Auguste eagerly
The imperial commissions were apparently
economic propaganda aimed at other competing
supplied designs for the new imperial court.
nations. The considerable government support for
Such official works represented a far cry from
artisans signaled the elevated status of the deco-
his more unusual pieces for Beckford. The papal
rative arts at the same time that the fairs, which
tiara for Pius VII that he made with the jeweler
encouraged consumption on the part of visitors,
Marie-Étienne Nitot was offered by Napoleon and
replaced the more volatile participatory festivals
Josephine for the pope’s services at the emperor’s
of the Revolution.112 Foreigners were impressed,
coronation in 1804. That same year, he cre-
with one English spectator at the 1801 event struck
ated the grand vermeil, a lavish silver-gilt service
by the wealth of materials on display: “the finest
that included an enormous and hefty pot à oille
silks, the most beautiful tapestry, porcelain, lace,
and a matching stand supported by winged lions
cambrics, furniture of every kind, and of new
(fig. 20). The 425-piece service required so much
inventions, works in steel, glass, marble, every
gold and silver that the goldsmith had to incorpo-
thing which an ingenious and flourishing people
rate old tableware that had been started in 1789 on
could send to Paris, from every quarter, were
behalf of Louis XVI. While Napoleon demanded
here exhibited.”113 Participating at the final exposi-
that everything be newly made on his behalf, the
tion held during the Empire at the Esplanade des
service represented a material continuity between
Invalides in 1806, Auguste displayed his vessels
109
Henry Auguste
65
Fig. 20 Henry Auguste, oval tureen (pot à oille) and stand from the grand vermeil de l’empereur, 1789/1804. Silver gilt, 51 × 53.4 cm. Collection du Musée Napoléon Ier, GMLC327C. Photo © RMN– Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Thierry Ollivier).
alongside other exhibitors, with gold only one
polished surfaces, suggests that Auguste sought
shiny medium that competed for the attention
to distinguish himself from the competition,
of visitors. He won (ironically enough) a gold
which included Napoleon’s favored goldsmith,
medal for his entries at the 1806 exposition, which
Biennais. One art historian later judged his process
included two repoussé busts, a chalice, and two
as “cheapening” traditional goldsmiths’ work by
enormous candelabra that Napoleon hoped to
relying on cold joining methods: “Figures and bas-
offer to the once-again operational church of Saint-
reliefs applied in a cold manner using vises and
Denis, and a round table made for Count Nicolas
nuts do not appear joined to the body of the object,
Demidoff. He received recognition for inventing
and as if they were in a different material: it is more
114
a process of hammering and stamping metals that
the work of a bronzier [bronze worker] than a gold-
would eliminate the need for casting and chas-
smith.”116 Regardless, the “cheap” technique did not
ing, along with reducing the amount of material
discourage buyers. By 1807, Auguste had one of the
used. The introduction of another technique,
largest workshops in Paris, which employed sixty
where matte ornaments were positioned against
workers, even more than Odiot, demonstrating the
115
66
Luxury After the terror
ways in which the progress of industry had trans-
object made out of pure gold. Typically incorporat-
formed workshops that specialized in singular and
ing ebony or ebonized wood handles to prevent
rare objets de luxe into proto-modern factories.
the heat conducted by the metal from burning the
hand of the user, the unsteady grip here appears
117
Accolades and prestige aside, Auguste’s fame
could not guarantee his financial security in a
as a fragile element that at one point was mis-
world of radical economic flux. He ultimately
handled and broken at its weakest point (and later
became a victim of his mounting debts, as the
repaired). From a purely formal viewpoint, it calls
family became aware of his financial insolvency.
to mind the extravagant snakes that hypnotized
His own father subpoenaed him in 1798 in order
Renaissance artists upon the rediscovery of the
to receive payment from the sale of his property
sculpture of Laocoön on January 14, 1506, near
118
in Val-sous-Meudon. After his wife’s death, his
San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Described by the
father-in-law, Charles-Pierre Coustou, became
ancient Roman writer Pliny as mirabiles, or mar-
the guardian of his young grandsons, undertak-
velous, the snakes encircling the bodies of the
ing measures to secure their inheritance at L’Haÿ.
priest Laocoön and his two sons became a sculp-
His reputation en famille was not the only thing in
tural obsession for those seeking to outdo this
tatters. Even as Beckford acknowledged the gold-
writhing masterpiece. As Madeleine Viljoen writes,
smith’s talents, he became aware that entering into
the Laocoön “distilled Renaissance preoccupa-
financial transactions with the French goldsmith
tion with the serpentine line in a single, snake-
was not without its risks. The English connoisseur’s
wreathed form, one that had the sanction of the
agent in France, Nicholas William, believed that
ancients,” thus coiling around the minds of sculp-
Auguste had denounced him to the authorities in
tors preoccupied with disentangling their own
Paris, writing that “A greater rogue than Auguste I
talents from the monumental presence of antiq-
believe is not upon the face of the earth, he will
uity.122 The shapely handle provides an unlikely
119
cheat you of everything if he can, and nothing but
site for displaying a design ingenuity that promises
force, I see, will bring him to any sort of reason.”
to outdo the orderly designs of the ornamental
Beckford cautioned William to be careful in col-
bands of the ewer, transforming the vessel’s sharp
lecting his debts from the goldsmith, deeming him
outlines into a twirling surplus of associations,
“a slippery eel.”121
a neoclassical ideal come undone.
120
Financial insolvency destabilizes the readings
Did bankruptcy make Auguste a modern
of Auguste’s work, lending an unreliable qual-
man? To a degree, there are parallels between
ity to disparate elements of his vessels, no matter
Auguste’s insolvency and the gilded splendor pro-
their material purity, perhaps calling to mind
jected by the Napoleonic regime, which seemed to
the expression “all that glitters is not gold.” The
rely increasingly on golden veneers as its military
serpentine handle of the ewer joined to the body
campaigns became more disastrous. By 1806, the
of the vessel by a Medusa-like face could be seen as
year he was hauled to court by his creditors, his
registering the slippery nature of Auguste’s work
debts were estimated at 1,369,968 francs. Even
as a goldsmith, evidence of an artisanal guile in
before the court date, Auguste had attempted to
choosing to attach an ungraspable handle to an
run away, only to return and seek to restructure
Henry Auguste
67
his debts, promising to pay the entire sum back
1810.129 Condemned in absentia to be shackled and
in eight years.123 His creditors included gilders,
chained for six years in 1811, Auguste managed
chandelier makers, lemonade sellers, his own
to hang on for another five years; he had escaped
brother-in-law, widows, laundrywomen, architects,
France with three crates holding the most valuable
and housepainters, as well as Count Demidoff.
cargo, “silver, diamonds, and bills of exchange.”130
Instead of making good on his promises to faith-
Though it is unclear when he left Jamaica, Auguste
fully pay back his debts, Auguste secretly planned
died on September 7, 1816, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
a second escape. Quietly relinquishing control of
his business, he placed one of his employees in
Auguste of Haiti does not resemble the man who
charge of business operations in 1808 and orga-
had once made his mark crafting visible and
nized the sale of paintings and furnishings at an
expensive forms of luxury. Following his depar-
auction in August 1809, demonstrating the more
ture, the government accused his sons of having
personal ways in which individuals could use
colluded with their father, forcing them to bear
auctions to dismantle one’s own life possessions in
the weight of his debt. After auctioning off the
order to regenerate cash flows. The next month,
remaining ninety-four crates seized at Dieppe,
he gave powers of attorney to a business associ-
creditors were able to recuperate only 38,236 francs
ate, saying that he was “about to embark on a long
from the sale. The government sought to mort-
voyage of which he could not say how long.” This
gage the family properties, even as the guardian
may have been Charles Dietz, a former surgeon,
of Auguste’s sons attempted to save his young
later accused of being an accomplice in “diverting
charges and the little he could from their father’s
his effects, or in accepting false transports, sales,
financial shipwreck.131 But the damage to the fam-
or donations, or in subscribing to acts that were
ily name had been done. The scars were so deep
124
125
126
knowingly fraudulent to legitimate creditors.”
that when Charles-Louis, the older son pictured
In the fall of 1809, the goldsmith left Paris for
sitting pensively at the table next to his mother in
London en route to Jamaica, but not before enlist-
the painting by Gérard, purchased the du Plessis
ing his workers to pack up the precious objects
farm in 1817, he changed his name to Charles-Louis
and jewels in his workshop, as well as his tools and
Auguste Duplessis after his property, in the hope,
other belongings, to be sent to a fake address in
according to Saunier, of ridding the future from
Dieppe, where an intermediary was to send the
“the stain that marked his name.”132 His father had
packages onward to England.128 From September 23
managed to wipe out all the tentative hopes for his
to October 13, 1809, the crates were sent in
sons’ futures that he had chiseled on the heart of
stages to Dieppe. Auguste failed to foresee the diffi-
his wife. One year later, on November 7, 1818, seek-
culty he would have in sneaking ninety-four crates
ing to escape the debts that they could not repay,
out of France undetected, and the state seized his
both sons renounced their rights to inherit their
possessions at the French port; his creditors, how-
father’s estate.133
ever, were unsuccessful in their attempts to stop
his departure. The goldsmith was officially stripped
did Auguste envision for himself in Haiti? The
of his French citizenship in absentia on June 23,
punishment meted out by the French state to
127
68
Abstract, spectral, and speculative, the
Luxury After the terror
What sort of postrevolutionary future
the goldsmith who got away—condemning him
military conflicts among its warring generals,
in absentia to be shackled and chained—was a
a Black North, and the mulattos of the South and
paradoxically weighty and ponderous sentence
the West.138
for a former citizen who no longer had a bodily
presence in the French nation. At the age of fifty,
reorientation of the prior trajectory of his life by
Auguste abandoned his family and his debts in
mapping its end onto the turbulent and uncertain
order to embark on a great transatlantic jour-
promise of a postcolonial future in a histori-
ney without return, and without the promise of
cal terrain that Dayan has called the “quizzing
material security that ninety-four crates of objects
glass” of colonial memory and its violent history:
would have provided against future monetary wor-
“Rereading events in France through the quizzing
ries. Escaping the metropole and its heavy burden
glass of Haiti is to clarify the reciprocal dependen-
of financial debts, Auguste perhaps sought the
cies, the uncanny resemblances that no ideology of
outer limits of France’s fiscal and administrative
difference can remove.”139 Likewise, the goldsmith’s
control by going to Haiti—a name chosen from
end in Port-au-Prince puts the eccentric practices
the Amerindian word for “mountainous lands” by
of his past into an alternative historical perspective
Jean-Jacques Dessalines when he declared the first
by displacing them into a context where the colo-
independent Black republic on January 1, 1804,
nial language of mastery and domination of the
in Gonaives, shortly before he ordered the killing
Enlightenment encountered the powers of super-
of the remaining white French colonists on the
stition, resurrection, mutilation, and dispossession,
island.134 Two years later, Dessalines was mur-
harnessed in order to remake a different sort of
dered and violently dismembered in an ambush
history for the New World. The erratic elements of
by soldiers at Pont-Rouge. Though we do not
Auguste’s life and work somehow gain new mean-
know the precise date of the goldsmith’s arrival,
ing when viewed in the context of Haiti. Whereas
Auguste probably traveled by boat from Jamaica to
one could read the heart relic of the goldsmith’s
Cap-Français. His presence in Haiti is difficult to
wife in terms of the residues of Catholic ritual
trace amid the genealogical records, and he does
that secretly lingered on throughout the French
not appear to have been employed by the Hôtel de
Revolution, the eccentric form of luxury gains an
la Monnaie, which began issuing a new national
alternative significance when mapped onto the
currency shortly after independence, partially
voudou rituals that propelled key moments in the
135
The goldsmith’s demise in Haiti forces a
transformation of the colony of Saint-Domingue
supplied, it turns out, by the British industrialist and experimental metallurgist Matthew Boulton.
into Haiti. For the radically dispossessed and
However, the family name Auguste was already
denigrated bodies of the enslaved, spiritual posses-
common in the north of Haiti at the beginning of
sion became the means to fuel colonial resistance.
the nineteenth century, raising the possibility that
Rather than viewing voudou as a practice merely
he may have had family contacts there before flee-
made up of superstitious beliefs derived from
ing France.137 Had Auguste arrived in the country
African cultures prior to enslavement, Dayan has
by 1810, he would have encountered a divided
characterized it as a diasporic practice intimately
Haiti that continued to be wracked by internecine
bound up with the violent historical realities
136
Henry Auguste
69
70
of colonial Saint-Domingue. Functioning as an
auction in 1812, including the workshop drawings
“intensely intellectual puzzlement, the process
by Moitte, Odiot purchased them, and his rival
of thought working itself through terror,” Dayan
used the models over and over again in his own
describes the ways in which voudou reworked
successful workshop, which survives today. The
Haiti’s violent colonial past of slavery and dispos-
importance of the designs to Odiot’s reputation is
session, through active spiritual encounters and
made visible in the 1822 portrait of the goldsmith
rituals of memory, in “shreds of bodies come back,
by Robert Lefèvre, where the proper bourgeois
remembered in ritual, and seeking vengeance.”140
artisan is seated before his prized works. With his
elegant and unblemished right hand, Odiot points
If I appear here to be straying far afield
from Auguste’s goldsmithing work during the
to his finest works, while his sinister hand is shown
Revolution and the methodological parameters
firmly gripping the sheets of a large portfolio
of proper historical research, I do so in order to
containing the designs for the objects, claiming
point out that finding him in Haiti at the end
authority and ownership over their conception
of his life can be read as a form of poetic jus-
from start to finish. Perhaps this is the strangest
tice that, in some strange way, makes historical
twist of all in this tale of a good goldsmith gone
sense. Though Auguste may not have succeeded
bad, a slippery eel and insolvent experimenter
in having his church bell coinage turned into the
who tarnished the family name with his debts but
national French currency, the skills of an individ-
made some of the most beautiful works in precious
ual who possessed the power to convert ordinary
metal in the age of Terror. For it was ultimately
objects into the source of wealth surely must have
paper, the stuff that Auguste had railed against for
resonated in a place where relics had the ability to
being so fragile and abstract, the substance upon
resurrect the dead and change the course of the
which so many of revolutionary France’s past
future. Back in France, fragments of his memory
monetary worries and future dreams of national
lived on even after his death in Port-au-Prince in
prosperity were printed, that ensured the survival
1816, and after his sons had dispossessed them-
of his name, a little sliver of the slippery but gifted
selves of the tarnished family name. When his
eel’s work contained in each piece executed by his
seized possessions were sold off at a government
rival.
Luxury After the terror
P
laying cards was one of the few pastimes left to the royal family when they were imprisoned in the Temple beginning
on August 13, 1792, days after the storming of the Tuileries and the official end of the French monarchy. As the king’s valet de chambre Jean-Baptiste Cléry recounted in his memoirs, the family typically partook in lighthearted games after dinner. The king and queen retired to her chamber to play
Chapter 3
another round of trictrac or piquet shortly before
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
bedtime.1 While games of chance had once evoked
Political Fantasies of the Arabesque
enjoyed by Marie-Antoinette at her private retreat
the heady, high-stakes world of elite gambling at the Petit Trianon, the games in their turreted residence afforded the royal family one of the final vestiges of bourgeois normalcy, a moment of temporal abandon otherwise constrained by the political events unfolding in Paris. Such moments did not last long. Soon after their imprisonment, the National Convention initiated the trial of the king. On Christmas of 1792, Louis XVI wrote his last testament and will. After a short and contentious trial for treason, where Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine de Saint-Just demanded the death of the king on behalf of despots everywhere, declaring that “no one can reign innocently,” Louis Capet was dealt a losing hand. On January 16, 1793, 361 deputies voted for the king’s immediate death, 72 for a delayed death penalty, and 288 against his death.2
Less than a month after his execution at
the Place de la Révolution on the morning of January 21, 1793, a novel set of playing cards appeared, which incorporated the new realities of a France freed of its monarchical past. Kings and queens were replaced with a new cast of revolutionary characters, including figures of Liberty and Equality (plate 10). A harbinger of the National Convention’s decision on 1 Brumaire, year II
(October 22, 1793) to remove royal and feudal signs
for lavish furnishings, sumptuous silks, and inte-
from playing cards, the first set of republican cards
riors that filled the great ancien régime residences
was patented by Jean-Démosthène Dugourc and
of elite Paris and the French court, including the
Urbain Jaume. The inventors insisted to the public
very spaces where Marie-Antoinette had once held
that the deck would function as “the Manual of the
gambling matches from dusk until dawn.
Revolution, since there is not a single attribute that
they compose that does not offer to the eyes or to
the Revolution is the subject of this chapter,
the spirit all of the characteristics of Liberty and
which explores the multiple and unexpected sites
Equality.” Proffering the cards as didactic if taste-
colonized by Dugourc’s arabesques. A pattern of
ful reminders of republican virtue, Dugourc and
ornament that saw a resurgence in France at the
Jaume explained in the prospectus that they had
end of the eighteenth century, arabesques provided
created them with the purpose of helping citizens
the means for Dugourc to make his name as a
to abandon “expressions that ceaselessly recall
designer, as he claimed to have invented the goût
despotism and inequality, and there is not a single
étrusque alongside his brother-in-law, the architect
man of taste who was not shocked by the gloomy
François-Joseph Bélanger, shortly before the col-
figures on playing cards, and the insignificance of
lapse of the monarchy. A late eighteenth-century
their names.” The egalitarian playing cards joined
iteration of neoclassicism informed more by
the plethora of games and other ephemeral forms
fantastical projection than archaeological accuracy,
of print that emerged during the Revolution that
the goût étrusque has been studied as a decorative
sought to draw a line between the corrupt diver-
language reserved for the European elite by schol-
sions of the ancien régime past and the didactic
ars such as Juan José Junquera, Christian Baulez,
mission of educating the citizens of the new
Chantal Gastinel-Coural, and Pilar Benito Garcia,
nation. Far from innocuous pastimes, playing
who signaled Dugourc’s key role in disseminating
games, as Taws has argued, helped individuals
the style to courts in Spain, Russia, and Sweden.6
picture their place as participants in sweeping his-
In spite of the continuing proliferation of ara-
torical events over which they otherwise had little
besque designs throughout the Revolution—they
control or perspective, and to envision, as Dugourc
appeared on wallpaper designs, on textiles, and
and Jaume proposed, a world no longer governed
even upon the printed vignettes of the newly issued
by the authority of kings: “as images and objects
paper currency—a trend undoubtedly fueled by
that mobilized a participatory engagement with
Dugourc’s work as a designer, attention has focused
recent history, they articulated a transforma-
on his ancien régime activities, with the exception
tion of national and individual identities.”5 On a
of the revolutionary historian Jules Renouvier,
more personal level, the playing cards were an
who mistook Dugourc for a radical printmaker.
improbable private commercial enterprise for
At a moment when many of his collaborators and
Dugourc. For only a few years earlier, he had
former patrons were jailed or exiled, Dugourc
been responsible for creating the very language of
began a second career as a designer of paper
“despotism and inequality” critiqued in the 1793
ephemera, from letterheads and wallpaper to the
prospectus, as a designer of arabesque decorations
republican playing cards that opened this chapter.
3
4
72
Luxury After the terror
The ambiguous politics of design during
Ranging from engravings and silk designs
historical precedents beset by an anxiety of influ-
to wallpaper and playing cards, the objects and
ence, with innovators like Dugourc reweaving
images analyzed in this chapter reveal Dugourc’s
earlier motifs from classical antiquity and the
use of the arabesque both as an ornamental motif
Renaissance to new ends. Interpreting the republi-
with a classical precedent and as part of a political
can playing cards as forms of luxury that circu-
imaginary through which the designer willfully
lated arabesque compositions to new audiences
negotiated his place in the Revolution. Certainly,
and publics, I consider the ways in which these
his compositions could be seen as part of a con-
purported forms of propaganda often worked at
tinuing tradition of ornament prints that began
cross-purposes with the moralizing discourses of
with the Renaissance rediscovery of antiquity and
the government. I do not mean to suggest that they
continued well after 1789. Severed from their appli-
were simply reactionary or even anti-revolutionary
cation onto luxury surfaces such as silk uphol-
images. Instead, the cards pictured the ways in
stery, chandeliers, furniture, and elite interiors,
which the independent designer, freed from
arabesques opened up to a range of interpretations
the dictates of working for an administration or
and meanings no longer controlled by the author-
patron, could generate and claim authorship over
ity of the patrons who had commissioned them,
images that could not be controlled by a singu-
or even the luxurious materials out of which they
lar source of authority. This was the case when
had once been executed. Design flourished within
paper became a charged and visible medium for
a liberated atmosphere created by the new legal
determining the course of individual and collec-
frameworks of the Revolution, when, for the first
tive lives, from the printed passports and identity
time, intellectual property rights accorded design-
papers that allowed citizens to travel from one
ers considerable claims over their creative output.
locale to another to the legal documents that
As Katie Scott has argued, artists turned increas-
sealed the fate of suspects during the Terror.8
ingly to the legal courts to contest the encroach-
ment of the industrial arts upon the fine arts, since
ing a designer recognized for his singular genius
painters, sculptors, and engravers were “stripped of
and talent, Dugourc’s arabesques also activated
their elite corporate identity” and forced to “obtain
the anxious collective myths of the feminine that
an occupation license, called patente, in common
haunted revolutionaries as they sought to establish
with the vast body of urban artisanal trades from
a political society based on masculine notions of
whom they had formerly been distinguished by
virtue. As a royal designer he worked on behalf
their exemptions and privileges, and with whom
of the queen, whose lavish spending on luxury
they were now equated as citizens.”7 With his deci-
and fashion in the final years of the ancien régime
sion to patent the republican playing cards in 1793,
was viewed by critics as a sign of the corruption
Dugourc clearly sought to take advantage of the
of the court and its fiscal crisis, particularly in the
new legal rights accorded to designers.
wake of the Diamond Necklace Affair. Even as he
retailored his work and identity toward the new
Collective fantasies and individual conflicts
Beyond the personal fantasies of becom-
competed with each other within ornamental
publics and forms of production that emerged in
designs that by their very nature operated through
Paris after the collapse of the monarchy, what I
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
73
describe as a maternal economy haunted his use
follies, and residences with luxurious furnish-
of arabesques, where past memories of the queen
ings and inventive decorations inspired by the
became entangled with more personal narra-
mania for antiquity.11 In trendy neighborhoods
tives about missing mothers. Finally, this chapter
such as the Chaussée d’Antin, arabesque decora-
asks: do designers make unreliable narrators?
tions snaked through nearly all of the buildings
Here, Ben Kafka’s notion of the “psychic life” of
constructed in the city’s great real estate boom that
paperwork provides a productive way of thinking
took place from the end of the Seven Years’ War in
through Dugourc’s shift to paper designs during
1763 to 1789. Such architectural chimeras appeared
the Revolution. Paperwork laid the foundations
to teeter near the brink of financial disaster; the
of a modern bureaucratic government, made
cultural critic Louis Sébastien Mercier described
possible through the machinery of “registers,
enormous buildings emerging “from the earth,
receipts, reports, instructions, circulars, signa-
as if by enchantment, and new neighborhoods
tures, countersignatures, seals, and other forms
are composed of nothing more than hôtels of the
of official communication” that would replace
greatest magnificence.”12 In marrying the sister
old documents made under the sign of feudalism
of the famed architect Bélanger in 1776, Dugourc
and despotism.9 Kafka reminds us that the official
gained access to the charmed world of his brother-
documents of governance were also shaped by
in-law, contributing to the prestigious architectural
human slips and errors, forms of parapraxis that
projects he undertook on behalf of the financier
made paper prone to “inevitably reactivate some
Claude Baudard de Saint-James and court banker
of our earliest wishes, conflicts, and fantasies
Jean-Joseph de Laborde, whom Dugourc described
about maternal provision, paternal authority,
as “the two richest individuals in France.”13 Neither
sibling rivalry, or whichever other familial division
the language of arabesques nor speculation
of labor happened to be in place in our child-
were the reserve of Parisian financiers alone. Much
hoods.”10 While some readers may bristle at the
of the designer’s work with Bélanger also catered
use of Freudian psychoanalysis to interpret drawn
to the whimsical tastes of the court, emblematized
designs, the notion of “psychic life” may provide a
foremost in the designs for Bagatelle, the pleasure
different framework for contemplating design as
pavilion made for the comte d’Artois, the king’s
an interface between individual intentionality and
younger brother (fig. 21). He had commissioned
collective forms of cultural, political, and eco-
the pleasure pavilion in 1777 after his sister-in-law,
nomic change.
Marie-Antoinette, had wagered that it could not be completed in less than three months. While Bélanger directed the project, the sculptor Nicolas-
Speculative Origins
François-Daniel Lhuillier provided the decorative program for the pavilion, since he had traveled to
74
On the eve of the Revolution, as the court at
Rome and had first-hand knowledge of the monu-
Versailles and the city of Paris vied for cultural
ments there; he brought back to Paris a love of
influence, plenty of opportunities appeared for
Palladio and a copy of Piranesi’s Diverse Maniere,
ambitious young designers to fill lavish gardens,
which he shared with the architect.14 The mémoire
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 21 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, The Garden Façade of Bagatelle, 1779. Pen and black ink and watercolor over black chalk, 28.3 × 40.2 cm. Bequest of Susan Dwight Bliss, 1966, 67.55.17. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
that Dugourc filed concerning his work confirms
incorporation of figures into his arabesque decora-
his marginal role at Bagatelle, which consisted
tions set him apart from the aesthetic of a younger
mainly of paintings on stucco ornament that
generation trained at the École royale gratuite
imitated alabaster bas-reliefs; his role was dimin-
de dessin, who had internalized a pedagogical
ished because of his lack of authority regarding
prohibition against depicting the human figure,
classical sources. Thus, he merely, in the words
a privilege reserved for students of the Royal
of Baulez, “filled in the voids left behind in the
Academy.17 Dugourc developed his own signature
arabesques designed by Nicolas-François-Daniel
draftsmanship and design techniques in a high-
Lhuillier and the painter-decorators who were not
pressure architectural environment surrounded by
specialists of the figure.” Nonetheless, Dugourc’s
a network of skilled artists and artisans responsible
15
16
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
75
for executing the interior. His dexterity as a drafts-
with which he has ceaselessly remained occu-
man enabled him to execute the architectural
pied.”21 Upon his return to Paris, he found that
commands of Bélanger when needed, but it also
the family’s wealth had evaporated, and the young
granted him the freedom to create drawings with
aspiring artist, after receiving a pension alimen-
signature flourishes when he wished to highlight
taire (to cover food and lodging expenses) from
his own name.
the duc d’Orléans, chose to emancipate himself
from his father.22 He decided, “amateur that he
18
From an early age, Dugourc was familiar with
the world of ancien régime privilege and pleasures,
was, to become an artist.”23 His choice here of the
having witnessed it firsthand while growing up
words “amateur” and “artist” are telling of a high
in the household of the Palais-Royal, the grand
self-regard.
Parisian residence of the notoriously debauched
duc d’Orléans. Born on September 23, 1749, in
his father’s financial misadventures as a determin-
Versailles to Jean-François Dugourc, an officer in
ing factor in the course of his subsequent career.
charge of provisions in the household of the duc
In 1751, his father had invested in newly invented
d’Orléans, and his wife, Charlotte-Victoire Guairet
sanitation machines for cleaning and removing
Delacour, whose family had worked for the queen,
sewage from outhouses “without the odor from
he claimed to have received a princely education
the waste escaping or causing inconvenience of any
that led to aspirations far beyond his standing as
sort, even within the house where the waste will be
a minor figure in the duke’s retinue. He learned
processed.”24 Claiming that he was the “sole author
geometry, architecture, and perspective by the age
and inventor of the machine” as well as the lone
of ten and was sent to learn rhetoric at the collège
proprietor of the privilege over the rights to the
de Juilly, shortly before being called back to the
machine, Dugourc et compagnie obtained in 1763
Palais-Royal, where he became a companion of the
exclusive rights to the invention from Louis XV
young duc de Chartres, who later became known
for twenty years. A barrage of lawsuits ensued in a
as Philippe Égalité. A turning point in his youth,
decades-long case to which the lawyer Mathurin-
according to his autobiography from 1800, was a
Pierre Jozeau devoted considerable paperwork.
trip to Rome, which ultimately for him became
The lawsuits are crucial for understanding
the site of fantasized projections rather than the
Dugourc’s own anxieties over the rights to inven-
focus of direct observation and careful study.
tion, since he was left with a huge legal mess: the
He had managed to reach the Eternal City at the
designer was forced to deal with debts owed and
age of fifteen in the entourage of a comte de Cani,
accrued several years after his father’s death in
only to be forced to return to Paris after three
1778.25 There are echoes of his father’s lawsuit in
months upon the death of his mother on April 13,
Dugourc’s own autobiographies written in 1800
1765: “he had only just arrived when the death
and 1823, which depict a self-assured personality
of his mother forced him to return to France,
who, as Baulez noted, repeatedly insists on calling
having only glimpsed the famous city and seen
himself a “director” of projects rather than a minor
for just a moment the celebrated Winckelmann,
collaborator and who often sought to claim greater
whose enthusiasm inspired a taste for Antiquity,
authorship over collectively produced projects.
19
20
76
Luxury After the terror
In recounting his youth, Dugourc emphasized
As will become evident, the paternal anxieties over
marriage scenes, and gouache portraits, as well as
privilege and inventions would resurface in his
small compositions that featured obscure his-
own desire to establish an exclusive patent over the
torical subjects—such as Le souper de Henri IV à
republican playing cards.
Coutras (1775) and L’hommage rendu au maréchal
de Catinat après la Victoire de la Marseille (1776)—
Less apparently, Dugourc’s mother also
haunted his formative years. Mothers in general
suggesting an imagination interested in minor,
are absent from the stories of young academic art-
secondary scenes and details rather than l’histoire
ists and architects flocking to Rome to train their
événementielle, or grand history.27 Dugourc’s early
eyes before antiquity. Meanwhile, paternal author-
printmaking reflects his training under Charles-
ity figures such as the comte d’Angiviller and the
Germain de Saint-Aubin, whose brother, during
painter David loomed over lesson plans and tight
the Revolution, designed the first assignats (dis-
purse strings, while competing fraternal cohorts
cussed in the previous chapter).28 Born into a fam-
drove each other to excellence or madness. Like
ily of talented engravers, Saint-Aubin gained fame
other maternal figures relegated to passive roles,
primarily as the brodeur du roi (embroiderer to the
Dugourc’s mother is evoked only in death, as the
king), designing lavish embroideries for the gowns
primary reason he was prematurely forced to
of Queen Maria Leszczyńska as well as Louis
return to France; thus he had only a tantalizingly
XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour. While he
brief glimpse of the Eternal City that would ignite
dabbled in caricature, displaying a caustic wit in an
26
a lifelong passion for antiquity. Her death pre-
early book of etchings titled Essais de papilloneries
vented him from consummating a full mastery of
humaines (1748), a satire on court intrigue and the
the language of antiquity, embodied by the erudite
rituals of society, his best-known publication was
figure of Winckelmann, whose face he saw only in
L’art du brodeur, a treatise on embroidery, where he
passing, just long enough for a fifteen-year-old boy
sought to elevate it to a mimetic “art of adding the
to retain the memory of his name. His meeting
representation of any object that one desires to the
with Winckelmann and the death of his mother
surface of a fabric already woven and finished.”29
stand as twinned motifs that structure the acquisi-
In his treatise, Saint-Aubin emphasizes the techni-
tion and loss of antiquity in the text of his life.
cal precision necessary to achieve fine designs
No known records exist in the form of
on a prepared textile using needles and bobbins,
sketchbooks or drawings that date to Dugourc’s
with the varying line weights made by different
trip to Rome. Instead, his earliest commercial
thicknesses of threads wrapped in gold and silver.
works in gouaches, miniatures, and prints prior to
Dugourc’s training under Saint-Aubin would
his entrance into Bélanger’s architectural practice
explain the inclusion of designs for embroidered
reflect a petit-maître sensibility that catered to
silk pockets and jackets found amid drawings for
the erudite if slightly debauched interests of the
brocaded silk in an undated album (plate 11). The
late ancien régime private art market. After an
later silk compositions he created on behalf of the
early print dedicated to Marie-Antoinette upon
Lyon entrepreneur Camille Pernon bear traces of
her marriage to the dauphin in 1770, Dugourc
Saint-Aubin’s sensibility and prickly wit, as much
embarked on making prints of fêtes galantes,
as they herald the sophisticated arabesque prints
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
77
through which he sought to establish his reputa-
He eliminated the complex network of private
tion as an artist and amateur, and cocreator of the
contractors who had worked on behalf of the court
goût étrusque (fig. 22).
under his predecessor and consolidated artistic control under the sculptor Jean Hauré, who in turn consulted Dugourc for his designs. Still, criticisms mounted against the vast expenditures and irregu-
Roulette Royale
lar bookkeeping practices of the administration. In numerous ways, the national debt crisis over-
As Stéphane Castelluccio notes, magnificence
shadowed Dugourc’s ascendancy as an official
came at a high price, and despite Thierry de Ville-
court designer in 1784, with the French monar-
d’Avray’s sincere attempts at fiscal reform, lowering
chy’s expenditures on luxury under mounting
the budget of the Garde-Meuble proved an impos-
public scrutiny, particularly the sums spent by the
sible task.33
fashionable queen on extravagant costume balls
and lavish dresses. Dugourc’s entry into the Garde-
there is a tendency to believe that Versailles
Meuble de la Couronne coincided with the arrival
exercised a monopoly on taste. This is belied by
of yet another finance minister, Charles-Alexandre
Dugourc’s work elsewhere. By the 1780s, he had
de Calonne, who had been tasked with fixing
become a key figure both at the court and in the
the national debt by levying taxes but who also
luxury market in Paris, which drew the atten-
signaled, in the words of John Shovlin, the “disas-
tion of the queen, who purchased pieces from the
trous effects of the league between the absolute
famous dealers Dominique Daguerre and Martin-
monarchy and vested interests in finance and the
Eloy Lignereux, to whom Dugourc provided
court.” Reforms were the order of the day, and
designs.34 In the final years of the ancien régime,
Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, the new
Dugourc’s professional ties extended beyond
head of the Garde-Meuble, was also tasked with
the reach of Bélanger to include Daguerre, the
the futile mission of regulating the expenditures
furniture maker Georges Jacob, who was also his
on royal furnishings. Alongside the Menus-
neighbor, and the bronziers François Rémond and
Plaisirs, it was the task of the Garde-Meuble de la
Pierre Gouthière. Bélanger acknowledged the far-
Couronne to maintain the image of the monar-
reaching influence of his brother-in-law in a letter
chy, with Thierry de Ville-d’Avray expressing the
to François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter,
belief that “the furnishings of the royal residences
the son of Jacob, when he wrote that the furniture
30
31
would express the prestige of the throne.” As part
maker “had good sense to draw upon the counsels
of his reform measures, Thierry de Ville-d’Avray
of my brother-in-law’s [Dugourc] school on the
refused to lend furnishings to courtiers other than
taste for an art that we worked together to revive
princes of the blood. Issuing inventories of the
and perfect.”35 Even as his designs entered the vast
administration’s stock, he paid particular atten-
paperwork that the Garde-Meuble generated in
tion to the usage of cloth. Old pieces were burned
order to supply the French monarchy with settings
in order to recuperate the precious metals and
suitable for the official représentation of the king
fund the commissioning of new silks from Lyon.
and queen and their households, he continued to
32
78
Given the prestige of the French royal court,
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 22 Attributed to Jean- Démosthène Dugourc, project for an ornament design for silk, ca. 1790. Watercolor and ink on paper, 14.3 × 9.6 cm. Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris. Don David Weill, 1924, Inv CD 2742. Photo © MAD, Paris.
supply work for other European clients, such as,
Fontaine). For example, the drawing of a chande-
in Russia, Catherine the Great, her son the grand
lier for an unfulfilled commission for Grand Duke
duke, and her lover, General Alexander Lanskoi,
Paul at the Pavlovsk Palace in Russia has an experi-
and the future Charles IV in Spain. One can see
mental dynamism, where we can see the artist
what made Dugourc such an attractive designer
trying to lasso a final design from many potential
for wealthy clients wishing to imbue their resi-
conceptions, an arabesque of possibilities. The
dences with a sense of whimsical fantasy (a taste
sense of several sketched lines in motion rather
that would subsequently be replaced by the more
than a single definitive outline was well suited to
archaeologically rigorous work of the architects
the invention of whimsical chandeliers, in this
Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard
case featuring putti astride swans harnessed with
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
79
Fig. 23 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, design for a chandelier with twenty-four candles, in bronze, porcelain, and rock crystal, 1784. Pen, ink and watercolor on paper, 25.6 × 19.8 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Photo courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
80
beaded reins with crystal drops and delicate silk
Spain, as well as the French court: “not only in
trimmings (fig. 23).
the decoration of architecture, but also for wall
hangings and furniture: and since this time, all of
Silk, the material of magnificence, constituted
one of the costliest expenditures for the Garde-
the designs executed in Lyon by Pernon.”36 After
Meuble, making its design a particularly presti-
being named dessinateur of the Garde-Meuble de
gious assignment for Dugourc. Immodestly, the
la Couronne, his relationship with Pernon became
designer wrote that, in the decade or so preceding
of prime importance. The Lyon entrepreneur’s livre
the Revolution, he had single-handedly set the
de patrons (pattern book) is filled with drawings
example for applying “Arabesque and Etrusque”
by Dugourc’s hand, which often resemble annota-
decoration to the silks made in Lyon that were
tive sketches that were later translated into tightly
coveted by his prestigious clients in Russia and
woven designs rendered in sumptuous brocades,
Luxury After the terror
lampas broché (brocaded silk textile), and gros
Necklace Affair.40 Executed in 1787 by the queen’s
de Tours (ribbed silk textile, similar to taffeta).37
personal ébéniste Jean-Ferdinand Schwerdfeger
Letters he exchanged with Pernon as early as 1781
and intended for her bedroom at Versailles, the
demonstrate the ways in which such luxurious
furniture case is constructed of chestnut and cov-
materials were the result of personal ties inter-
ered in rich mahogany paneling with gilt bronze
woven with commercial connections and profes-
figures, glass painting, and mother-of-pearl inlay
sional interests. On December 5, 1781, Pernon
(fig. 24). The central block is divided into three
sent a formal request to Dugourc regarding the
bays, separated by sculpted caryatids of the four
possibility of acquiring a large bust of the empress
seasons, with the central circular gilt bronze plaque
of Russia in plaster and having it sent to him by
featuring Fame Presenting the Muses to France
coach. On the verso of the same letter, Pernon
(the plaque was replaced in 1788). The three figures
wrote in a more intimate tone, asking for a floral
at the top originally held aloft a crown, which
vase and an eagle that would be embroidered on
was destroyed when the palace was ransacked in
a piece of white fabric panel: “I will pass on the
1789. Though Dugourc was not officially named as
flowers, but the eagle and vase are very necessary
part of the commission, a surviving wood model
to me; let me know if you can make this object for
incorporates his characteristic usage of arabesque
me as soon as possible. I hope that you and your
motifs, which indicates his likely involvement
wife both benefit from good health. Good bye.
(fig. 25). The queen had conceivably commissioned
Your friend always. Pernon.” Dugourc responded
the updated version in an effort to regain a sense
by making a quick little sketch of an eagle balanc-
of authority after the Diamond Necklace Affair,
ing the vase on top of its head, adding “I drew the
as if she sought to use the powers of furniture to
bolt of lightning under the feet imagining that this
contain and put away the rumors that had begun
would add to the effect.” Pernon turned to his
circulating to ruin her public reputation.41 In 1785,
inventive friend in Paris to resolve design issues
Jeanne de Valois Saint Rémy, known as the com
for fabrics that would entail complex arrangements
tesse de la Motte, claimed to have connections with
of arabesques that defied the capabilities of local
the queen and tricked the Cardinal de Rohan into
Lyon designers, who could execute floral patterns
purchasing a diamond necklace that the countess
but could hardly conceive of adding a thunderbolt
promised to offer to the queen in order to patch up
to an eagle with outspread wings to heighten the
the desperate cardinal’s sour relationship with her.
effects of a silk wall panel. In contrast to earlier
The jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge had already
38
39
designers, Dugourc eschewed the naturalistic floral
unsuccessfully offered the 1.6 million livre neck-
motifs favored in Lyon, introducing a strong axial
lace—which contained 647 diamonds and weighed
symmetry of arabesques into the brocaded silks,
2,800 carats—to Marie-Antoinette, who had
which were extraordinarily difficult to weave.
turned it down, exclaiming that France’s involve-
ment in the American War of Independence meant
By far Dugourc’s most prestigious design at
court was for Marie-Antoinette’s jewel cabinet,
that it needed to spend its money on warships
made shortly after one of the greatest scandals of
instead of diamonds. After the plot was discovered,
the monarchy’s final years, known as the Diamond
Louis XVI decided to try Cardinal de Rohan and
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
81
Fig. 24 Jean-Ferdinand Schwerdfeger, after Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, jewelry cabinet (serre-bijoux) of Marie-Antoinette, 1787. Mahogany, gilded bronze, mother-of-pearl, and porcelain, 258 × 200 × 67 cm. Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles, OA5515. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Christophe Fouin).
Fig. 25 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, model for a royal jewel cabinet, ca. 1787. Wood, wax, and ink on paper, 78.7 × 69.5 × 23.5 cm. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 65.20. Photo: The Walters Art Museum.
de la Motte in a court of law, which drew public
of Paris, mocking the spendthrift queen and her
attention to the trial, with the public believing
helpless husband and portraying them as a herd of
that the queen was complicit in the affair. The
swine.43
association of her name with the subsequent trial
of Cardinal de Rohan opened the floodgates to
Diamond Necklace Affair in mind when he was
libelous pamphlets that sought to bring down her
designing the jewel cabinet on behalf of the queen.
reputation, and with it, that of the French crown.
Nonetheless, he would have at the very least been
Given this context, the queen’s commission for
cognizant of the affair and would have recognized
a jewelry cabinet strikes one as an ill-conceived
the symbolic importance of the jewel cabinet.
response to the tide of paper pamphlets, satires,
Yet the mounting criticism directed against the
and libels that began to circulate on the streets
queen and her spending habits made it evident that
42
It is unlikely that Dugourc explicitly had the
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
83
Fig. 26 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, L’Air, title plate from Arabesques, 1782. Etching, 26 × 18.5 cm. Purchased for the museum by the advisory council; 1921-6-298-1, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.
luxury objects produced at such spectacular costs
Couronne, tethered his name to the lineage of
could have been conceived as a direct affront to the
architects, painters, and designers who had added
French public, who no longer adored their queen.
their own personal flourishes and marks to the tradition of arabesque prints since the Renaissance. Even as he undertook important commissions
String Theory
from royal and aristocratic clients, Dugourc continued to experiment in print, an aspect of produc-
84
Before turning to Dugourc’s work during the
tion bound to his self-identification as an amateur,
Revolution, I want to consider a set of his prints
in the sense of what Charlotte Guichard has
that are crucial to understanding arabesque
described as “someone who practiced the arts in
designs as the intellectual source of his broader
an occasional manner,” rather than an artisan who
oeuvre. Arabesques, published in 1782, two
was forced to copy the work of others for compen-
years before he joined the Garde-Meuble de la
sation.44 Amateur forays into printmaking could
Luxury After the terror
provide a space of freedom and recreation, and an
paired themes of Mars or War (Mars ou la Guerre)
artistic practice liberated from the demands of a
and Vénus ou la Coquetterie. In War, the octagonal
deadline or commission. One example, dated to
medallion of Hercules clubbing Cacus signals the
April 22, 1783, shows a woman in mourning hold-
bellicose theme, echoed in the arms and weapons
ing an urn next to a large antique tomb. The text at
scattered throughout the plate. Perhaps the most
the bottom describes the print as an “essay retou-
puzzling plate is Venus, for instead of choosing to
ché,” an attempt using a newly invented corrosive
connect the ancient goddess with love or beauty,
ink that Dugourc claimed would etch the plate.
Dugourc represents her with the affectations of
Arabesques operates by means of doubled
figures and doubled meanings, attempting to
coquetry (fig. 27). Two sphinxes with butterfly wings and peacock headdresses gaze at themselves
suture the clarity of allegory onto the obscurity
in mirrors. True to allegorical form, they coquett-
of the decorative fields of ornament. It adapts the
ishly hold fans, as if flirting with the viewer. While
traditionally vertical format of the arabesque into
evoking some of the satirical motifs drawn by
a form that fills the entire plate, as if Dugourc
Saint-Aubin in the Livre de caricatures and Essais
wishes to turn a marginal type of ornament into
de papilloneries humaines that mocked social but-
a kind of painting composition. The six plates
terflies, the plate also contains references to clas-
feature motifs derived from natural elements and
sical sculpture, such as the depiction of the Three
mythological gods, which would later serve as a
Graces—Aglaia (Beauty), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and
creative wellspring for furniture, wallpaper, and
Thalia (Abundance)—shown in the central oval
drawings. The title page, which also represents
cameo. Dugourc reused a similar medallion for a
the element of air, features Dugourc’s name in the
drawing from around 1785 for a richly decorated
center of the composition, surrounded by putti
screen of carved and gilded wood and silk, one
that rest upon an eagle and by airborne creatures
that was likely never executed.45
such as parrots, owls, and doves (fig. 26). The next
plate depicts Earth (La Terre) through the figure
by Dugourc; as a genre they drew heavily upon the
of the ancient Roman goddess Cybele, who holds
precedent of Renaissance decorative motifs taken
sheaves of wheat in each outstretched hand, as well
from the Vatican Loggia. The celebrated publica-
as a peach tree in her left hand and a fig tree in
tion of Giovanni Volpato’s Le Loggie di Rafaele
her right. Dangling from each palm is a cluster of
nel Vaticano, which appeared in Paris in 1770, led
grapes, which whet the appetites of a spotted leop-
to a veritable explosion of arabesque ornament
ard and a lion, clambering atop two large rinceaux.
in Parisian architecture, especially in the field of
A medallion with a female worshipper in front
interior decoration.46 The ties to the Renaissance
of a statue of Zeus is located between two squir-
are made clear by the inclusion of Dugourc’s
rels dangling on a string, which also supports two
prints in a collection titled Recueil d’arabesques,
embracing putti. Reflexive symmetry dominates
contenant les loges du Vatican, gravées d’après
the compositions of Fire (Feu) and Water (L’Eau),
Raphaël d’Urbin et grand nombre d’autres composi-
which continue upon the theme of the natural
tions du même genre, dans le style antique, d’après
elements. The last two plates are devoted to the
Normand, Quéverdo, Salembier, Prieur, Boucher,
Of course, arabesques were only half invented
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
85
Fig. 27 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, Venus ou la Coquetterie, plate from Arabesques, 1782. Etching, 27 × 20.8 × 0.3 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1928, 28.44.114-.119. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: author.
86
Dugourg, et autres. Compiled and published in
the printmaker François-Marie-Isidore Quéverdo.
a large format intended for the luxury publica-
A majority of the images included in the bound
tion market by Joubert in year X (1802), the book
volume make explicit reference to the architectural
draws a clear line from Raphael’s incorporation of
settings for which such decorations were intended,
grotesque ornament in the decorative program
or the pedagogical purpose of ornament prints
of the Vatican Loggia to the eighteenth-century
“useful for artists and students.” Dugourc’s plates
versions provided by a range of French printmak-
remove both of these references, instead refer-
ers, architects, and painters. In the reference to
ring to himself as the inventor and engraver of the
the seasons and the combination of figurative and
designs.
ornamental motifs, Dugourc’s designs resemble
a number of the other examples, such as those by
which grotesques had traveled beyond Renaissance
Luxury After the terror
Prints were the primary medium through
Italy and reached France. Fifteenth-century artists
for theorists seeking to establish a moral purity in
and antiquarians who had rediscovered ancient
French architecture. In his volumes on architecture
Roman decorations in the Domus Aurea sometime
for the 1788 Encyclopédie méthodique, Antoine
around 1480 mistakenly believed the ancient villa
Chrysostôme Quatremère de Quincy devoted
to be a series of caves, or grottes, because it had
a long entry to arabesques, “forms of ornament
been used as foundations for later buildings and
that are often the most capricious, fantastical, and
thereby confounded arabesques with the term
imaginary, whether in sculpture or painting, that
“grottesche” to describe the ornaments, weightless
architecture employs in the decoration of walls,
wall decorations that gradually conjured associa-
panels, doorframes, pilasters, friezes, and some-
tions with the fantastic, bizarre, and capricious.
times even on vaults and ceilings.”50 For this grave
The combinations of the vegetal, the mineral,
architectural theorist and moral crusader, who was
and the animal arranged in loose structures were
obsessed with classical origins and absolute order,
particularly shocking, since these rare examples
arabesques posed a semantically loose and visu-
of painting from antiquity seemed to be in direct
ally messy topic. While they possibly originated
defiance of Horace’s injunctions against the use
in the Islamic prohibition of figurative images
of monstrous license. The goldsmith Benvenuto
(but were already found in classical antiquity),
Cellini wrote that the proper designation for such
Quatremère de Quincy claimed that arabesques
decoration would be monsters “inasmuch as the
eventually came to cover virtually all of architec-
ancients, who delighted in composing monsters
ture’s surfaces. Seeking to define this ornament
out of goats, cows, and horses, called these chi-
with multiple names—moresque, grotesque, ara-
merical hybrids by the name of monsters.” Later
besque—and many points of origin, he writes that
brought to the courtly architecture of France by
“one can only define the arabesque in calling it the
Italian mannerists, arabesque designs covered the
abuse of ornament.”51 For Quatremère de Quincy,
surfaces and stucco elements of Fontainebleau; the
arabesques endangered architecture by encroach-
intricate patterns of tracery found in the prints
ing upon its moral authority, an attack undoubt-
of artists such as Jacques Androuet du Cerceau
edly aimed at a society that privileged surface
even migrated to the spatial rituals of court dance,
decoration over structural stability.
which culminated in the ballet spectacles of
Louis XIV.
ister the quality that enabled the proliferation of
this ornament on so many surfaces and sites: its
47
48
By the end of the eighteenth century, ara-
Histories of the arabesque often fail to reg-
besques had acquired associations with the fasci-
nonrepresentational, nearly anti-mimetic quality,
nation for the Orient and fantastical projections in
described by André Chastel as “primarily a vertical
the form of turquerie, motifs that perhaps initially
world entirely defined by graphic play, without
had to do with internal critiques of European
depth or weight, a mixture of rigor and inconsis-
morality but eventually laid the foundations for a
tency bringing to mind dreams. . . . Hence a double
colonizing discourse of the Other.49 All the same,
sentiment of liberation, from concrete expanses
the loose associations of arabesques with licen-
where gravity reigns, and from the order of the
tiousness made it no less dangerous, particularly
world that governs the distinction of beings.”52
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
87
In the course of the eighteenth century, arabesques
Arabesques expresses the desire to pull away from
acquired associations with the inventions of imagi-
the anonymity of drawing in a workshop con-
native free play. Kant chose to include wallpaper
text in the decision to publish his signature so
ornament à la grecque as a type of pulchritudo vaga,
prominently on each of the six plates. An elegant
or a “free beauty” without a definite purpose, in a
DG monogram at the bottom left corner of each
passage from Critique of Judgment, published in
plate (except the title plate bearing his full name)
1790: “Many birds (the parrot, the humming-bird,
is proudly positioned next to “inventit et fecit,”
the bird of paradise) and a lot of crustaceans in the
thus displaying his dexterity of mind and hand.54
sea are [free] beauties themselves [and] belong to
The insignia is composed of elegant loops and
no object determined by concepts as to its purpose,
interlocking letters, drawing attention to the D,
but we like them freely and on their own account.
the first letter of his distinguished (and probably
Thus designs à la grecque, the foliage on borders
self-chosen) classical second name, Démosthène.
or on wallpaper, etc., mean nothing on their own:
He transforms his last name into a noble one by
they represent [vorstellen] nothing, no object under
splitting Du from Gourc. Seeded into his compo-
a determinate concept, and are free beauties.” This
sitions, the artist’s meandering monogram also
is a rare piece of meandering prose in a text that is
draws attention to the most inventive flourishes of
otherwise rigorous in its frameworks of intellec-
his arabesques, where he deviates the furthest from
tion. Moreover, the passage is striking for the way
the polished Renaissance standard established
Kant has shaped a kind of arabesque composition
by Raphael. These marks consist of supplemental
out of text, tying creatures from the air and the sea
strings, laced and tied into loops and curlicues,
to foliage and borders and wallpaper.
a disegno logic of the line undone by the embroi-
derer’s needling thread. Etched marks dissolve
53
88
A sense of free play and invention is let loose
in Dugourc’s Arabesques, printed plates unleashed
into the most delicate of filaments, which are
from the demands of a client or patron wishing
tied together into tiny bows, superfluous signs of
for a piece of decoration that would suit his or her
femininity with loose ends that, if tugged, would
personal desires or forms of professional repre-
dissolve the entire order of the design into nothing
sentation. Copying and invention were the visual
more than a heap of tangled skeins.55
parameters of Dugourc’s work as a professional
draftsman, as he learned to translate the rules of
arabesque as told to us by Kant: a design, on the
architecture into his drawings, calibrating line
one hand, whose free association and repetitious
weights, shading, and measurements to transform
nature guarantees its freedom from any specific
drawing into a graphic system of representation
end, a form of applied art with no clear directive
that increasingly bore the weight of disciplinary
that leads one into the realm of the imagination
codification over the course of the eighteenth
rather than rote manual labor. On the other hand,
century. Though he never received professional
it might be possible to read Dugourc’s string play
training in architecture, working under Bélanger
as a kind of visual anxiety about the feminine, the
left him confident enough to later propose signifi-
fear that a Kantian sense of pulchritudo vaga was
cant projects for Charles IV of Spain. By contrast,
most commonly to be seen and enjoyed within
Luxury After the terror
Loose marks are the very definition of the
the privacy of boudoirs and bedrooms, interior
feminine spaces occupied by loose women whose
eighteenth-century ornamentiste to a twentieth-
power resided in their ability to control weak men
century psychoanalyst is quite an associative leap.
by beguiling them out of their masculinity and
All the same, I can’t help but think that artistic
their public power (hence Quatremère de Quincy’s
freedom and liberation is only half of the picture
great aversion to arabesques). Quite literally,
of Dugourc’s arabesques. Though the compari-
we see the precarious structure of Dugourc’s
son is anachronistic, seeing them alongside the
arabesque for Vénus ou la Coquetterie held up by
squiggle game helps to draw out the ways in which
purse strings, fans, and powder puffs, with pen-
Dugourc’s tangled lines of communication adopt
dulous jewels hanging from strings of beads that
different forms and postures, binding and wrap-
terminate in loosely tied ends.
ping, loosening and delineating. There is a déjà vu
quality to many of his images, as if they have the
A noose, a lasso, a bow, a bond: lots of things
Admittedly, to go from the prints of an
can be made out of bits of string, especially by
look of the uncannily familiar, a sense of the anti-
little boys devoid of the ability to speak their mind,
quated and already outdated, a historical malaise
who turn to their hands to do the talking that their
made manifest even before the term had officially
mouths cannot. At least this is what the child psy-
become a concept in the historical and literary
choanalyst D. W. Winnicott divined when playing
imagination of the late nineteenth century.58 Part
the “squiggle game,” a therapy technique he used
of this may be the fact that we know, based on
when working with children who were often trau-
Dugourc’s autobiography, that he never really had
matized by the loss of a parent. Winnicott clearly
direct access to the arabesque motifs of the subter-
intuited the power of paperwork to resurface anxi-
ranean world of the Domus Aurea (unlike other
eties, fantasies, and fears that his young patients
French artists who often left behind graffitied sig-
could not otherwise say aloud. The game entailed
natures as proof of their visits). And unlike Percier,
taking turns doodling on a sheet of paper together
it is highly unlikely that Dugourc had the chance
with his patient, who would fill in or continue the
to carefully study and draw Raphael’s deftly woven
drawing by adding his or her own lines to make
antique grotesques on the walls of the Vatican
a picture. For such a simple exercise, the game
Loggia in person. Any sense of originality would
yielded a rich accumulation of images.56 A seven-
have been derived from and mediated by the realm
year-old boy whom Winnicott worked with drew
of print. Recall, too, that access to the antiquity of
string during the exercise in order to express sepa-
Rome had been denied to him by the death of
ration anxiety from his depressed mother, sub-
his mother, which forced his early return to Paris
sequently leading Winnicott to think of string as
without allowing him to truly study and grasp
a useful tool in therapy sessions. He viewed it as a
antiquity in all of its full splendor; his premature
potent symbol that “can be looked upon as an
return to Paris gave birth to a lifelong enthusiasm
extension of all other techniques of communica-
for the elusive classical past.
tion. String joins just as it also helps in the wrap-
ping up of objects and in the holding of uninte-
interpretation here, we might say that the early
grated material” (fig. 28).
death of Dugourc’s mother caused him to adopt a
57
Tarrying with the psychoanalytic mode of
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
89
portfolio of ideas because of his mother’s untimely death, consigned Dugourc to the secondary role of filling in the decorative voids left behind by other more important decorators in Bélanger’s firm, such as Lhuillier. Arabesques also registers the ways in which family connections were bound up in his fabricated designs and the ways that arabesques, pace Kant, were also about a sense of being tied up in the past paths of others.
Dugourc’s arabesques hold things together,
connecting structure to ornament, at the same time serving to dissolve solid forms into nothing more than voids covered with gossamer illusions. The language of illogic employed in Dugourc’s designs carries over even to his name, comprised of letters laced together by the same looping line, gently pried apart to form the bellies of the D and the G. Similar chimerical shapes can be found in the knotted tails of the two sphinxes perched at the top of the plate for Vénus ou la Coquetterie, binding the structure of his name to the twitching extremities of a mythical figure that famously Fig. 28 Donald W. Winnicott, squiggle game drawing from “A Child Psychiatry Case Illustrating Delayed Reaction to Loss, Drawing Number 9.” Reprinted with the permission of the Winnicott Trust.
posed the riddle of man to Oedipus and that would later be seen by Hegel as “the symbol, as it were, of symbolism itself.”59 In less obscure ways, this half-human female monster, pictured doubled and gazing at her reflection in a mirror, would in turn be unleashed by revolutionaries to criticize the decadence and corruption of the monarchy,
90
particular attitude to the antique, what we might
embodied by the mythic figure of the wicked
otherwise term (borrowing from Freud) a com-
queen, the cause of France’s ills, the evil source of
promise formation defined by an originary lack
the female cavern, the grotto of nightmares, and
(only three months there and a brief glimpse at
symbol of a maternal revenge who embodies the
Winckelmann’s face), supplemented by mediated
powers of horror (fig. 29).60
and belatedly accessed images of classical antiq-
uity, found in places such as Volpato’s lavishly
issued Arabesques after completing an architectural
illustrated book. The absence of expertise, of not
commission for the Hôtel Vaupalière. Dubbed the
having spent enough time in Rome to build a
“antichambre Dugourc,” the first-floor vestibule
Luxury After the terror
The suggestion has been made that Dugourc
Fig. 29 Anonymous, caricature showing Marie-Antoinette as a leopard, late eighteenth century. Etching, 11.8 × 9.8 cm. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962, 62.520.16. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
features panels based on Arabesques, which the
Loose Ends
designer allegedly made in 1780, though no redecoration campaign was organized that year
A pair of silver Dianas depart for the hunt on a
(plate 12).61 Closer inspection reveals that the
fragment of one of the last brocaded silks that the
panels are wallpapers signed by Dugourc and
Garde-Meuble de la Couronne commissioned
dated to 1790, just three years before the residence
before the arrest of Thierry de Ville-d’Avray on
was seized as émigré property. After the furni-
August 14, 1792, two days after the storming of
ture was sold, the government claimed the house
the Tuileries (fig. 30). While Dugourc sought to
and rented it to the limonadier (lemonade seller)
reinvent himself as a printmaker, the royal admin-
Cathenois on 17 Brumaire, year IV (November 8,
istration continued commissioning works, as if
1795), who transformed it into a dance hall. For
doing so would ensure a return to normalcy and
once, Quatremère de Quincy would have found
the eventual restoration of the monarchy. Joseph
the location of arabesques befitting of the resi-
Savournin, the royal agent in Lyon for the Garde-
dence’s new licentious function.
Meuble, had sent two samples of the “damas bleu
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
91
gathering water in a grotto, and the terminal motif of leopards reaching for clusters of grapes, recall the arabesques of Dugourc, who refined the designs supplied by the local Lyonnais designer Joseph Gaspard Picard, before the Garde-Meuble ordered 300 aunes (approximately 400 yards) of the sumptuous furnishing fabric from Pernon.63 Though the silk arrived at the Garde-Meuble in the spring of 1792, the mythological fabric was never used to upholster the queen’s furnishings. That Easter, the family had been barred from traveling to Saint-Cloud. Thierry de Ville-d’Avray was assassinated while imprisoned during the September Massacres.64 On September 3, 1792, Jean-Bernard Restout, who had replaced the former intendant at the Garde-Meuble, informed Pernon of “the complete suspension of all works formerly ordered by M. Thierry.”65 The silk that had been woven for the queen at Saint-Cloud was seized by the revolutionary government and later used to pay off a national debt owed to “le service des Capitaines grecs,” mercenaries who had fought on behalf of the French. With the exception of a surviving fragment in London, the rest of the brocaded silk was probably destroyed in order to recuperate the silver.66
Fig. 30 Textile fragment, ca. 1792. Brocaded silk, 19.29 × 8.07 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Cloth and textiles often appeared amid the
myths that sprang up during the Revolution, though rarely did they involve the sumptuous productions of brocaded silk from Lyon.67 In the fictional account of the Revolution told by Hilary Mantel, a picture of lace comes to the mind of
céleste et argent” the previous summer, hop-
Georges Danton, just before the leader of the Paris
ing to work out the final details of the design.
Commune is scheduled to be guillotined on April 5,
He described vertical scenes of “figures de dianne
1794, in the form of a distant childhood memory:
ou chasses avec Piramides, et aussi Celui a figures D’Enfants et vases bas-reliefs,” to be woven of silk
Rue Honoré: One day, a long time ago, his
and high-quality silver for the queen’s furniture at
mother sat by a window, making lace. The
Saint-Cloud. The full repeat, including nymphs
broad morning light streamed in on both of
62
92
Luxury After the terror
them. He saw that it was the gaps that were
geography of pockets, patches, and tears,” textile
important, the spaces between the threads
spaces that brought together a tangled arabesque
which made the pattern, and not the threads
of objets trouvés: “They even knew what to expect
themselves. “Show me how to do it,” he said.
to be the contents of pockets: toys, bits of string,
“I want to learn.”
odd objects, in those of a drowned boy; cotton and
thread, a tiny piece of soap wrapped up in a hand-
“Boys don’t do it,” she said. Her face was
composed; her work continued. His throat
kerchief, in those of a drowned girl; keys, tobacco
closed at the exclusion.
pouches, snuff-boxes—a standard instrument of
sociability, an ideal entrée en matière to a hesitant
Now, whenever he looks at a piece of
lace—even though his eyes are bad—he seems
conversation.”69
to see every thread in the work. At the
Committee table, the image rises at the back
the tricoteuses, the women who furiously clicked
of his mind, and forces him to look far, far
their knitting needles while watching the victims
back into his childhood.
mount the guillotine. Far from the ephemeral
68
Textile making figured, too, in the legend of
strings used by Dugourc to create chimerical fanWe could take this delicate, made-up narrative fila-
tasies, the tricoteuses spun yarns to knit practical
ment as a metaphor for Mantel’s own art, of filling
things like stockings and liberty bonnets to patri-
in the gaps left behind by the threads of history
otically stave off the cold. The term was first used
and making intricate new patterns in between the
in the winter of 1794–95 to describe, according to
spaces of the revolutionary narrative already fully
Dominique Godineau, “the women who, installed
crammed with so many dates, figures, minute
in the tribunals open to all, had followed, or fol-
analyses, and footnotes woven from the archives.
lowed the masculine club meetings and diverse
No matter how micro one’s history writing gets,
revolutionary assemblies.”70 The allegorical print
as fine as a blade of grass, it is hard to write a story
of Madame Sans Culotte embodied the anxieties of
that feels as true and compelling as the fictional
class and gender that shaped the mythic image
version imagined by Mantel, where no amount of
of this laborer, showing a gentle if impoverished
exegetical digging or rifling through the crumbling
working-class woman with her knitting needles,
papers of the archives will fill in all the moth-eaten
a cat playfully pawing at the red yarn (fig. 31).
holes of subjective historical experience. And yet,
During the paranoid context of the Thermidorian
in the Archives de la Seine can be found the loose
Reaction, as the new government sought to dispel
ends of the Revolution, amid the records of those
popular uprisings such as the Conspiracy of the
who had committed suicide by drowning them-
Equals led by Gracchus Babeuf, the term was
selves in the river at that time. The concierges in
weaponized. Poor women were thus accused of
charge of retrieving the corpses at the end of the
having overstepped their domestic boundaries and
eighteenth century acquired a thorough knowledge
inciting men to violence.
of the material remainders of the victims, leaving
aside the dead bodies to instead become experts in
violence of the Terror, an image of the bloodthirsty
what Richard Cobb calls the “intimate and unique
revolutionary woman was invented on the basis
In the attempts to disavow the organized
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
93
Fig. 31 Anonymous, Madame Sans Culotte, ca. 1792. Stipple engraving with hand coloring, 25 × 17.5 cm. G 26300, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
94
of “historic approximations, fictional recon-
public competition for designs for the national
structions, fantasies.”71 Yet other types of textile
money. He boasted that his currency, made of
fabrication took place. Silk too was caught up in
“warp-knitted and dyed” (tricots à chaîne et chinés)
the politics of the period, evidenced by a woven
silk would be of the highest quality, unlike what
pair of stockings that pronounced support for the
he called money made from the “vulgar arts” of
finance minister Jacques Necker, though one can
papermaking, printing, and engraving.72 Jolivet
hardly imagine these on the calves of Robespierre
proposed manufacturing the national currency
(fig. 32). Perhaps the most unusual example for
from silk, which would “ensure the public fortune
the repurposing of silk was the proposal for silk
through the joining of difficult arts, rare in France,
assignats, to be knitted on behalf of the nation.
and completely unknown abroad.” The rarity and
Étienne Jolivet, a Lyonnais maker of silk stock-
difficulty of manufacturing silk would prevent the
ings, submitted his proposal as part of the 1792
money from being counterfeited, since the bills
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 32 (left) Stockings with “Necker” pattern, ca. 1788–93. Woven silk. Rogers Fund, 1923, 26.56.123. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fig. 33 (right) Attributed to Étienne Jolivet, silk assignat of 500 livres, ca. 1792. Woven silk, 13.5 × 12.7 cm. GB 1090, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
could only be produced in Lyon, where he and his
business partner Sarrazin had invented a knitting
unusual, given the political violence that had ran-
machine that created silks that would not fray
sacked Lyon and ground the silk industry to a halt.
when cut or torn. Jolivet’s assignats appear at first
Of course, certain lucky entrepreneurs managed to
glance to be rather crude, though the dyed letters
continue producing works. Pernon’s livre de com-
and numbers depended on a selective dying pro-
missions from the years 1791–93 contains orders for
cess (fig. 33). However, this may have been deliber-
dress silk for foreign courts, particularly Russia,
ate, since by the time Jolivet submitted his knitted
Sweden, and Spain. The last order took place on
samples, the technique already had popular asso-
July 3, 1793, a few months before the Siege of Lyon
ciations with the tricoteuses. The selection com-
destroyed the city.74 From August to October 1793,
mission that met in the spring of 1793 considered
French Republican troops sought to seize control
Jolivet’s suggestion seriously, though it eventually
over the federalist revolt in Lyon, a royalist strong-
abandoned silk in favor of paper money.
hold already battling social unrest between master
73
Jolivet’s proposal for silk assignats was
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
95
weavers, who demanded higher wages through an
the wine, a blend very prejudicial to the health.”78
end to the royal monopoly, and merchants, who
Rather than eat off them, Robert preferred paint-
sought to maintain control over the silk indus-
ing his plates, passing them off to a porter who
try. After the city surrendered in October, the
sold them for a louis apiece to English tourists
Committee of Public Safety called for its complete
milling about the prison, fascinated to be witness-
destruction. Jolivet’s patriotic invention appears
ing the events transpiring in Paris.79
not to have been enough to prevent suspicion
of his counterrevolutionary ties. On 9 Pluviôse,
ised Dugourc the possibility of a new start. Like
year II (January 28, 1794), the thirty-four-year-old
other designers and artisans, he grasped the advan-
was sentenced to death.
tages posed by the abolition of the guilds and the
75
96
76
As Lyon was ransacked and Thierry de Ville-
Paper, more than silk or dinner plates, prom-
development of new intellectual property laws that
d’Avray became a victim of the September
promised greater legal protections and financial
Massacres, Dugourc claimed to have simply tuned
rewards to designers and artisans.80 His subse-
out the entire Revolution. At least this audacious
quent claims to have remained dormant during the
assertion is made in his autobiography, written
Revolution are belied by the material evidence of
from the retrospective safety of 1800. He wrote
his activities. In 1790, he proposed a print of the
that he decided to turn his attention to quiet stud-
Fête de la Fédération. Though commemorative fes-
ies of antiquity, “firmly having decided not to play
tival prints were issued as souvenirs and claimed a
any role in the strange event that had overturned
journalistic veracity of the ephemeral events, they
his country.”77 We can hear Dugourc’s regressive
were often, according to Richard Taws, mediated
tendencies at work in this textual pattern, a return
representations subject to varying viewpoints and
to antiquity as a form of retreat from the tumultu-
forms of artistic “exaggerations, tricks, and subtle-
ous social change around him, the inner amateur
ties.”81 This was certainly the case with Dugourc’s
refusing to partake in the dangerous public work
wash and ink drawing (fig. 34). Not only is the
of politics. Dugourc does not say outright that
image set within a trompe l’oeil frame—a rhetori-
he was a royalist, which would have been risky,
cal device intended to suggest to the viewer the
especially given the exile and condemnation of his
illusory nature of the picture within—but also
aristocratic and royal patrons and the imprison-
the image bears the unusual inscription “fédé-
ment of his close collaborators. These included
ration des français dans la capitale de l’Empire.”
Bélanger, who was arrested, along with his lover,
Curiously, Dugourc has replaced Jacques Cellerier’s
Mademoiselle Dervieux, on 15 Pluviôse, year II
temporary arch with a design of his own concep-
(February 3, 1794) and thrown into jail at Saint-
tion, replacing the two side openings of the arch
Lazare, next to the painter Hubert Robert, who
with spolia ornaments and adding short porches
spent his incarceration painting prison plates with
on the cross axis. Even stranger is the carving on
landscapes. Notoriously inedible, prison meals
the frieze: “A la félicité eternelle de l’Empire.”
were described by contemporaries as horriblement
Perhaps these are the types of “antique studies”
mauvaise and typically consisted of “salted her-
Dugourc had in mind when claiming to have been
rings, dried cod, and maggot-infested cheese, and
otherwise preoccupied during the Revolution.
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 34 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, The Festival of the Federation, 1790. Pen and black ink and gray wash over black chalk, 6.3 × 9.45 cm. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s.
At least in scale, Dugourc’s work during this
intended. One example can be found at the top
period was considerably smaller in comparison to
of a letter issued by the Minister of the Interior
the visible public projects undertaken by paint-
announcing the coup of 18 Brumaire (fig. 35).
ers such as David. They are almost deliberately so,
Dugourc’s seemingly marginal and insignificant
suggesting that the designer understood that the
images participated in the collective transfer of
sites of power were no longer to be found in
political power from the sovereign body of the
the bedchambers of royal palaces but on the space
monarch to the administrative and bureaucratic
of the page. He became a prolific maker of en-tête
institutions that claimed to represent the popular
de lettres, or official letterheads, which conferred
sovereignty of the new French Republic.
power and authority to new political entities such
as the Committee of Public Safety.82 In many
tions, Dugourc joined a wallpaper business with
cases, Dugourc’s designs outlasted the revolution-
Étienne-Alexandre-Jacques Anisson-Dupéron,
ary regimes for which they had originally been
the former director of the Imprimerie royale.
Characteristic of his entrepreneurial ambi-
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
97
Fig. 35 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc (letterhead design), circulaire du ministre de l’Intérieur, Laplace, aux administrations centrales et municipales, 1799. Woodcut. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
Initiated in 1791, the manufactory occupied the
and his capital ensured the early success of the
hôtel de Longueville, not far from Henry Auguste’s
endeavor in a crowded and highly competitive
goldsmith’s workshop. It advertised its bona fides
market dominated by makers such as Réveillon
as a patriotic enterprise: “The genuine republi-
and Arthur et Robert, a profession equally popu-
can paper, proper for covering administrative
lated by radical Jacobins such as Pierre Cietty,
meeting rooms, public establishments, private
the close acquaintance of the Duplay household
offices and apartments, can always be found at
and Robespierre, and the Lyonnais manufacturer
the Manufacture républicaine, place du Carroussel
Joseph Dufour, whom Jean-Marie Collot d’Her-
[sic], hôtel Longueville; those seeking origi-
bois, member of the Committee of Public Safety,
nal plates should address citoyen Dugourc.”
selected to help “purify the rebel city” after the
Anisson-Dupéron’s position as the royal printer
Siege of Lyon.84
83
98
Luxury After the terror
Arabesques featured amid the wallpapers
series of assignats in 1790 as head of the royal
designed by Dugourc for the Manufacture républi-
printing works, a position he was ultimately
cain, providing a visual continuity with the imme-
forced to resign from after he was suspected of
diate past, even as they collapsed the distinctions
being a royalist.88 Printing the nation’s first paper
between public and private space and flattened
money inevitably brought with it considerable
the material heterogeneity of the ancien régime
responsibilities and anxieties, and in the hyper-
interior with paper simulacra. Complex arabesque
bolic emphasis on creating “genuine Republican
decorations that catered to the growing taste for
wallpaper,” one can detect the apprehensions about
antiquity enabled specialized designers to distin-
circulation, counterfeiting, and surveillance found
guish themselves from more ordinary artisans and
in the public debate on the assignats as structuring
prevent the possibility of copyright infringement.
the uses of wallpaper. After all, what would a false
With his prior expertise in designing silk and
Republican version look like?
working at the Garde-Meuble, Dugourc, amateur
and artist that he was, could at last claim author-
during the Revolution suggest that the divisions
ity over the entirety of the walls’ composition,
between “official” documents and other less formal
no longer having to answer to an architectural
kinds of paperwork were minimal, with objects
manager or having to fill in the voids left behind
such as the republican playing cards collapsing
by a sculptor with better classical credentials. In a
private enterprise and patriotic aims. After the
more immediate sense, it retained the mate-
journée of August 10, Dugourc sought to distance
rial traces of the past with few complaints about
himself from Anisson-Dupéron. He turned his
the reappearance of despotic luxury, such as the
attention from wallpaper to playing cards, leasing
arabesque motifs in the Hôtel Vaupalière that were
a space with his Jacobin business partner Urbaine
taken from Dugourc’s engraved plates from the
Jaume in the former warehouse of the Académie
ancien régime.86 The reuse of motifs is not entirely
royale de musique, down the street from the
surprising, since wallpaper manufacturers readily
hôtel de Longueville.89 Officially patented on
admitted that the market as a whole consisted of
February 17, 1793, a little less than a month after
“imitating on paper everything that is executed in
the king’s execution, the thirty-two cards were
fabric, cloth, plaster, marble, stucco, wood, or any
printed in woodcut and hand-colored on a single
other matter used for furniture or decoration.”
sheet, after which some were cut into official decks.
85
87
In remediating the silk motifs of the past,
Fervent reproductions on and out of paper
Perhaps in anticipation of the popularity of the
wallpaper might be seen as an attempt to recu-
cards, Dugourc and Jaume requested permission
perate the financial losses of a material associ-
from the Minister of the Interior to expand the
ated with the monarchy’s insurmountable debts,
premises of their factory. The petition is dated to
an arabesque iteration of the trompe l’oeil prints
February 22, 1793, just six days after the cards were
of assignats that signaled France’s traumatic
officially patented, and includes a plan of the man-
memories of financial terror. The links between
ufactory located on the third floor of the build-
wallpaper and currency are not so far-fetched,
ing. The partners hoped to expand the space to
given that Anisson-Dupéron had printed the first
include lower floors and secure street access on the
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
99
Fig. 36 Caisse patriotique de Saint- Maixent, Billet de confiance for three sols with Boutin’s signature, 1790–93. Playing card with ink and stamps, 5.5 × 8.3 cm. GB526, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Photo: Paris Musées.
rez-de-chaussée.90 Seeking to distinguish his new
than the Arabesques, evidenced by the numerous
enterprise from his previous activities, Dugourc
copies made of them. Moreover, their currency
issued an advertisement that informed “our fellow
as print was emphasized by the fact that playing
citizens that no wallpaper is produced or sold at
cards were used as substitute forms of local money
all in our manufactory of new Republican playing
and billets de confiance (notes of trust) in colonial
cards, rue Saint-Nicaise.”
France, where both metallic money and paper
were scarce (fig. 36).
91
Prior to the Revolution, cards had served as
a stock subject matter for artists, from the vanitas
paintings of seventeenth-century artists such as the
aim was simply to replace royal figures with the
Le Nain brothers to the meditative work of Jean-
embodiments of revolutionary ideals, the playing
Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, such as Boy Building a
cards had complex systems of meaning that once
House of Cards (1735). Besides vanitas, cards were
again recalled arabesques. Designed as a piquet
typically understood in the eighteenth century to
deck, Dugourc and Jaume’s set includes thirty-two
stand for the hierarchy of the social orders, with
cards instead of the typical fifty-two cards found
the whole deck invoking the totality of feudal
in a poker deck. There are slight variations among
society. Such a social understanding was clearly
the rare surviving sets. For example, each of the
what the government had in mind when it decreed
face cards from the earliest version of the deck,
that cards had to be entirely reformulated in order
dating to year II, bears an inscription at the bottom
to reflect the new principles of equality after the
that states “Dugourc, inv. l’an II de la République,
downfall of the monarchy. As a class of print,
par Brevet d’Invention.” By contrast, the face cards
the playing cards reached a far wider audience
in a hand-colored set at the British Museum lack
92
100
Luxury After the terror
Even as Jaume and Dugourc insisted that their
his name as the inventor and are accompanied
in the masterful arrangement of figures, text, and
instead by a copy of a proposal for the constitution
ornaments found on each of the face cards, and the
of year III. As Thierry Depaulis notes, Dugourc
creation of a new cast of characters, who, in their
and Jaume’s pack was the first deck of cards to
doubled figurations, evoke the compositional
have been officially patented, transforming what
strategies found in the Arabesques. Deciphering
had been a somewhat generic signifier of social
each figure requires relying on the prospectus. The
order into a specific form of intellectual property
“geniuses” of the deck resemble classical gods, such
over which Dugourc and his partner sought autho-
as the winged “Genius of Spades, or of the Arts,”
rial control. The new laws on patenting inventions
who holds a lyre and a miniature Apollo Belvedere.
in 1791 replaced the previous system of privileges
The “Genius of Diamonds, or Commerce”
and titles that had been granted by the royal
resembles Mercury and holds a caduceus in one
administration. The variations in sets signaled the
hand and a bag of money in the other. While his
ways in which the cards could have multiple func-
pensive figure indicates his “profound specula-
tions, serving on the one hand as public advertise
tions,” the portfolio, papers, and book at his feet
ments of Dugourc and Jaume’s claims over the
demonstrate “that confidence and fidelity are
rights to the design or forms of revolutionary
the primary foundations of commerce, just as
propaganda when accompanied by the constitu-
exchange is the means, and order creates secu-
tion. On the other hand, the ghost of Dugourc’s
rity.”93 Alongside the “Liberty of the Press” and
father looms in the background of this endeavor.
the “Liberty of Religion,” the appearance of the
For the patent indicates an attempt to seize autho-
“Liberty of Clubs, or Marriage” is surprising,
rial control in order to ensure that the legal battles
since she is shown wielding divorce papers in her
over the rights to invention that had once brought
hands. The device is intended, the authors assure
his father down would not do the same to him.
their fellow citizens, as an apotropaic “amulet,
that must ceaselessly remind spouses that their
Refiguring the family romance of the French
Revolution, the cards replaced the paternal kings,
fidelity must be mutual in order to be enduring.”94
maternal queens, and filial jacks of the traditional
The figures of Equality bear a remarkable specific-
deck with personifications of Genius, Liberty, and
ity, corresponding to new patriotic types that had
Equality. On the reverse side of the republican
emerged out of the Revolution. Though there are
cards stood the abstract diamond shape of the
no tricoteuses, the “Equality of Hearts, or Duties”
law formed from four joined fasces, which also
represents a member of the National Guard, while
replaced the aces in the deck. The woodcut designs
the “Equality of Clubs, or Rights” is a judge who
are intentionally coarse, a stylistic regression from
wears a costume similar to the designs that David
the fine etched lines of Dugourc’s earlier, more
had invented for members of the government.
accomplished engravings. The harsh bludgeon-
like work of cutting across the grain of wood to
the “Equality of Diamonds, or Colors” and the
produce figures is found not only in his playing
“Equality of Spades, or Rank,” represented, respec-
cards but also in the woodcut letterhead designs
tively, by a liberated Black man and a sansculotte.
of this period. All the same, there is a refinement
The Equality of Diamonds goes one step further
By far the two most radical figures are
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
101
than any abolitionist image of the period in figur-
to use a particular type of card stock with the
ing freedom, not as a freewheeling entanglement
fleur-de-lis, which served as a tax stamp allowing
of arabesque motifs but as an armed Black man
authorities to distinguish between duty-paid cards
(plate 13). Calling to mind the Black Spartacus
and illegal examples. When tax regulations were
envisioned by the Abbé Raynal in Histoire des deux
lifted, remaining stocks of perfectly watermarked
Indes, this avenger of the New World is shown
paper continued to be used until 1800. Thus, one
unchained from the fetters of slavery and enjoys
found “perfectly republican playing cards, made
“the new Pleasure of being free and armed: on one
during year II, on this paper watermarked with the
side one sees a camp, and the other sugar cane,
fleur de lys.”97
and the word Courage finally avenges the Man of
Color from the scornful injustice of his oppres-
cards, the more the revolutionary manual of the
sors.”95 As a parallel allegory, the armed sansculotte
future comes undone by the plenitude of attributes
grips the muzzle of his musket with one sinewy
that surround each figure, and the didactic mes-
hand, while he points down at the crumbled
sages become so many slogans layered one upon
The more one looks at this pack of playing
remains of the “demolition of the Bastille,” chis-
another in a semiotic mesh of words that never
eled with the date August 10, 1792. The date of the
quite mean what they say.98 The same is true of
fall of the Bastille on July 14 has been collapsed
the letterhead designs created by Dugourc and his
with August 10, a maneuver that is not entirely
collaborator Duplat, which have a crowded quality,
explained in the prospectus.
as if the ancillary decorative elements are fighting
their way to occupy center stage and replace the
While the society augured by the republican
playing cards overturned the hierarchical order of
primary emblems, in a redeployment of arabesque
the royal deck, the cards relied on the composi-
squiggles meant to undo the purposiveness of rev-
tions of the past for their symbolic effect, much
olutionary iconography. Functioning as dialectical
like the propaganda prints of the period. Hence
objects rather than foolproof pieces of propaganda,
the adoption of seated figures recalls the former
Dugourc and Jaume’s cards embody the ways in
royalty found on playing cards, in order to evoke
which the visual culture of the ancien régime—full
“a mass equal to the Magots from the age of
of pleasure, play, frivolity, and risk—persisted, the
Charles VI, and one took care to preserve the same
material traces of the past serving as the physical
colors, in order to offer the same effects.” A num-
support for the serious work of the present.
96
ber of the decks had, in fact, been printed upon old card stock embossed with a fleur-de-lis pattern left over from the ancien régime. Though royal-
Cut Loose
ists used hidden rebuses and repurposed prints to
102
serve as secret counterrevolutionary calling cards,
After Dugourc’s forays into revolutionary paper-
the fleur-de-lis watermarks represent the last
work, his return to silk and his migration to Spain
ghostly traces of the ancien régime’s tax system.
to work for the Bourbons in 1800 places pressure
The monarchy had regulated gambling instru-
on understanding his revolutionary activities, and
ments and, since 1751, had required card makers
whether he indeed had but briefly dabbled in the
Luxury After the terror
politics of the period before ultimately wishing,
tent room, as well as the royal hamlet made for
in his words, “to only serve Bourbons.” Dugourc
Marie-Antoinette at Versailles (fig. 37). Dugourc’s
99
had been working for the Spanish court from Paris
rustic pavilion resembles a wooden shack, com-
as early as 1786; he decided to move permanently
plete with log piles and a thatched roof, perhaps in
to Madrid following the death of his business
keeping with Charles IV’s love of rural life.104 It is
partner, the entrepreneur François-Louis Godon.100
unlikely that such a half-conceived structure was
His designs for silks and architectural follies in
ever built.105 Nonetheless, in a similar manner to
Spain pushed the more restrained decorations he
the dovecote that Pierre-Adrien Pâris had recon-
had created during the ancien régime to greater
figured into a house for himself at Colmoulins,
extremes, incorporating Chinese and Egyptian
Dugourc’s fancy shack performs architectural
motifs alongside his trademark arabesque patterns,
subterfuge, betraying an anxiety about ornamental
as well as more elements of fantasy and colors;
ostentation in hiding columns, grotto-like spaces,
in Spain, he sought to outdo the most extravagant
and an alcove bedroom behind a truly dilapidated
designs of the ancien régime. For example, it is
exterior.
hard to trace any kind of ostensibly revolution-
ary sensibility in the colorful arabesque silks he
out as neatly as the tightly woven and repeating
designed in Spain for Charles IV, which drew once
patterns of the silk panels that Dugourc was tasked
more upon the decorative motifs of the Loggia
with designing in Spain, so vibrant, so symmetri-
(plate 14).
cal, and so perfectly ordered. The Empire even-
tually caught up with the French designer, and,
101
Officially named a royal architect in charge
The loose ends of one’s life never quite work
of the palace at La Moncloa in 1802, Dugourc
eight years after he arrived in Madrid from Paris,
provided architectural designs to the Spanish king
Dugourc was followed by his compatriot Joseph
and his court, including the influential minister
Bonaparte, who deposed King Ferdinand VII in
Manuel Godoy, even though he had not been for-
a matter of months and placed himself on the
mally trained as an architect. Alongside creating
throne in 1808, backed by his brother Napoleon.
extravagant arabesque decorations for the king’s
The French emperor is the subject of an unusual
spaces, he sought through his architectural proj-
drawing by Dugourc; it shows him in alternat-
ects to resuscitate in rural Spain all of the grand
ing profiles, the youthful and idealized portrait
designs that had once populated ancien régime
haunted by the ghostly presence of an older and
Paris, as if the Revolution itself had never trans-
perhaps more accurate version of the Napoleon
pired. Three years after Dugourc arrived in Spain,
of that moment, his saggy profile registering the
Bélanger, in his typically sardonic way, wrote to the
effects of all the military campaigns that would not
furniture maker Jacob that “your former master
touch the perfectly repeating ornamental pattern
M. Dugourc, is resuscitated: he is the first archi-
figured below in a vertical foliage motif, a little bit
tect to the king of Spain and of the prince of the
of free beauty next to a face subject to the vicissi-
Peace.”103 One particularly ambitious proposal for
tudes of time (fig. 38).
a chalet at Aranjuez evokes many of the elements
that Bélanger had used at Bagatelle, including the
past had depended and the means through which
102
Paper was the medium upon which Dugourc’s
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
103
Fig. 37 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, design for a chalet in Aranjuez, 1786–1803. Black ink, pencil and wash on paper mounted on blue card, 42 × 77 cm. Image courtesy of Drawing Matter.
104
he hoped to secure a lucrative future. A large pre-
and helped to propagate during his early suc-
sentation drawing from 1808 attests to the ways
cesses with Bélanger in a range of materials, from
he sought to once more use his skills as a drafts-
silk panels and furnishings to delicate gilt-bronze
man to save himself from exile and to adapt once
mounts for precious hardstone objects. The central
again to the shifting political allegiances brought
vertical section in the drawing shows a seated
about in the wake of the Revolution (plate 15).
female figure who plants her feet upon a globe that
Among the largest of Dugourc’s surviving draw-
shows the African continent; she sits between two
ings, the image’s exact function is unclear,
male attendants, one with butterfly wings and the
although it is accompanied by a small slip of paper
other wearing a crown of wheat.106 Several of the
that reads, “this sheet was begun in Paris in 1787
grotesque motifs recall the plates from Arabesques,
and completed in Madrid in 1808 by J. Démost.
which drew from the Vatican Loggia, while the
Dugourg architecte du Roi Joseph Napoléon.”
exotic and fantastical beasts interspersed through-
A sort of memory palace, the composition com-
out the design include camels, elephants, unicorns,
bines many of the motifs associated with the goût
and squirrels—animals that would reappear in
étrusque style that the designer had pioneered
Dugourc’s illustrations for Les animaux savants,
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 38 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, Napoleon Bonaparte at the Champ de Mai, ca. 1815. Graphite on light blue paper, 30.3 × 22.1 cm. Bequest of Harry G. Sperling, 1971, 1975.131.108. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
published in 1816. The panel is set into a frame
decorated with black and terracotta cartouches
panels of woven silk that Dugourc designed for
evocative of Greek vase paintings, separated from
Pernon on behalf of the Spanish court, it does not
two outer bands of Egyptian-style decoration in
correspond to a specific commission or known
a gray wash. At the bottom half of the composi-
royal project. As evidence of this, we need only
tion, a Roman tetrastyle temple contains a statue
glimpse at the structure located in the center,
of Cybele. The inscription on the outer walls of
emblazoned with the artist’s name and profes-
the temple reads, “j. démost. dugourc archi-
sion within the frieze of the temple dedicated to
tect inv. del.” The cornice of the inner structure
the Great Mother. Even if indeed, following the
contains the dates of the drawing’s commencement
hypothesis put forward by te Rijdt, the drawing
in Paris in the year of 1787 and of its completion in
served as “a sample of archeological motifs allow-
Madrid in 1808.
ing the artist to demonstrate all of his savoir-faire,”
While the drawing’s format recalls the long
Jean-Démosthène Dugourc
105
it does not tell us why it took Dugourc nearly
Stylistically, the heavily controlled composition
twenty years to finish this drawing, nor the practi-
evokes the kind of images Dugourc would make
cal matter of why he chose to make an “advertising
for the Bourbons during the Restoration, after he
card” in such a large format.107 On another level,
returned to Paris from Madrid in 1813, drawing
it raises the question of why a draftsman who had
the funeral procession for Louis XVI and taking
been employed by countless other artisans and
charge of designing the lavish silk brocades for the
architects, chief among them Bélanger, decided to
throne of the Palais des Tuileries in 1819 but never
chisel his name as an architect within the edifice of
quite managing to find a solid position under the
his design.
Restoration.109 The conservative, somber quality of
the drawing is picked up in the strange sepia tones
What kinds of representational anxieties were
at work in 1808 in Madrid for one of the most
and muted shades, which create the effects of a
prolific designers of ancien régime Paris, who
reproductive print more than an original drawing
would be remembered a century later for his works
and look forward to the cinematic strategies of
on paper and as the radical printmaker of repub-
using muted tones in film in order to signal a flash-
lican playing cards? The strangest aspect of the
back to the past. Instead of signing his name on the
drawing is the way in which Dugourc drew himself
outer margins, outside the mimetic framework of
into a tomb, the carefree and loose footwork of
the drawing, as was typical of eighteenth-century
earlier arabesque patterns turned into coffers and
drawing conventions, he chose to sign his name
containers and caskets, set one into the other in an
inside, in the sanctum sanctorum of the center of
interlocking and inescapable system as conserva-
the composition. Significant indeed is the temple
tive and funereal as the Egyptian motifs found
at the heart of the drawing, where Dugourc has
in the outermost edges of the drawing. Gone were
chosen to leave his name chiseled on the surface of
the ambiguous fantasies of the past, the fugitive
a sanctuary dedicated to the Great Mother, whose
designs with openings and closings in between the
death called him back from Rome and cut him off
threads that had allowed for the traffic between
from the true knowledge of antiquity, but whose
politics and pleasure. Instead, the design was so
absence shaped the arabesque fantasies that arose
tightly woven that no gaps could be left behind.
from the designer’s sleight of hand.
108
106
Luxury After the terror
S
hortly after Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, prints, pamphlets, and letters sought to capture the remarkable
spectacle that had transpired at the Place de la Révolution. While the severing of the king’s head was meant to be the final act that would liberate the Revolution’s body politic from the despotic past, witnesses appeared divided on exactly what they had encountered. The executioner, Charles-
Chapter 4
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent Carving in Exile
Henri Sanson, felt compelled to weigh in on the final moments of the king in order to put the rumors to rest (see fig. 1). He described the former monarch’s descent from the carriage and how, after initial protests, Louis XVI removed his jacket and held out his hands to be bound with rope. Against the loud sound of the drumroll, “he climbed onto the scaffold and sought to move to the front as though wishing to speak. But it was pointed out to him that this, too, was impossible. So he allowed himself to be led to the place where he was bound, and where he shouted very loudly, People, I die innocent. Then, turning towards us, he said: Gentlemen, I am innocent of every charge laid against me. I hope that my blood may seal the happiness of the French people. Those, citizen, were his true and final words.”1
More than the executioner himself, the guillo-
tine was the other great protagonist on the morning of the king’s death. Nothing more than “a horizontal plane some feet above the ground on which have been erected two perpendiculars separated by a right-angled triangle falling through a circle onto a sphere which is subsequently isolated by a cutter,” the guillotine’s ruthless and impersonal efficiency made it an exemplary instrument of the Terror (fig. 39).2 While most eyes were trained upon the once mystical figure of the king, others marveled at the machine that had separated Louis
Fig. 39 Hercy, Robespierre guillotinant le boureau après avoir fait guillot.r tous les Français . . . cy gyt toute la France, 1794. Burin engraving, 23.5 × 15 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
108
XVI’s head from his body, as if he were no different
Pinel turned his attention from the emotional loss
from any of the other victims who had come before
of the king to the instrument that had brought him
him. Among the crowd that day stood a young
death: “Louis was bound to the fatal plank of what
Philippe Pinel, who described the event in a letter
is called the guillotine, and his head was cut off
to his brother. After writing of a “heart heavy with
before he hardly had time to suffer, which is at least
sorrow, in a stupor of profound consternation,”
one advantage of this murderous machine that
Luxury After the terror
bears the name of the physician who invented it.”3
that the architect Pierre-Adrien Pâris proposed to
In Laure Murat’s provocative account, the guillo-
the Bourbon court in exile while he himself was
tine and the spectacle of the king’s death together
hiding in Normandy (fig. 40). Pâris’s centralized,
led to modern medical understandings of madness
tiered structure was crowned by a crucifix at the
and the self as a divided subject. She reminds us
top; a monument of monstrous proportions, its
that, while Pinel may have been an anonymous
ostensible religious iconography consciously chal-
spectator at the Place de la Révolution that day,
lenged the secularization of the Pantheon achieved
he later became the founder of French psychiatry.4
under the directives of Quatremère de Quincy.
The mechanics and visual effects of the guillotine
The wrathfully large dome (which would have
provoked new medical understandings of “losing
taken years to complete) sought to architectoni-
one’s head” in the nineteenth century. It also made
cally compensate for the dismembered and lost
the more immediate task of commemorating the
body of the king, which had been swiftly buried
king particularly difficult, if not impossible, in the
in the mass grave of the Madeleine Cemetery and
postrevolutionary period.
covered with quicklime to prevent any attempts at
How the specter of the king’s death figured
disinterment and recuperation. Rejected in favor
in the execution of luxury during the postrevo-
of a more modest expiatory chapel completed by
lutionary period is the subject of this chapter,
the architect Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine
which focuses on a small carved medallion by the
under Charles X, Pâris’s phantasmagorical project
French sculptor-architect Aubert-Henri-Joseph
demonstrates how a divided collective memory
Parent. Produced in 1795, two years after the
made Bourbon monuments nearly unbuildable.5
king’s death, the relief features a profile portrait of
Louis XVI on a medallion carved from limewood,
Parent’s small commemorative object was of a
which was Parent’s specialty in Paris before he
private nature and, unusually, relied on the use of
moved to Switzerland and Germany during the
wood. Parent’s carving, however small, requires a
Terror. The medallion is dedicated to Franziska
slow and deliberate process of viewing in opposi-
von Hohenheim, making the appearance of the
tion to the radical instantaneity represented by the
dead king’s portrait puzzling, given that she did
guillotine. This is the case when considering the
not have particularly close ties to the French
poem written on the verso of the medallion by the
monarch. One might initially classify the carv-
Swiss Protestant preacher Johann Caspar Lavater,
ing as part of the royalist imagery that circulated
who introduced Parent to his many contacts in
after his execution. Haunting silhouette portraits
Switzerland. Just as the pages of the Kabinet van
depicted the king as a ghostly spectral presence
mode en Smaak viewed a Sèvres cup and saucer
alongside weeping figures who did the demonstra-
as the remnants of a lost world of royal splendor,
tive work of mourning for a public that could not
the small and unassuming limewood sculpture
openly express loss for fear of political retribu-
turned the carved image of the king into a political
tion. More ambitious attempts to commemorate
devotional object. Carving Louis XVI as a sub-
the king took place clandestinely, such as the
ject could only legitimately take place within
architectural project for a monument to the king
the conditions of exile, since it would have been
At the opposite end of the material spectrum,
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
109
Fig. 40 Pierre-Adrien Pâris, second project for a monument dedicated to the memory of Louis XVI, ca. 1818–19. Ink and wash, 49.5 × 43.5 cm. Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon, Fonds Paris, vol. 484, no. 117. Photo: Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon.
dangerous to mourn the king in France even as
had been recognized primarily for its com-
the Thermidorian Reaction ostensibly brought the
mercial uses in the context of luxury, was trans-
Terror to an end. Still identifying as a royal subject
formed in his exile into an instrument of political
of the crown after the monarch’s death, Parent in
commemoration.
his professional trajectory reveals the transformations that took place in artisanal practice in exile. Before the Revolution, he had attempted to
Flowers for the King
navigate the hierarchical world of the royal acad-
110
emies without much success. Carved genre scenes
Christian symbols of metamorphosis and resur-
made for the commercial market were classified
rection, aspects that later became characteristic of
on a lower aesthetic tier than marble statuaries or
royalist imagery during the Bourbon Restoration,
history paintings. Parent’s wood carving, which
can be detected in Parent’s carving, which at first
Luxury After the terror
glance appears purely decorative (plate 16). A pro-
volatile circumstances made both being religious
file portrait of Louis XVI set into a medallion sur-
and royal treasonous activities under the French
rounded by the Latin inscription lud[ovicus] xvi
revolutionary government, even after the end of
occidit 21 J 1793 (Louis XVI killed on January 21,
the Terror.
1793) rests above a miniaturized cylindrical casket
held up by scrolled volute legs. The long side of
form of propaganda prints aimed at countering
the casket is inscribed with the Latin words Mors
revolutionary images, the untimely slowness of
immortalitas, a reference to Lucretius’s descrip-
carving a sculpture in wood represents an unusual
tion of the immortality of death and eternal
method of artistic production, one that was,
change in De rerum natura, a line that Karl Marx
moreover, rarely found in the academic salons
would resuscitate in a different context in an early
of cosmopolitan Paris. Largely neglected as a
critique of capital.6 Beneath the casket is a sacri-
sculptural medium during the neoclassical period,
ficial Christian lamb suggesting the innocence of
the language of wood carving was more com-
the Bourbon king, while the theme of resurrec-
monly associated with the furniture and interior
tion can be found in the butterfly triumphantly
decoration that joiners, cabinetmakers, and carvers
emerging from its chrysalis and about to take flight
executed on behalf of the Garde-Meuble de la
at the top of the composition. Below the lamb are
Couronne, such as Georges Jacob, who supplied
the coats of arms of Franziska von Hohenheim, the
exquisitely carved pieces of furniture to the French
duchess of Württemberg, to whom the object was
court and worked with Dugourc, whom we saw in
dedicated, as indicated in the inscription found
the previous chapter. In contrast to sturdier forms
on the ebonized frame. Her name is once again
of wood, such as walnut, beech, and later mahog-
mentioned on the reverse side of the panel, which
any typically used by Jacob and other joiners in the
includes Lavater’s poem, “On the coffin of Louis,
furnishings of the period, Parent’s characteristic
the murdered victim,” to which I will return later
use of limewood allows us to position him within
in this chapter. The high-relief carving of the
a longer genealogy of carvers, beginning with the
Bourbon lily stalk and the rose symbolizing Marie-
extraordinary pre-Reformation sculptors who
Antoinette daringly jut out from the surface and
were the subject of Michael Baxandall’s book
loom incongruously large above the medallion
The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany.
and miniaturized tomb. In contrast to these, one
can detect, when seen closely and in raking light,
under the genus of Tilia, is a light hardwood
the spectral presence of the Bourbon fleur-de-lis
traditionally used in Europe as a decorative carv-
decorating the short side of the coffin; the same
ing material. Typically unsuited for carpentry or
fine chiseling is used to carve the word Tigurina,
the structural forms of furnishings because of its
the Latin word for Zurich, below the artist’s more
unstable nature, limewood has a complex internal
deeply carved signature and the date of 1795 on the
structure. Although it is a light hardwood that
base of the monument. Such ample use of religious
the Renaissance theorist Leon Battista Alberti
and royalist symbolism might strike us today as
described as “tractable,” the ease with which
being rather overdetermined. However, politically
the carver can work across the grain in multiple
Given that royalist images circulated in the
Limewood, or linden wood, also known
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
111
directions with little resistance also makes it vulnerable to the pressures of uneven shrinkage and splitting.7 Working with this paradoxically soft hardwood requires the development of manual dexterity and an experience of reading the shapes of the wood beforehand in what Baxandall, borrowing from the Renaissance natural philosopher Paracelsus’s terminology, described as a kind of chiromancy, a “reading of the lines of disposition and experience on any natural object by means rather similar to that of reading the lines on a hand.”8 Looking at wood sculpture entails a different process, too. Limewood carving is sensitive to the play of light and shadow and, as such, demands that the viewer also practice a kind of chiromancy in order to grasp what Baxandall terms the “accumulative sensation” that arises in the process of viewing a sculpture, which enables the viewer to see the carved surface of patterns as “consisting in an intricate act of serial perception by ourselves rather than in a wooden artefact, as a process and not a thing.”9
Certainly, Parent is separated by a temporal,
cultural, and geographical gulf from the carving methods and collective cultural practices that flourished in Renaissance Germany among the limewood sculptors studied by Baxandall. In some
Fig. 41 Tilman Riemenschneider, seated bishop, ca. 1495. Limewood and gray-black stain, 90.2 × 35.6 × 14.9 cm. The Cloisters Collection, 1970, 1970.137.1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ways, the French carver shares more in common with the seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch limewood sculptor Grinling Gibbons, who gained
projects, as Gibbons did, the Louis XVI panel
prominence by carving remarkable architec-
demonstrates that religious themes could be found
tural ornaments at Hampton Court Palace.10
hidden amid the floral motifs in which he special-
Importantly, much like earlier sculptors, Parent
ized. Something about the experience of viewing
left his wood unpainted, a treatment that both
Parent’s work is comparable to the phenomeno-
drew attention to his skill and created a resistance
logical modes of beholding that Baxandall claimed
to the mimetic and lifelike temptations of poly-
were necessary to grasping the accumulative
chrome sculpture (fig. 41). While he probably
sensation of a limewood sculpture by artists such
undertook a number of secular, decorative carving
as Tilman Riemenschneider.
11
112
Luxury After the terror
The small medallion offers but a partial
recent coronation at Reims is just visible, drawing
glimpse into the technical mastery and artistic
the eye back into an illusionistic depth at the same
talents of Parent, who began his career in the
time that it brings attention to the patterns formed
hope of becoming a royal artist. He was born on
by the grain of the wood. To the right of the floral
December 13, 1753, in Cambrai, a town in northern
basket, Parent carved trophies and war spoils.
France close to the Belgian border, into a fam-
Already in this early work, the hallmarks of his
ily of noble lineage that could be traced back to
style are detectable in the modulation of the relief
Pierre Parent, a secretary of state to Louis XI in the
in order to depict successive moments in time and
fifteenth century. Antoine-François Saint-Aubert,
to create a heightened sense of illusion, as well as
a Cambrai painter of fantastical genre scenes,
the exploitation of the carved frame. Composed
trained him early on in painting, though Parent
somewhat awkwardly, the text begins at the top
claimed to have taught himself how to carve.13
left corner of the frame and reads: “great king of
By the age of twenty-four, he was working for the
your subjects and the love and the father /
local nobility, and in 1777, the city of Valenciennes
whom the frenchman adores and the for-
asked him to create a carving to celebrate the
eigner dreams of / when i erect a trophy to
arrival of Louis XVI, who was visiting the city on
the rarest virtues / my art traces louis and
the hundredth anniversary of its incorporation
recalls titus.”
into the kingdom of France (plate 17).
allowed for the demonstration of Parent’s multiple
12
Parent’s carving must have struck a chord
This flattering piece of royal propaganda
with the young king, who had a predilection for
talents as a carver of both sculptural and structural
tinkering with lathes and locks in his workshop
surfaces, as a virtuoso who could both provide
at Versailles under the watchful tutelage of the
the work of art and furnish the frame that would
locksmith François Gamain, whom we encoun-
embellish and heighten the dramatic effects of
tered in chapter 2.14 Louis XVI had only ascended
the relief it contained. In attacking his panels and
to the throne in 1774 and hopes remained high
frames from multiple angles, the sculptor asks the
for the new French king and his wife. Parent’s
eyes of the viewer to do the same. The way the text
large and exuberant relief depicts roses, lilies,
circles around the panel suggests that the viewer,
poppies, anemones, jasmine, sunflowers, morning
like the carver, should perform acrobatic feats in
glories, scabious, and periwinkle, arranged inside
order to turn the enormous wooden panel and
an openwork basket placed atop a small plinth
read the entire message. As awkwardly composed
decorated by fleur-de-lis and a central medallion
as the text is, Parent’s words demonstrate the ways
portraying the youthful countenance of Louis XVI
in which provincial cities such as Valenciennes
set between two cornucopias. To the left, a small
expressed their devotion to the king in terms of
domestic scene of avian affection unfolds as a
paternal affection and filial duty, even as the art-
mother bird sits on the plinth feeding her just-
ist sought to show his erudition by referencing a
hatched brood while the father bird, carved in
classical figure of authority like the ancient Roman
shallower relief, flies at a transverse angle. In the
emperor Titus. The carving was an immediate suc-
distance, a pyramid commemorating Louis XVI’s
cess. The piece was hung in the lower-level dining
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
113
room at Versailles and won the young artist a gift
marquis de Turpin, the piece and a pendant panel
of 1,200 livres from the royal crown, an award that
dedicated to the theme of friendship were said
was accompanied by a letter inviting the artist to
to have delighted visitors “by the delicateness of
study in Paris.15 The carving was one of the few
the work and the veracity of the attitudes.”20 The
objects left untouched during the October days of
heightened sense of naturalism with which he
1789.
16
carved his tender scenes attracted viewers. Unlike
While the study of neoclassical sculpture
stolid marble busts placed securely on plinths
tends to be limited to executions in terracotta,
and pedestals, Parent’s vertically positioned wood
plaster, or marble, there was also a penchant for
carvings evoked a sense of wonder by achieving
less monumental media, favored by the provincial
highly recessed and deeply excavated surfaces that
nobility who composed Parent’s primary patronage
brought the world of nature alive.
base. His early success gained from this carving
enabled him to move to Paris in 1779, where he
set his sights on Catherine the Great, who had
became a pensionnaire of the Royal Academy of
sent her estranged son Paul and his wife, the grand
painting and sculpture as a student of Étienne-
duchess Maria Feodorovna, to visit Paris in 1783
Pierre-Adrien Gois, who specialized in religious
on a diplomatic mission following the War of the
and allegorical statuary in marble. Although the
Bavarian Succession.21 Like Dugourc, who created
comte d’Angiviller had granted him a pension
a number of designs for the grand duke in 1784,
of 600 livres a year, he was not the most diligent
Parent had evidently hoped to secure Russian
pupil, lured instead by the fame and money to be
patronage by selling a carving listed in the pam-
made on the private art market. The same year he
phlet of the Salon de la Correspondance of 1783
began at the Academy, Parent displayed works at
as “The portrait of H. M. Catherine II, empress of
the Salon de la Correspondance, the controversial
Russia, carried by the imperial eagle holding in its
commercial exhibition established in 1779 by Pahin
talons the scepter and the globe. In the lower part,
de la Blancherie, who was pejoratively described
where branches of flowers cross over each other,
as “an unrelentingly mercantile host who affected
is posed a bird’s nest with nestlings; their mother
the trappings of nobility.” He became known for
covers them with her wings and feeds them with
carving pathetic genre scenes of dead mother birds
her beak, symbol of the benefits and maternal
with their fledglings in nests from single pieces of
tenderness of the empress for her subjects.”22 One
wood. At the distinctly nonacademic salon, such
can see Parent replaying the motifs of naturalism
carvings would have been displayed next to paint-
in the service of monarchical authority that he
ings and sculptures as well as curiosities, natural
had earlier utilized in his panel for Louis XVI, yet
history specimens, and “freaks of nature,” such
in a much higher relief panel, which leads to the
as a two-headed calf, putting the fine arts status
suspicion that a number of the pieces were glued
17
18
of his works into question. This did not deter
on rather than carved from the same block. The
Parent from submitting works to the Salon again
Russian couple did not purchase the piece, leaving
in 1780, including a small scene of baby birds in
Parent devastated. Nonetheless, we can see the
a nest being fed by a mother bird. Created for the
sculptor pushing the limits of a decorative medium
19
114
Not content with minor patrons alone, Parent
Luxury After the terror
to an allegorical language, perhaps not entirely
He wrote to Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, the director
understood or appreciated by the sovereign powers
of the Academy in Rome, that the only support he
whom he so desperately sought to court.
could offer the delinquent artist was a return fare to Paris. As the coup de grâce, in a separate letter the director chastised Parent for having used his royal pension to make a profit instead of further-
Errant Subjects
ing his own education. Had he used his funding Rome and antiquity beckoned to all of the young
properly toward his studies, he would not have
artists toiling in ancien régime Paris, and Parent
found himself “in the same city, after having been
heeded the call, going straight to Italy without
dragged around like an errant subject, without
telling the comte d’Angiviller. He secretly trav-
shame, and whose talents, too little matured
eled to Florence and then Rome, in search of
by proper studies, interrupted perhaps forever
private patrons. With little in the way of resources,
your career.”26 D’Angiviller’s comments were not
he wrote a letter of contrition in the summer
completely unfounded. Parent’s first académies,
of 1783 to the comte from Florence, imploring
or anatomical studies, made in Florence and Rome
the powerful director for financial assistance.
in 1783 suggest he could indeed have used a little
Parent wrote of his devastation: “Not knowing
more training in mastering the figure, one of the
what would become of me, little by little I made
key exercises that distinguished academic artists
my way to Italy in order to escape from the misfor-
from their artisanal counterparts. In one example,
tunes that beset me. . . . That is why I sought shelter
Parent depicted what appears to be a blacksmith
in the sanctuary of the arts that is Rome.” While
at the forge with disheveled hair (fig. 42). His
he was in Florence in 1784, he likely encountered
hunched torso inelegantly terminates in a lumpy
Gibbons’s masterpiece carving for the Medici at
pair of buttocks that resemble a sack of pota-
the Palazzo Pitti, which possibly inspired his own
toes more than taut, muscular masses. The word
carvings, all the while attempting to secure a mod-
“Rome” is visible in between his legs.
est “gratification” from the grand duke of Tuscany
before traveling onward to Rome, “without sup-
without the disciplinary tools of the academy
port, without protection, continuing to go to the
shaped and delimited Parent’s career, in a manner
Académie de France every day.” He wrote once
similar to that of Dugourc. While his clandestine
again to d’Angiviller, this time from Rome, hoping
journey to Italy and his unrealistic demands of
to use the money that had been reserved for his
d’Angiviller effectively foreclosed the possibility
studies in Paris to stay for a year in Rome and
of a royal career, this did not prevent him from
learn how to sculpt marble. Given the difficulty
using his trip to Rome to lay claim to an extensive
of winning a spot at the Académie de France in
knowledge of antiquity. The classical turn in his
Rome, d’Angiviller was none too pleased with
work is suggested by a red chalk drawing of a lav-
Parent’s request, primarily because the sculptor
ish urn (plate 18). Placed in an outdoor landscape,
had neglected his studies in favor of attempt-
the wide urn features a female bust in the center
ing to make money on the private art market.
wearing an Egyptian headdress and sprouting
23
24
25
This brief glimpse of antiquity in the flesh
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
115
nest with eggs, the fruits of their labors of love. The image is probably a preparatory study for a carved relief panel, although the executed piece has not been found. At the bottom of the composition, Parent wrote in ink, “Bas relief d’après antique à Rome en 1784 Aubert Parent fec,” suggesting that the drawing was based on an architectural fragment he saw in Rome.
The drawing reveals the ways in which Parent
composed in terms of surface depth rather than outline and contours, in contrast to the architects and sculptors who trained at the Academy. Large passages of red chalk are reserved for the edges and underside of the vessel, leaving unmarked parts of paper in the central bust on the vessel and in the surrounding background area. The shaded parts are the most heavily modeled and worked surfaces, while the blank spots on the sheet correspond to the uncarved “background” of the panel. Faint hatch marks traced on the pedestal tableau set off the putti from the excavated background. Fig. 42 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, study of a nude seen from behind, 1783. Pen and brown and black ink with wash and watercolor on paper, 28.7 × 18.6 cm. Musée des Beaux-arts de Valenciennes. Photo © Coll. Musée des Beaux-arts de Valenciennes, cliché Régis Decottignies.
The sensitivity to the nuance of carved heights and the effects of light hitting the surface of an opaque body is indicated in the central figure on the vessel. One other aspect of his work process becomes evident as well, namely the time it took to think through designs and map them out on paper before executing them in wood. Unlike artisans
wings, surrounded by an abundance of foliage and fruit. The finely curved vessel terminates in a pair of rings dangling from the noses of two satyrs at either end. On the supporting plinth below, a putto playfully offers his companion some fruit through the mouth of his mask. Draped around the vessel and support are the intertwining stems of a rose and lilac, flowers especially favored by Parent. Two birds flirt delicately upon the left side of the branch, counterbalanced on the other side by a
116
Luxury After the terror
who consulted albums and punctured drawings in order to transfer designs onto executed pieces of furniture or decoration, oftentimes destroying the documentation in the process, Parent clearly thought of his carvings as works of art that merited highly finished drawings, to the degree that he felt the need to sign and date the paper.
After a second trip to Rome, Parent published
a set of prints of staircases, clocks, furniture, and vases, suggesting that he sought to establish a
commercial market for his designs. Among the engravings from 1788–89 are six plates of funerary vases, once again shown placed on large pedestals, suggesting that these were invented compositions inspired by rather than directly observed in Rome (fig. 43). These are, in fact, purely fantasy compositions that combined Parent’s talents for carving flora with classicizing motifs he had picked up but had not completely mastered. Throughout the ornament prints and his drawings, Parent’s renderings have an undeveloped quality that distinguishes them from the more sophisticated courtly compositions of Dugourc and the studious and academically informed work of an architect like Pâris. It is as if Parent, true to d’Angiviller’s words, had never quite managed to receive a proper education that would have erased the parochial signs of his early training as an artisanal worker of wood and allowed him to obtain a distinguished position at the Academy. In technical terms, the plates also show abrupt shifts in scale and an inconsistent use of perspective, which would indicate that he hardly understood the rudiments of drawing, let alone the classical themes he had studied in Rome. The
Fig. 43 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, Vase composé, posé sur un autel antique, plate 4 from Cahier de Vases, 1788–89. Engraving and etching, 39.3 × 28.5 × 1.4 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 51.540.8 (1-34). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
defects in composition, perspective, and rendering that are so apparent in the connoisseurial milieu of engravings and drawings are mitigated once
work after 1792, but not in the tumultuous world of
the forms have been translated into wood. The
sansculotte Paris.
language of perspective changes when shadows and solids are read as serial forms of surface that depend so heavily upon the changing position of
A Bit of Shaped Wood
light and shadow, as the viewer moves around the sculpted plane. One could say that Parent stub-
Was Parent a true royalist? The question of
bornly held onto his pride as a self-taught carver
“authentic” and fixed political positions has
who knew his material better than any sculptor
appeared more than once in the course of this
in marble could teach him. While he may never
book. We have seen the Janus-faced nature of other
have reentered the good graces of d’Angiviller,
artisans, such as the goldsmith Auguste or the
he managed to find an alternative audience for his
designer Dugourc, who enjoyed more prestigious
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
117
positions working for the French court, abruptly
described as an allegory of the constitution of 1791,
shifting their alliances with the change in regime.
also features a bouquet of flowers but without the
Parent’s strong identification with the image and
heavily classicizing motifs found in the earlier
prestige of the monarchy, despite his lack of direct
panel (fig. 44). In lieu of the high pedestal with
relationship to the court, thus appears aberrant,
putti, Parent has carved in illusionistic high relief
almost a mistaken career move on the part of a
a shelf that supports the vase containing sunflow-
provincial artist. Parent would have lacked the
ers, carnations, ranunculus, roses, convolvulus,
access to the inner circles of elite society enjoyed
and jasmine, as well as a dead bird and a nest filled
by Dugourc and Bélanger. Perhaps it was this
with unhatched eggs. Most daring of all are the
distanced perspective that allowed him to main-
two medallions on chains that teeter precipitously
tain an abiding faith in the authority of the crown,
off the shelf, with one shown in a three-quarter
even as he sought to tailor his carvings to the new
profile and the other placed frontally. The upper
political climate and aesthetic atmosphere of revo-
one depicts the personification of Rome and is
lutionary France.
inscribed with the letters S and C (for senatus con-
sultum); the lower medallion contains the portrait
At turns decorative and symbolic, Parent’s
wood carvings could hold multiple political
of Hadrian encircled by the words “Imperator
realities together, at least before the journée of
Caesar Trajanus Hadrianus.”29 These two coins
August 10, which marked the official end of the
have been positioned close to the bird’s nest, which
monarchy. This is suggested in a pair of allegorical
is placed precariously at the far edge of the shelf
relief panels, carved in 1789 and 1791. The panel
and pitches forward toward the viewer.
from 1789 has been described as an allegory of
mortality. A vase of flowers is perched upon a
Parent had previously sought to tailor his carv-
high pedestal with a small genre scene of a bird
ings to the political powers of his age—from
attacking a snake in the left foreground, presum-
Louis XVI to Catherine the Great—and it is not
ably protecting the brood of nestlings located
surprising to see him once again seeking to push
to the right of the block. An arsenal of flora has
the formal possibilities of wood carving to shape
been carved, with lilies, poppies, tuberose, roses,
allegories of the political events unfolding in
ranunculus, and tulips snaking their way out of the
revolutionary France. In such an interpretation,
vase and off the panel in high relief. Reminiscent
the two coins dangling from the chain in the 1791
of Dutch floral paintings, such an exotic bou-
panel could be viewed as a commentary on the
quet could not have been found in nature, given
constitution drafted by the National Assembly and
the varying seasons in which each flower was in
ratified by Louis XVI on September 13 that same
bloom. Once again, Parent can be seen show-
year.30 The assumption is that any informed viewer
ing off his knowledge of classical subject mat-
seeing this panel in Paris would have immediately
ter. The vase carved in low relief resembles his
recognized the twinned images of an enlightened
published vase compositions and contains a well-
emperor with the city of Rome as a picture of hope,
known image from Herculaneum of a grasshopper
a “moment of balance when the Monarchiens still
in a cart pulled by a pigeon. The second panel,
hoped that a reformed and constitutional France
27
28
118
Luxury After the terror
Bouquets too could express a political will.
Fig. 44 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, carved relief with allegory of the constitution, 1791. Limewood, 58.7 × 39.7 × 5.7 cm. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 84.SD.194. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
could be governed by the decrees of a French sen-
Greuze’s paintings of girls and dead birds made
ate, linked by the new constitution to an enlight-
such subjects familiar fodder for the picturing
ened Louis XVI.” Anne-Marie Kerneis has argued
of sentiment.32 Unlike Parent’s compositions,
that one can detect a significant shift in Parent’s
Démontreuil’s still-life carvings were extremely
subject matter starting in 1792, the year he went into
sparse. Cutting out all classical flourishes and
exile in Switzerland. Correspondingly, sad scenes of
references in the form of statuary and fragments,
dead birds hanging by their tails replace exuberant
the wood-carver focused instead on his dead avian
flowers. However, this was evidently in response
subjects, carved with incredible life-like details, par-
to the arrival of competition. Beginning in 1791,
ticularly in the fine splinters that create the effects
the limewood sculptor Jean Démontreuil began
of the plumage (fig. 45). In 1793, two pieces he
displaying his pathos-laden carvings of dead birds
displayed at the Salon were prosaically described as
and empty nests at the public salon. Jean-Baptiste
a framed picture of “a dead bird and its pendant.”33
31
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
119
Fig. 45 Jean Démontreuil, still life of dead bird, ca. 1795. Carved limewood, 34.5 × 27.8 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK6694. Photo: KHM-Museumsverband.
Yet even as specialists of floral painting such
as Gérard van Spaendonck channeled the newly
overnight. Given the sudden and dramatic politi-
moralizing visions of nature to elevate a low
cal reversals of the period, it is risky to interpret
genre of painting to lofty and patriotic heights,
Parent’s allegories as commentaries on a specific
Parent’s carvings of flora and fauna resist a one-
political event. For example, even if we recognize
dimensional reading. Allegories rely on a stable
that his carving at the Getty was made in 1791,
framework of shared meaning and interpretation,
its potential significance would change dramati-
so that viewers can grasp the relationship between
cally depending on whether it was carved and
two objects or figures that have no ostensible con-
displayed before or after the royal family’s failed
nection to what they signify. They work on the
flight to Varennes on June 20, which foreclosed
34
35
120
assumption that the world will not be abolished
Luxury After the terror
any hope for a constitutional monarchy in France,
and to visually process. The untreated material
although Louis Capet remained the titular king.
elicited an optical traction and a gestation within
The arrangement of objects on the low shelf of
the opaque layers so that the meaning of the
the carving, which contains not only the ancient
worked surface has to be extracted.
coins with references to Rome (and profiles seen in
earlier works of Parent) but an already dead bird
had to be reframed in light of the king’s death.
unable to protect its unborn brood teetering at the
This is demonstrated in the case of a floral panel
edge, could just as easily be read as a pronounce-
dating to 1784 (plate 19). Once again, he depicts a
ment of an already lost cause.
floral still life in a classicizing landscape, this time
accompanied by the inscription aubert parent
Parent’s carvings did not change stylistically
The sculptor himself recognized that his works
in reaction to the political events of the period,
eques ro. inv. sclpt. roma an 1784 incised in
but the viewers themselves had. Lacking the clar-
serif script at the bottom of the piece. At one point,
ity of the geometrically arranged bodies found
the panel also had a paper description attached
in revolutionary history paintings, the resistance
to the back written by “Sieur Aubert Parent,
to allegory comes not only from the polyva-
Sculptor, Designer, Academician, and former
lent meanings of flowers—signaling at once an
pensioner of his late Majesty Louis XVI.” Recorded
Enlightenment naturalism and artificiality, the
in a stock sheet of the art dealer French and Co.,
expansion of botanical knowledge, and allusion to
the now lost commentary consisted of a thorough
Christian vanitas paintings—but from the obtuse
explanation of the naturalistic scene found on the
nature of wood itself. It is a material so prosaic
front. In writing about his carving, Parent drew
that it barely registers as a type of matter worthy of
particular attention to the highly excavated surface
intellection, calling to mind Kant’s description in
of the lilac, which “especially merits the atten-
the Critique of Judgment of casually coming across
tion of the connoisseur because of the difficulties
a “bit of shaped wood” while walking in a bog and
which the author had to surmount in order to
only just barely registering it as an artifact made
execute . . . without any breakage having worked
with a sense of human purpose. At the same time,
some above as well as below, and also when we
it is precisely wood’s dumbness that allows for its
consider the two flies which are apparently resting
carving to shine as a marvelous, nearly miraculous
on the green tulips.”38 The description was signed,
feat of artistry. Parent’s daringly chiseled passages
“Aubert Parent. Amsterdam 1793.” Based on this
certainly draw attention to the skill involved in
date, along with his self-identification as “former
working against such antipoetic matter. And seen
pensioner of his late Majesty Louis XVI,” Parent
against the rapidly published and hawked prints
penned the description after the king’s execution.
that sought to represent political events in real
time, or the printed calendars and almanacs that
the means to reaffirm his ties to the monarchy at
promised a future time reordered on the basis of
a time when others, such as Dugourc, sought to
nature’s rhythms and an orderly decimal system
efface their links to the past. No longer guaranteed
rather than the arbitrary ruses of despotism, wood
a steady market in Paris, Parent added an inter-
carving was a slower medium both to accomplish
pretive label to the back of his work that would
36
37
Relabeling the panel provided Parent with
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
121
anchor and stabilize the obverse side of the object
newly established laws made returning to France
and provide semantic reassurance to the work’s
even more difficult. In the summer of 1792, the
future, probably royalist owner. What ultimately
Legislative Assembly passed a series of laws against
distinguished his limewood carvings from those
émigrés that enabled the confiscation and sale of
of his competitor Démontreuil is his obsessive
their land as biens nationaux and placed family
marking of the place and time of their facture,
members remaining in France under permanent
or what might otherwise be called terminal dates,
surveillance. After the September Massacres and
after his exile in Switzerland. Again, he exploits all
the official end of the monarchy, those who had
sides of his works, taking advantage of each plane
departed were “banished in perpetuity,” with the
as a means to explain and heighten his achieve-
death penalty for any émigrés captured in France.
ments and to signal his presence in the world. The
On October 24, 1792, the government sanctioned
panels function at once as markers of his experi-
the seizure and selling of émigrés’ movable prop-
ence in exile, landmarks of his location, as well
erty.40 Whatever one’s reasons had been for leaving,
as archival records of past projects he hopes to
exiting France inadvertently made one an enemy
convert into the starting point for future commis-
of the state. Emigration also helped to refashion
sions. Unstable with mutable meanings because of
identities. Noble titles and names were dropped
their resistance to a singular reading, the carvings
for more mundane ones that were no longer tied
operate, to paraphrase Baxandall, as “accumulative
to feudal residences and seigneurial rights: “For
processes” instead of fixed artifacts.
noblemen, the invention of a completely unedited destiny opens a parenthesis that ruptures noble filiation and is at times accompanied by a change in name: Moré de Pontgibaut becomes Labrosse
Exile and Excavation
once he becomes a businessman.”41 Dispossession had become a key feature of the
political strategy of the revolutionary government
émigrés were diverse and defy easy categorization,
by the time Parent departed Paris in early 1792,
in spite of the revolutionary rhetoric issuing from
as the first wave of émigrés, including the comte
Paris that transformed all émigrés into aristo-
d’Artois and the prince de Condé, left France and
crats tout court. Arriving in Basel in 1792, Parent
established royalist strongholds in Germany in the
would have heard the news of the king’s death
hope of raising an army and restoring the French
from the safe distance of his new life outside Paris.
throne. Strictly speaking, the individuals leaving
Before the Swiss Confederation was defeated and
the country did not identify themselves as political
seized by the French in 1798, the canton formed
refugees, exiles, or even as émigrés. Gerrit Walczak
an important destination for prominent émigrés;
has emphasized the strong economic impetus that
d’Angiviller resided (perhaps somewhat conspicu-
drove painters such as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
ously) for six weeks at the Auberge des Trois Rois in Basel before moving onward to Mannheim,
to move to various European cities, though her original reason for leaving France was political.
where, according to his valet, “there was a prodi-
Following each successive wave of departures,
gious quantity of French émigrés.”42 While Basel
39
122
The motivations, paths, and receptions of
Luxury After the terror
was but one brief sojourn in a period of perma-
buried just outside of Basel.44 The desire to estab-
nent itineracy for the former powerful minister
lish a new career on ancient grounds had particu-
of Louis XVI, ironically rendering him an “errant
lar resonance amid the political dispossessions and
subject,” it provided Parent, former pensioner of
dispersals happening in France, which sought to
the French king, with the opportunity to estab-
eradicate the traces of an intractable social order
lish his roots and change his profession in a
that had once seemed to be set in stone.
place where the academies did not hold the same
cultural sway as in Paris. Among the most promi-
wood sculptures even as he gained greater stature
nent early commissions he received during this
led him to encounter a particularly influential
period was the creation of a picturesque garden at
collaborator, Johann Caspar Lavater. A Zwinglian
Württembergerhof for the wealthy Basel manufac-
pastor and theologian based in Zurich, Lavater
turer Rudolf Forcart-Weiss. Parent incorporated
became a celebrity owing to his popular publica-
real Roman columns and a wall into the garden
tions on physiognomy, including Physiognomische
from an archaeological excavation he undertook in
Fragmente, issued from 1775 to 1778. In an age of
the nearby town of Augst, probably relying on his
sentimental empiricism when concepts of free
own antique designs to fashion the four monu-
will replaced notions of predestination, Lavater’s
mental vases that marked the terminal points
“scientific method” for divining man’s charac-
of the garden parterres. The commission helped
ter from his outward expression found an eager
transform him from an itinerant wood-carver into
audience among savants and ordinary individuals
an architect-designer. That the excavations helped
alike, who sought to align inner sentiments with
him achieve success in his new home, identified
the physical characteristics of individuals. A mix-
by its Latin name of Tigurina in the carving of
ture of popular religious sentiment, mysticism,
Louis XVI, is attested to by the fact that he had the
and Enlightenment natural theology, his spurious
results published in 1804 and the following year
claims about the human character spoke to readers
became architect-in-chief of the Catholic canton
who had been equally awed by the performances
of Solothurn, where d’Angiviller had briefly stayed
of Franz Mesmer and Alessandro Cagliostro; his
during the early years of his exile.
work spurred countless imitators. George Brewer
combined the Swiss pastor’s writings with Charles
43
Typically associated with the Grand Tour and
Parent’s insistence on continuing to carve
the rediscovery of antiquity, archaeological digs
Le Brun’s theories of the passions to create a ver-
could also help to reorient one’s past toward new
sion geared toward children in his 1812 publication,
professional futures. The brief time Parent spent
The Juvenile Lavater, or a Familiar Explanation
living in Italy would have provided enough cred-
of the Passions of Le Brun, Calculated for the
ibility to establish his professional bona fides in
Instruction & Entertainment of Young Persons.
Switzerland. It is conceivable that the older, more
While others offered to put physiognomy to use in
mature Parent thought of the archaeological exca-
divining the characters of women, as in Le Lavater
vations at Augst as a means of redressing his ear-
des dames, ou L’art de connoitre les femmes sur leur
lier misadventures in Italy, by literally grounding
physiognomy, his works proved highly influential
his identity upon the ancient Roman foundations
among the artists of the day.
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
123
Fig. 46 Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of dedication to Aubert-Henri- Joseph Parent from Règles physiognomiques; ou, observations sur quelques traits caractéristiques, 1795. Manuscript. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (850007). Photo: author.
Physiognomy depended on meeting and
the exterior with the interior, of the visible surface
comparing a wide variety of faces and personali-
with the invisible that it embraces, of the animate
ties, and travel provided Lavater with the means
and perceptible material with the non-perceptible
of studying his subjects. In his own words, he was
principle that imprints this character of life,
not the inventor of physiognomy but “the restorer
of the manifest effect with the hidden force that
of this science, human and divine.” Writing in
produces it.”47
Essai sur la physiognomie, he claimed to have had
no interest at all in the subject until the age of
him highly sought after. His guest book regis-
twenty-five. While he had enjoyed drawing por-
tered the list of famous personages who trav-
traits from an early age, he had never thought to
eled to see him at home in Zurich and whom he
connect this pastime with an attempt to divine the
encountered throughout his extensive journeys
inner character of individuals from their outward
across Europe. Parent’s signature is recorded on
facial features. Suddenly, one day, upon looking
September 28, 1795, two years after the French
at a face, he experienced a sort of “shudder that
sculptor had arrived in Switzerland. The close
lasted several moments after the departure of the
nature of their friendship is corroborated by a
person.” After studying and drawing countless
manuscript copy of Lavater’s book, Règles phy-
portraits, he gradually discerned that certain traits
siognomiques; ou, observations sur quelques traits
and temperaments corresponded to each other,
caractéristiques, dedicated to Parent and dated to
which led him to define physiognomy as “the sci-
the fall of 1795 (fig. 46). He dedicated the book
ence which teaches to recognize the relationship of
to Parent on a printed cartouche pasted inside the
45
46
124
Luxury After the terror
Lavater’s skills at divining characters made
first page: “Monsieur Aubert Parent, tres honnete homme—et sculpteur et architecte tres habile est recom[m]andé par cette ligne tres amicalement à tous regards—en allemagne. Zurich ce 6. XI. 1795.” Functioning as a calling card and letter of introduction, the book benefited Parent and helped to publicize the work of the Swiss pastor, since the “letter” had been placed within a copy of his own writings. Parent’s friendship with Lavater undoubtedly put him in touch with a vast network of correspondents, acquaintances, and aristocratic patrons with whom the pastor had come into contact through his work as a physiognomist.
Tying limewood sculpture to physiognomy
gave new life to Parent’s carved forms. In Paris, the sculptor had usually displayed his works in the Salon de la Correspondance, a commercial instead of a fine art context. By allying his works to Lavater’s popular philosophy, the chiseled surfaces of Parent’s panels became interpretive devices for reading character and meditations on his “science.” Geniuses and imbeciles, kings and thieves could all be read like open books, thanks to Lavater. Art played a particularly important role in this
Fig. 47 Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of page from Règles physiognomiques; ou, observations sur quelques traits caractéristiques, 1795. Manuscript. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (850007). Photo: author.
philosophy, since sketching the lines of different faces was key to unlocking the mysteries of inner character. At his Zurich home, Lavater kept
encountering different individuals. Meant to help
a series of study portraits, which he placed into
readers grasp the “hidden forces” that shaped the
mounts and paired with textual descriptions of
characters of various subjects, Lavater’s drawings
the portrayed individual’s character. The studies
at times dissolve into abstract lines and shapes. The
yielded the insights into different personalities
hand-drawn illustrations of deconstructed faces
published in his books. These included portraits
in Parent’s manuscript copy at times appear like
of famous men such as René Descartes and Isaac
surrealist exercises. A pair of furrowed brows and
Newton, whose faces were dissected and cata-
a rainbow of wrinkles, for example, are reduced
loged into fragments of split chins, raised eye-
to a series of abstract lines somewhat ironically
brows, snub noses, and downcast eyes, each of
indicating, according to Lavater’s theories, “the
which corresponded to a distinct personality trait
infallible mark of a stupid mind, nearly incapable
determined through Lavater’s own experience of
of any type of abstraction” (fig. 47).48
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
125
deprived of every other vestige of her formerly
The Science of Mourning
ennobled status.50 Disconsolate with grief over As the Thermidorian Reaction sought to bring
her husband and her financial situation, Franziska
an end to the policies of the Terror in France, the
wrote to Lavater in a letter after her husband’s
exiled Parent transformed the image of Louis XVI
death in a language filled with personal disaster:
into a personal object of mourning. Serving as both promoter and collaborator, Lavater was
O Friend! What a shipwreck I have suffered,
instrumental in publicizing the French carver’s
still I hope only from this world to find a
work to female patrons whom he himself sought
future compensation. Your commiseration,
to cultivate, including Franziska von Hohenheim,
which you affirm in partaking in my sad fate,
duchess of Württemberg, to whom the Louis XVI
once again awoke the first gentle sentiments in
medallion was dedicated. Raised in the Pietist
my heart that hitherto appeared to no longer
faith, she was a commoner by birth who had
have belief in God and friendship; because
become the official mistress of Carl Eugene, Duke
I have forever lost the most precious, the most
of Württemberg, in 1774, after he purchased
beloved in the world. . . . Now everything has
the title of countess and crest of the extinct
changed—I know how to forego everything,
Bombaste von Hohenheim family on her behalf;
but the domestic happiness, sage contact, that
she later became his wife. On the carving, the
mutual understanding, that communication
two coats of arms of Württemberg and Bombaste
between us! To lose these and to still go on
von Hohenheim, supporting a crown and posi-
living, I almost do not know how to endure.51
49
tioned just below the sacrificial lamb, appear to
126
signal the noble rank of Parent’s patron. By 1795,
Franziska had actually been stripped of both of
crown and rendered powerless, Louis XVI would
these titles, reduced to nothing more than a com-
have resonated with the former German duchess,
moner after her husband’s death in 1793. Because
to whom Parent and Lavater offered the intimately
the duke was Catholic, he could not marry the
scaled carving more as a form of consolation rather
Protestant divorcée until the death of his first wife
than a commissioned piece. Though it is a coinci-
in 1780; their union was only officially recognized
dence that the loss of her titles occurred at the very
in 1786 but was never fully accepted by his fam-
moment that émigrés departed France and the sei-
ily. In the fall of 1793, Carl Eugene’s brother and
gneurial lands that had been attached to their
successor, Ludwig Eugene, set about divesting
names, their arrival in the Duchy of Württemberg
Franziska of her noble title, rights to succession,
(a territory that in the eighteenth century also
and the properties and estates that her husband
included Montbéliard, where Georges Cuvier grew
had so painstakingly sought to secure under her
up) would have had added significance. The reverse
name before his death. In the end, she was left
side features a paper cartouche with a handwrit-
with nothing but the languishing properties of
ten text (fig. 48). Titled “On the tomb of Louis, the
Ensingen and Sindlingen, 60,000 guilders, and the
murdered victim” (auf Ludwigs, des Ermordeten,
furnishings in her dressing room and her clothes,
Sarg), the poem is dedicated to Franziska. Although
Luxury After the terror
As a figure who had been stripped of his
Fig. 48 Johann Caspar Lavater, detail of auf Ludwigs, des Ermordeten, Sarg—von Aubert Parent (on reverse of plate 16). Dalva Brothers, New York. Image courtesy of Leon Dalva.
emerge from the steam of the blood as stars from
it has been argued that the paper cartouche was
clouds
prepared by Parent, who is named in the title, it is far more likely that Lavater authored the poem,
and Christ welcomes the noble with new names
since his name is written at the bottom right-hand
Johann Kaspar Lavater 179553
corner of the card. In its formal qualities, it closely resembles his collection of Denkzeichen or “thought
Unlike the terse description of the king’s death
notes,” a poetic economy of pithy statements that
that Pinel provided in his letter to his brother at
gained their force of meaning from their limited
the beginning of this chapter, Lavater’s poem is
surface, in a manner similar to a tombstone:
not intended as an eyewitness account. Though
52
an oblique reference is made to the raised blade of When innocence bleeds, the people rampage, ingratitude raises the blade Woefulness cries feebly, virtue falls silent, and pain is muted God appears to veil himself—then the heavens augur greatness for misrecognized souls are holy to the knower of souls . . . when the blood spurts, the head sinks . . . thus the heavens see them
the guillotine, the father of physiognomy pushes poetic license to the brink of questionable taste, abandoning the relatively calm and straightforward descriptive language used by both Sanson the executioner and Pinel the psychiatrist in favor of a scene filled with spurting blood and a starry sky, where Jesus awaits the ascent of Louis XVI’s soul to heaven.
Why such emphasis on the coffin? Recall
that upon his move to Switzerland, Parent had
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
127
decided to change course in his career, working on
in classical drapery to the right holding an oval
landscaping projects, monuments, and archaeo-
portrait of a woman, presumably the princess’s
logical excavations that would eventually allow
mother, held above a plinth with objects. Although
him, toward the end of his life, to style himself
Lavater wrote to the princess that Parent, “a very
as a successful architect in Basel. As much as
economical and skilled man” (ein sehr billiger und
he emphasized the murdered king, Parent has
geschickter Mann) could be asked to construct
carefully chosen to depict the coffin in as much
a model in wood, the princess appears to have
architectural detail as possible, to the degree that
ultimately declined to commission the design.57
it is possible to imagine it having been carved out
Though it seems that the model was not executed,
of a heavy polychrome marble. Given the return
it demonstrates how Parent mobilized wood to
toward classical antiquity in revolutionary Paris
create potential collaborative projects with Lavater,
and Parent’s own proclivities, the heavy baroque
and how Lavater offered to realize works on behalf
shape of the tomb appears deliberately anachronis-
of his patrons through Parent’s economical and
tic, a stylistic impossibility for a king whose body
dexterous hands.
was never recovered from the mass grave at the
Madeleine Cemetery.
lion and the proposal for the Schaumburg-Lippe
monument suggest the ways in which physiog-
54
The Louis XVI medallion coincided with
another funerary project that Parent worked on
nomy was not only a form of light-hearted enter-
in 1795 with Lavater, who asked him to design
tainment but also could serve as a personal device
a monument on behalf of the Princess Juliane
for the bereaved, seeking consolation for the loss of
Schaumburg-Lippe to commemorate her mother.
loved ones, in the case of the princess, or mourn-
The correspondence between the princess and
ing past lives. This is surprising, since Lavater’s
Lavater suggests that the idea was primarily his.
work has more commonly been interpreted as
Drawing upon his physiognomic ideas, he writes
an Enlightenment pseudoscience that was the
that “the simplest, most worthy and proper
forerunner to nineteenth-century theories of rac-
[design] appears to me—your image in profile (you
ist hierarchies and twentieth-century eugenics.58
must send me a good profile) in the figure of Hope
Melissa Percival has gone so far as to call Lavater’s
against the image of the Deceased.”55 In her reply,
work “a pernicious incitement to the moral defa-
Juliane complained that she felt uncomfortable
mation of certain races, types, and individuals,”
including her portrait under the guise of hope,
arguing that his science was hardly an exact one,
since the aim of the monument was to memorial-
since it was essentially formed from a jumbled
ize her mother and not herself. Lavater deferred
series of fragmentary texts that pieced together
to her decision, agreeing not to incorporate her
old sources with new images and Lavater’s own
profile portrait into the design. An existing sketch
religious quirks.59 As a branch in the prehistory
by Parent shows the monument as a veined marble
of psychology, the pastor-philosopher’s writings
pedestal in the form of a Roman sarcophagus sur-
marked a regressive turn to the fixed topography
mounted by a funerary urn (fig. 49). Within the
of the face instead of an interest in pathognomy
pedestal is a large tableau depicting a female figure
or movement, which made French theories of
56
128
Read together, both the Louis XVI medal-
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 49 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, Esquisse pour un projet de monument d’après l’idée de monsieur le ministre Lavater, 1793 [1795?]. Pen and ink and watercolor, 23 × 16 cm. Landesarchiv Niedersachsen—Department Bückeburg S 1 B 2979. Photo: Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv.
expression, such as those of Charles Le Brun, dis-
the sitter’s stilled outline in a profile portrait with
tinct from ancient Greek interpretations. Lavater
absolute precision—the physiognomic portrait
emphasized stillness and fixity as the means of cap-
could by extension be linked to the visual spectacle
turing the human character via precisely measured
of the guillotine and what Daniel Arasse called the
silhouettes and death masks, a macabre interest in
blade’s punctum temporis: “By its instantaneous
the nonliving that was also found in his obsession
action, the guillotine sets before our eyes the invis-
with capturing the expression of death, where “the
ibility of death at the very instant of its occurrence,
moment of death is deeply expressive and absorb-
exact and indistinguishable.”61
ing because it is the moment of the departure of
the soul from the body.” In its ties to the physi-
Lavater’s theory within a teleological frame-
onotrace—a scaffold-like device used to capture
work that leads to the swift punitive blade of the
60
Caution should be exercised in situating
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
129
guillotine. For at the same time, physiognomy
a prereflexive certainty of man from which the
drew upon older religious traditions. Alongside
unity of the person and all its intellectual endeav-
Enlightenment philosophy or the Revolution’s
ors can be directly deduced.”63 In Paracelsus’s early
visuality of the mechanically produced instant,
modern philosophy of nature based upon a system
Lavater’s divination of the face suggests the sur-
of resemblances and signatures, the “external form
vival of local religious traditions in Germany and
is shaped according to its inner being, and not
Switzerland, where the events unfolding in France
the other way around.”64 Nature thus operates as a
were seen as but a late historical crisis that had
revelatory agent, with the human body the privi-
already begun in the sixteenth century with the
leged object through which hidden powers would
Protestant Reformation. The Zwinglian ordained
become manifest. Bergengreuen writes, “As in
pastor could be seen as representing one of the
the case of stones, plants, and animals, human
final surviving strains of a neo-Pietist faith in
signatures also point toward a hidden interior.
the Swiss-German regions. Pietism as a branch of
The shape of the hands (‘chiromantia’), the face
Lutheranism emphasized the importance of salva-
(‘physiognomia’), the rest of the body (‘substan-
62
130
tion through individual good works and religious
tia’) as well as gestures and body language . . . are
devotion. Though physiognomy was not entirely
important clues for ‘Erkenntnis des Menschen.’ ”65
antagonistic to certain Enlightenment views on the
Seen in terms of a theory of signatures, Lavater’s
cultivation of a moral character, Lavater’s writings
system depends upon establishing correspon-
positioned physiognomy in a vertical spiritual
dences between the visible outline of the portrait
economy informed by a Protestant pietism that
and the unseen character inside. In this context,
paradoxically made room, alongside the sensuous,
the linear economy privileged in his work is not
visible, and rational, for the invisible.
simply a series of drawn lines that can be erased or
corrected but constitutes the outermost bound-
Rather than dismiss Lavater’s influential writ-
ings as simply parochial, reductive, and regressive
aries that keep what is inside from the outside,
forms of thought, Maximilian Bergengruen has
at the same time that these borders make possible
proposed that the most peculiar aspects found in
the correspondences between the inner traits and
the Swiss author’s work resulted from his attempts
their outer expressions.
to reconcile a prereflexive signature theory based
in the theological writings of Paracelsus with
reader of Paracelsus, his active engagement with
modern sensualist patterns of thought. Lavater was
Lavater’s philosophy makes it possible to link the
conversant with contemporary German thinkers,
reception of his wood carving with the German
such as those of the Sturm und Drang movement.
cultural traditions that placed the viewing of
As Bergengruen argues, Lavater’s unsystematic
limewood sculpture in an idiosyncratic religious
theory does not target science for its claims to ulti-
context. Even the most modest of the French émi-
mate truth but seeks to make it fühlbar, or sensible:
gré’s secular carvings could thus be open to inter-
“the concept of feeling used by German sensual-
pretations colored by Pietist fervor. The disruptive
ism comprises two things: first, a link between
incursions of early modern natural philosophy and
external perception and inner experience; second,
theosophy in Lavater’s text could be dismissed as
Luxury After the terror
Though it is unlikely that Parent was an avid
simply incidental references to the past in an over-
to be rustic and roughhewn forms compared to
all inconsistent philosophical system. However,
his more sophisticated works. Had this composi-
recall that Paracelsus’s writings had provided the
tion merely been intended for translation into
limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany with,
print, as in Parent’s earlier forays into furniture
if not exactly a theory of carving, at least a guiding
design and ornamental work, the medallion would
context for the haptic metaphors that informed the
have appeared awkward at best. Yet something
modes of visual animation through which early
about the medium of wood is expansive enough to
modern viewers transformed chiseled bits of wood
accommodate the shifts in scale to create a medita-
into objects of religious devotion.
tive totality worth turning over in the mind.
Royalism was not a monolithic culture
Beyond France’s frontiers and deep within
but represented a shifting and evolving form of
the principalities and duchies that made up the
political subjectivity that produced a distinctive
Holy Roman Empire, local forms of religious piety
aesthetic born from conditions of loss, disper-
mingled with émigré political conservatism, giving
sal, and reactionary politics, as well as a strong
shape to modern expressions of counterrevolution.
identification with religion rather than the modern
In Switzerland, politics and religious fervor were
nation-state.66 Religious interpretations of regicide
not mutually exclusive but overlapping systems.
manifested the difficulties inherent in experiencing
It is not entirely surprising that, when the French
the end—and possible return—of a monarchical
annexed the Swiss Confederacy in 1798, Lavater
regime that had been embodied in the physical
became a vocal critic of the Directory government
presence of Louis XVI. Parent capitalized upon
and what he described in a published letter as
the death of the king, transforming the memory of
the “effects of Terrorism” that France propagated
Louis XVI into a more general symbol of loss that
under the guise of liberating Switzerland, effects
precipitated a recursion to older forms of mourn-
that, “even within the sound of freedom’s trumpet,
ing rooted in the religious and cultural practices
lets fall its ponderous hand upon our necks, may
of the past. In the Louis XVI medallion, one can
indeed force numbers to a constrained silence.”67
begin to make out the formal resonances between
Given the dangers of such vocal expressions of
Parent’s carving method and Lavater’s prereflexive
criticism, royalist propaganda typically adopted
physiognomic practice, as well as the need for a
quieter, more elegiac forms of protest. This is most
textual explanation of a complex carving about
apparent in the silhouettes of the guillotined royal
the invisible procedures of death and resurrec-
family merged with signs of Christian mourn-
tion, which form the primary subject matter of
ing. The precursors to the optical illusions of the
Parent’s carved panel. Certainly, the floral motifs,
Rubin vase, the profile portraits of the king and
profile medallion, elegiac tomb, and coats of arms
his family were to be found in the negative spaces
can already be found throughout Parent’s prior
surrounding more visible subject matter, cloaked
work. The heightened unnaturalism and sudden
in a royal and religious invisibility that operated in
shifts in scale in this panel seem to demand some
direct contrast to the all-seeing eye of transpar-
sort of textual explanation as to why this deft
ency. In a later version of the print that appeared
carver has suddenly been reduced to what appear
during the Bourbon Restoration, the royal family’s
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
131
Fig. 50 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent, carving of Louis XVI, ca. 1795, detail. Carved limewood with paper and ink cartouche (on reverse), 35.6 × 30 cm (with frame). Dalva Brothers, New York. Image: author. Courtesy of Leon Dalva.
hidden profiles were revealed once more in
not exhumed from the Madeleine graveyard and
order to manifest the restored Bourbon monar-
buried at Saint-Denis until 1815—Parent’s carving
chy’s legitimate and unbroken line of succession,
becomes a complicated materialization of Lavater’s
which began with Henri IV: his portrait is nestled
physiognomic philosophy caught up in a circu-
between two enormous lily stalks and under the
itous system of resemblances. In contrast to Pâris’s
drooping petals of a pansy, followed by Louis XVI,
grand monument, which sought to resurrect the
Marie-Antoinette, and the dauphin, and terminat-
language of monumentality and harness it to a roy-
ing with the doubled portraits of Charles X and
alist agenda, Parent’s small monument recognizes
Louis XVIII. The resemblance between the vase
the impossibility of honoring the king in the same
with snake handles in the royalist print and the
vocabulary that had been used to narrate the story
earlier prints by Parent is striking. Conceived as
of the Revolution. Drawing closer, the same careful
ornaments that would serve as visual evidence
puncturing and chiseling methods used to hollow
of Parent’s classical knowledge and familiarity
out and shape the curls of the sacrificial lamb’s
with the monuments of classical Rome, the vase
wool have been used to create the carefully curled
became, in the context of the Revolution, a ves-
hair of Louis XVI on the medallion. Seen from
sel for religious, royal, and dangerously seditious
an oblique angle, one can also see how Parent has
returns.
rendered the butterfly found at the top of the panel
in the highest relief. A symbol of Christian resur-
68
132
Turning the object over once more to contem-
plate the tomb of Louis XVI—which is an ersatz
rection but also the shared Greek word for “soul”
device, since the king’s dismembered body was
and “butterfly,” this lepidopterous form is the most
Luxury After the terror
freed from the surface of the wood panel itself,
wood and pass from a contemplation of the text,
in contrast to the sarcophagus and medallion,
back to a consideration of the relief carving of the
which are bound tightly to the panel’s primary
tomb upon which Lavater’s text has been literally
plane. There is no record of Franziska’s thoughts
and physically composed, as each side gains mean-
on the small carving. But when we look once more
ing in the incessant turning of the object from one
at the image, the dead king’s portrait hemorrhages
side to the other—but we never quite accomplish
rather than accrues symbolic meaning. It is a devo-
a complete experience of beholding. Through a
tional object devoid of material agency. Emptied of
continual process of deferral, one must make this
symbolic content, Louis XVI’s portrait embodies
object work by undertaking a manual motion of
loss itself: Mors immortalitas.
passing from the carved forms on the front to the
textual tablet on the back. And it is precisely in
An unlikely collaborative project created by
the adverse political circumstances that brought
handling this object that one grasps how it enacts
together an émigré French artist and a Swiss
the work of mourning. You need time for the
pastor, this unstable commemorative object was
work to reveal itself, to reveal the shadows that are
more than a royalist monument created in the
not there at noon but that appear underneath the
reactionary atmosphere of small principalities and
flowers at five o’clock, even for the lightly incised
minor courts living on borrowed time, just before
fleur-de-lis that make this an unmistakably royal-
Napoleon would effectively bring them to an end.
ist object to appear (fig. 50). To reveal itself, the
The carving brings together systems of religious
carving needs time, the one element necessary to
sentiment and secular commemoration that
access the normal path of grief, a shape of tempo-
clashed and competed, at a time when individuals
rality that became inaccessible to the modern wit-
sought to grapple with the enormity of the French
nesses who gazed at the spectacle of the guillotine,
Revolution and its precise historical significance.
a machine that obeyed the simple laws of physics
Just as it was made by the hands of Parent and
in rendering its forms of knowledge with swiftness
Lavater, we as viewers must handle the piece of
and precision.
69
Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent
133
F
rench porcelain began washing up on the shores of England in the first years of the nineteenth century. Profiting
from the revolutionary sales that began this book, London auction houses such as Christie’s and Phillips as well as private dealers seized upon the finest examples with a royal provenance and sold them to an elite English clientele hungry for French luxury despite the protracted conflicts between
Chapter 5
Alexandre Brongniart Fragile Terrains
the two nations.1 Among the most voracious consumers was the English regent George IV, who purchased exceptional pieces of Sèvres porcelain, including the lavishly decorated dinner service commissioned by the French king before his reign came to an abrupt end (plate 20). Acquired in 1811 through the agent Robert Fogg from the Paris dealer Würtz, the dinner and dessert service had been ordered by Louis XVI for his use at Versailles in 1783, the same year that the signing of the Peace of Paris concluded the American Revolution. The French king had never before spent such enormous sums on porcelain, and no expense was spared in order to decorate the service with mythological scenes. The manufactory’s most skilled painters participated in the completion of the soft-paste porcelain wares, with Charles-Nicolas Dodin and Charles-Éloi Asselin deploying a range of mythological vignettes found in the reserves of the dinner plates, and the rich blue borders expertly gilded by Étienne-Henri Le Guay père. In the official ledgers, the king wrote that he expected the service to be completed in 1803. The lengthy, twenty-three-year estimate for the completion of the dinner service was probably intended to spread out the exorbitant costs and labor of such a complex commission, which entailed painting figurative scenes on each plate, egg cup, ice-cream cup, and butter dish.2 A single plate—the way that Sèvres determined
estimates—was more than thirteen times the
amount of a typical example. The continuous
in revolutionary Paris in the years prior to his
production of the porcelain service suggested that
arrival at Sèvres, in order to explore the ways that
Louis XVI hardly expected his reign to end before
a language of extinction and regeneration trans-
the turn of the century, despite the looming fiscal
formed the meanings of porcelain. Tamara Préaud
crisis that threatened France’s stability. Sèvres had
has shown how the administrator’s moderniza-
delivered only half of the sixty-piece set when it
tion of the manufactory precipitated a number
finally halted activities on the royal commission in
of controversial decisions. These included the
1793, the year of the king’s execution.
selling off of old stock (which inadvertently
diminished the authority of factory designs, since
3
136
While the English regent savored the rem-
This chapter turns to Brongniart’s youth
nants of the ci-devant French king’s porcelain,
it allowed the circulation of blanks with Sèvres
the Sèvres manufactory had just survived near
marks to be decorated by outside individuals), and
extinction during the French Revolution, before
the establishment of a ceramics museum, which
Alexandre Brongniart brought it back from the
transformed the site of production into a didactic
brink when he took over as director in 1800.
institution for the public. Particularly contentious
The polymath naturalist, who had interests in
for ceramics historians was Brongniart’s deci-
mineralogy, invertebrates, and botany, proved an
sion in 1802 to completely end the production
able administrator in spite of the early misgivings
of soft-paste porcelain in favor of a sole focus on
about abandoning a career in the sciences for the
hard-paste porcelain.4 What is not often remarked
production of dinner services and vases. Bringing
is that the new director’s initial decisions—to sell
order, stability, and competence to the ailing
off the old stock, to establish a museum, and to
manufactory during what proved to be an excep-
end the obsolete production methods of the past—
tionally long tenure as director that lasted until his
also echoed collective desires for renewal that had
death in 1847, Brongniart introduced an aesthetic
been expressed during the French Revolution,
fueled by a fascination for Egypt and the classical
to eradicate the despotic past in order to build new
past, alongside his personal passion for mineral-
foundations for the future. The anxious search for
ogy and the earth sciences that he had acquired in
solid foundations forged from a temporal break
his youth during the Revolution. The reestablish-
with the past also drove Brongniart’s work as a
ment of Sèvres has typically been ascribed to the
scientist, particularly his collaborative project with
strong state support it received under Napoleon’s
Georges Cuvier to map the geological strata of
plans to revive ailing national luxury industries.
Paris in Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des
Yet the lingering political ideas of regeneration
environs de Paris (1811).
and progress, annihilation and extinction, which
had done so much to remap the terrain of the sci-
manufactory were interwoven with his redis-
ences, arts, and luxury industries in Brongniart’s
covery of the fragile terrains of postrevolution-
youth, found their way into the spaces of the
ary Paris, a city to which this last chapter turns,
former royal porcelain firm located on the route to
even as the liquidation of Versailles opened its
Versailles.
first chapter. Paris was the site of shifting and
Luxury After the terror
Brongniart’s attempts to revive the porcelain
at times conflicting visions of natural history,
politics of Jacobin Terror? Among the rare schol-
technology, and industry, within which porce-
arly analyses of revolutionary period porcelain, the
lain held a surprisingly vital place. While politi-
primary focus has been on the sudden adoption
cal circumstances led to the stylistic upheavals
by Sèvres of republican symbols and emblems,
at Sèvres, the changes at the manufactory make
undoubtedly necessitated by the need to sever its
sense only in relationship to the dynamic indus-
ties to the recent past.6 Likewise, makers of more
tries that appeared in Paris. I therefore turn to
popular forms of ceramics, such as faience or tin-
Brongniart’s scientific formation in the capital, and
glazed earthenware, eagerly proffered up plates as
how his encounters with the politics of regenera-
an earthly support for political messages that com-
tion shaped his subsequent visions of geology,
memorated egalitarian ideals and members of the
which were profoundly influenced by his friend
third estate, who were often represented by a spade
and collaborator Cuvier, whom he first met in
(fig. 51). Instead of iconography, what interests
Thermidorian Paris. From Brongniart and the
me are the ways in which porcelain, as a medium
scientific community in revolutionary Paris, I turn
of artifice that had literally been dug up from the
to the porcelain being manufactured by the private
earthly foundations of the French nation, embod-
firm Dihl et Guérhard, in order to explore the
ied the changes wrought by the Revolution in the
ways it channeled the energies and anxieties of the
discourse of the Earth. In the absence of a stable
urban landscape into pieces of porcelain that were
source of royal authority and the uncertain value
unlike anything that had been made at the royal
of liquidated examples from the ancien régime,
manufactory. The chapter ends with Brongniart’s
porcelain produced during the French Revolution
arrival at Sèvres, which turned to Paris for sources
registered the anxious politics of the period. Far
of financial support and stylistic renewal.
from being a princely vehicle for gustative delecta-
tion, it became a material site of contestation for
Brongniart’s story requires a broader narra-
tive scope and cast of characters than the more
working through ideas of extinction and regenera-
tightly biographical angles adopted in previ-
tion and visualizing Paris in the wake of the Terror.
ous chapters. This is in part because he was the director of a manufactory and not a designer or artisan. Moreover, his wide-ranging interests as an
Luxe en danger
academic, savant, and scientist brought together a host of other disciplines to bear upon the produc-
During the annual sale of Sèvres porcelain held
tion of porcelain. A brief survey of the myriad of
in the king’s apartments at Versailles, Louis XVI
research he published over his long career dem-
proudly displayed completed pieces of his din-
onstrates the eclectic range of his interests: from
ner service, unaware that his days as monarch
enamel colors and mining deposits to a natural
were numbered. The tradition had begun under
classification system of reptiles. What did this
Louis XV, when he became the sole owner of
fragile medium, which had operated as a sym-
Sèvres in 1759, after his royal mistress Madame
bol of royal munificence, prestige, and princely
de Pompadour encouraged the king to purchase
diplomacy during the ancien régime, mean in the
the private manufactory formerly located at the
5
Alexandre Brongniart
137
Fig. 51 Anonymous, revolutionary faience plate with “Nous jouons de malheur,” end of the eighteenth century. Tin-glazed earthenware (faience), 23 cm (diam.). Château-Musée, Nemours, Inv 2014.0.187.6. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Philippe Fuzeau).
château de Vincennes.7 Bold colors and imagina-
the body meant that it was possible to achieve a
tive forms became mainstays of Sèvres. Alongside
brighter range of ground colors than with hard-
the exotic shapes, enameled and gilded patterns on
paste porcelain.10 Sèvres’s products ranged from
cups, saucers, and vases also evoked the geologi-
lavish services to ornamental garnitures, sets of
cal specimens, corals, flowers, and shells found in
three or more vases intended for display. Workers
the natural history cabinets of wealthy tax farmers,
specialized in different tasks, which ranged from
bankers, and aristocrats, such as Joseph Bonnier de
making molds and stoking the fire to gilding and
la Mosson. Together, these materials conjured the
painting flowers, birds, and figures. Only a king
abundant riches of nature, which offered a spec-
could afford to support such a vast and costly
tacle of wealth on the same continuum as man-
endeavor.
made luxuries such as porcelain. Sèvres became
particularly well known for its soft-paste porcelain
Louis XVI appears to have taken an unusual
(porcelaine tendre). With a clay body that appears
interest in the creation of his last dinner service.
creamier than the more vitreous hard-paste porce-
Geoffrey de Bellaigue has emphasized that the king
8
lain, soft-paste porcelain did not incorporate the
himself probably insisted on the themes of mythol-
kaolin necessary to making “true” Chinese por-
ogy and Roman history depicted on his royal
celain until a source was discovered in the region
service, in keeping with the classical moralizing
of Saint-Yrieix in 1769. The chemical qualities of
messages favored by his close advisor and culture
9
138
Largely indifferent to the decorative arts,
Luxury After the terror
minister d’Angiviller, who had sought to revitalize
dismissed it by replying that the gift was a humble
state-sponsored painting along the same thematic
offering, nothing more than “a piece of his coun-
lines. A number of plates drew from prints of
try’s soil.”15 The elector’s comment is telling for
Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Fénelon’s Télémaque,
the ways in which porcelain not only represented
such as The Golden and Silver Ages painted by
tasteful objects of diplomatic exchange and sym-
Étienne-Henri Le Guay. Given the annual display
bols of rank but also lent itself to a metaphorical
of pieces to the public, the king may have intended
reading as a physical manifestation of a sovereign’s
the service to be a didactic form of luxury, a politi-
presence and domain. The vast sums of money that
cal gesture aimed at crafting the image of a just
Louis XVI poured into his dinner service during
ruler who would return France to a golden age,
the final years of his reign were thus unremarkable,
even amid the financial crises brought about by
simply a continuation of the royal favor bestowed
the country’s involvement in the American War
upon a precious material that functioned as a use-
of Independence. After Louis XVI was forced
ful instrument of statecraft.
to move to the Tuileries in October 1789, pieces
from the service continued to be exhibited at
been issued, Sèvres was confronting an entirely
the Louvre until January 1792, nearly six months
different situation, given the mounting debts of the
after the royal family’s failed escape and capture
new revolutionary government. Calls had not been
at Varennes. Sèvres made its last delivery on
made to completely demolish the factory. However,
January 13, 1792 (though a few stray pieces contin-
the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat singled out
ued to be made that year, some of which were sent
Sèvres in an article he wrote in 1790 that appeared
to a depot in Paris before being auctioned).
in the pages of his polemical journal L’Ami du
peuple. He questioned why such exorbitant
11
12
13
In a courtly Europe, where political advantage
By the time the last pieces of the service had
depended on carefully calibrated munificence,
amounts of public funds had been spent on super-
porcelain had played a strategic role in complex
fluous forms of luxury: “Foreign countries have no
diplomatic exchanges, its fragility serving as an apt
idea about establishments relating to the fine arts,
metaphor for the difficulty of maintaining delicate
or rather, the manufactories run at the expense
political alliances. Therefore, it is not surprising
of the State: the honor of this invention has been
that Louis XVI would have chosen the medium to
reserved for France; among them are included the
convey lofty political ideals to his subjects. When
Sèvres and Gobelins manufactories. The former
his grandfather sent the maréchal de Belle-Isle
costs the public more than 200,000 livres annually,
to Dresden on a diplomatic mission, the Saxon
for just a few porcelain services that the king gifts
elector Augustus III offered him a Meissen service
to ambassadors; the latter costs him 100,000 écus
that included two tea or coffee services, as well as
annually, though one does not know why, except to
porcelain animals and birds, and a “large dinner
enrich crooks and schemers.”16 Marat does not crit-
service, decorated in the manner of ‘old Japan.’ ”
icize the consumers or the luxury products made
The maréchal signaled his embarrassment at
at these factories. Instead, he censures the delib-
having received such a lavish gift beyond his sta-
erate blurring between private and public inter-
tion. Augustus III, in a sign of princely largesse,
ests, a practice that could be found throughout
14
Alexandre Brongniart
139
140
the ancien régime political system of privileges.17
follow official orders, writing to Garat to ask if a
Collectively, the Sèvres porcelain, Gobelins tap-
few costly examples might be spared.19
estry, and Savonnerie carpet manufactories had
been monopolies privately owned by the king, and
governmental policy of terror threatened the
they therefore centered their productions on royal
destruction of costly materials that were difficult
commissions or supplying diplomatic gifts. Each
to execute, the factory began limiting its produc-
maintained strong associations with the crown,
tion to single cups and saucers, mostly ornamental
which made their survival especially tenuous dur-
works decorated with republican themes, rather
ing the Revolution.
than entire services.20 On the pieces decorated
by Sophie Chanou, the radical painter used the
More than Marat’s criticism, large-scale
Given such a volatile situation, where a
worker unrest, lack of leadership, and absenteeism
reverse side of cups and saucers, a space formerly
helped to dismantle Sèvres, at a time when it was
reserved for Sèvres factory marks, to depict mes-
no longer able to rely on the steady stream of visi-
sages of solidarity with the new political causes of
tors who had frequented the manufactory en route
the republic. One set by Chanou is decorated with
to the court at Versailles. As Emily Richardson has
a border of roses encircling revolutionary arms,
noted in her study of Sèvres during the Revolution,
capped by a Phrygian bonnet (fig. 52). Instead of
it suffered enormous financial losses due in large
the interlaced L’s (taken from the king’s initials)
part to the outstanding bills left unpaid by the king
of typical Sèvres marks, the underglaze blue mark
along with the wealthy and elite of France who fled
on the reverse declares that the piece was made at
the country. The factory never officially closed.
“Sèvres, l’an 2ème de la république française une
However, its activities declined considerably after
et indivisible et impérissable.”21 Chanou’s painted
the new government took over the property in
text on the reverse of the saucer shows how the
1792. On September 29 of that year, the revolu-
declarative politics of the period colonized a
tionary government removed the royal manufac-
myriad of surfaces, appearing in places where most
tory from the civil list, officially transferring it on
people would not have even bothered to look, save
May 24, 1794, to the Commission of Agriculture
for those seeking out royalist suspects.
and the Arts, under the direct control of the
Committee of Public Safety.18 Along with absentee
of porcelain during the revolutionary period.22
workers and uneven production, weak manage-
These works deliberately overturned the medium’s
ment made it difficult to quell organized labor and
royal associations by demonstrating a keen aware-
the threats of violent retaliation for unpaid wages.
ness of the changing political atmosphere in Paris,
Old and unsold stock crowded the storerooms.
while perhaps revealing, like Chanou’s work, the
In the late summer of 1793, Antoine Régnier, then
underlying allegiances of the manufactory’s work-
head of the factory, received a letter from Minister
ers. On July 22, 1794, Sèvres completed a déjeuner
of the Interior Dominique-Joseph Garat, demand-
tête-à-tête, a richly decorated tea set made of soft-
ing that all molds and models representing royalty
paste porcelain that included cups and saucers,
and denounced individuals were to be destroyed.
a teapot, a milk jug, sugar bowl, and tray (plate 21).
Régnier was fired in 1793 after he hesitated to
The models derived from the ancien régime, with
Luxury After the terror
Sèvres also executed more ambitious examples
Fig. 52 Sèvres Manufactory, Sophie Chanou (decorator), cup and saucer (tasse litron and mignonette), 1794 (l’an 2 de la République française). Soft-paste porcelain. Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, MNC21185. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Martine Beck-Coppola).
the tray (known as a plateau de déjeuner Paris),
fundamental tension between an object intended
for example, having been in use by the manufac-
for polite and intimate forms of sociability and a
tory as early as 1775. Remarkably, the lobed tray
public event that became virtually emblematic of
of the déjeuner depicted a painting of the Fête de
the terrorist policies of Robespierre, a man who
l’Être Suprême, which had been held a little over a
seemingly embodied the “republican austerity” and
month before the set was completed.23
“primitive modesty” of the moment.24 Taking place
on 20 Prairial, year II (June 8, 1794) at the height of
We do not know for whom the tea set
was made. However, the porcelain embodies a
the Terror, the Festival of the Supreme Being was
Alexandre Brongniart
141
orchestrated by Jacques-Louis David at the behest
of Robespierre, who sought to establish a new civic
from the déjeuner were reminiscent of old forms in
religion that would replace the superstitions of the
use during the ancien régime, Sèvres also created
past with the cult of reason and nature, driving
new models in service of the Revolution. Among
away the dangers of atheism. The procession com-
the most unique was undoubtedly the incredibly
menced at the Tuileries with participants rejecting
refined republican sundial made around 1794–95,
atheism and ended at the Champ de Mars, where
as the recently elected members of the Directory
true believers climbed atop a magnificent artificial
government sought to distance themselves from
mountain made of plaster and cardboard dedicated
the Terror (plate 22). Jean-César Batellier had
to the Supreme Being (conveniently, the mountain
commissioned the piece after being named a
was also the political symbol of Robespierre’s own
représentant en mission to Sèvres on September 16,
faction in the National Convention). The writer
1793, becoming an unlikely patron of the manufac-
Charles Nodier later recalled the strong impression
tory who periodically ordered works for himself.
that the festival had made upon him, as the deathly
He was not alone, for colleagues stationed at
memory of the guillotine gave way to flowers and
Sèvres were known to have commissioned portrait
a sense of summery renewal: “Never did a sum-
busts of superiors in the hope of winning favor.28
mer’s day rise more pure on our horizon. . . . The
The sundial is octagonal in shape, with its edges
tortures had ceased. The instrument of death had
decorated in an incredibly finely painted imitation
disappeared behind the hangings and banks of
of red porphyry. The carefully depicted trompe
flowers.”26 As in Nodier’s recollection, the scene
l’oeil oak garlands laden with acorns appear to
on the porcelain tray depicted by Edmé-François
be woven into each of the piece’s eight sides. The
Bouillat includes an arrangement of flowers, a bas-
bronze gnomon is modern.
ket of grapes, and a peacock set in the foreground,
with the festival’s mountain visible in the distance.
complex and overlapping systems of time, one of
Of course, the porcelain does not depict the fact
which represented the temporal order of the old
that just two days after the festival, the Committee
world, and another that pointed to the new world.
25
The simple white face of the sundial contains
of Public Safety issued the Law of 22 Prairial
The didacticism of the piece is evident in its mul-
(June 10, 1794), the Law of the Grand Terror, which
tiple layers. The inner circle composed of Roman
accelerated the violence of the period by denying
numerals contains the twelve hours that had
the right to a fair trial, with sentences ending in
traditionally divided the day. The top of the inner
either acquittal or death. Nor, of course, is there
ring is cut in the center between six and seven by
any mention of the fact that less than a week after
another ring formed by a snake biting its tail, the
Sèvres completed the déjeuner, Robespierre, the
symbol of the Ouroboros that embodied an even
primary orchestrator of the festival, was guillo-
older, cyclical vision of mythic time. Above the
tined. It is surprising that the service survived the
snake hovers the all-seeing eye of surveillance,
purges that took place shortly after the downfall of
a representation of revolutionary vigilance meant
the Incorruptible.
to ward off the enemies of the Republic, which
27
142
While the milk jug, tray, and cups and saucers
Luxury After the terror
was also displayed prominently on the letterhead
decimal system that divided the hours of the day,
designs for the Committee of Public Safety. Within
the days of the year, the systems of weights and
the protective circle of the snake sits a cockade
measurements, and even money into units of ten.
atop a level and a fictional volume of the French
At the center of all these recalibrations stood the
constitution. The new names of the months from
Earth, which had been measured by scientists so
the Republican calendar are spelled out on the
that all the Revolution’s systems would physically
central north–south axis of the sundial in line with
be based upon natural and palpable foundations.31
the gnomon. A secondary circle of numbers, from
While luxury watchmakers such as Abraham-
two to eight, redivides the twelve-hour clock into a
Louis Breguet made expensive timepieces with
decimal system of time, with the nighttime hours
decimal time for wealthy clients, timekeeping,
from nine to one removed, since the sundial could
as Matthew Shaw indicates, could be done in a
not function during those hours. The outer perim-
number of less expensive ways, “by bells or sundi-
eter of digits replaces the 360 degrees traditionally
als, or discerned from the sound of traffic or the
found on a sundial into a decimal system of 300
height of the sun.”32 As a symbolic rather than a
degrees. As shown, the gnomon on the image thus
strictly utilitarian object, the sundial constituted
points to 7:30 in the morning according to the old
a powerful means of visualizing the collective and
timekeeping system; it is three in the morning in
public aims of the Revolution. If the Christian
revolutionary time.
calendar had allowed monarchs and the church to
wield their power in obscurity over the common
29
What was Batellier after in asking Sèvres to
execute such an unusual form of porcelain? Based
people in an arbitrary system that granted the
upon the natural, diurnal rhythms of the sun, the
control of time itself, time now would be public,
sundial participated in the revolutionary trans-
open to all, and dictated by the rational rhythms
formation of time. In October 1793, the govern-
of the sun.33
ment issued an official Republican calendar, which
retroactively declared September 1792 as the first
ics of French porcelain transformed from a rarity
year of the Republic. Each of the twelve months
reserved for exceptional clients into a political
of the year were renamed after the seasons and
expression of transparency and reason. Porcelain,
divided into equal units of three “decades,” ten-
which had once functioned as a symbol of the
day weeks that left a five-day period at the end of
French crown’s cultural authority, was used during
the year that was reserved for annual festivals. The
the Terror to assert the government’s attempts to
poet Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d’Églantine
ground its legitimacy in nature. Both the déjeuner
chose new names for the months based upon the
set commemorating the festival of the Supreme
natural cycles of the seasons, with the summer
Being and the sundial with revolutionary time
months of Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor,
spoke to the ways in which political visions of
for example, respectively recalling the harvests,
nature affected the production of porcelain at
heat, and fruits yielded in the warmer months.
Sèvres during a period when it lacked the strong
The calendar formed one part of an interlocking
support of a sovereign power.
30
The sundial demonstrates how the aesthet-
Alexandre Brongniart
143
Breaking Ground
300,000 Parisians joined in the construction work during the journée des brouettes to build the scenic
Images heralding nature as the source of national
arch, altar, and stands, which would rival the great
regeneration gained greater urgency upon the
public festivities of ancient Rome (fig. 53).35 The
death of the king in 1793. Before they became part
performative and collective forms of labor that
of our own language of climate crisis and the “sixth
helped to stage the Fête de la Fédération became
extinction,” pictures of blistering suns, tumultuous
part of its mythic status as the only festival that
seas, earthquakes, and exploding volcanos were
managed to truly achieve absolute transparency
harnessed to legitimize the Terror by showing that
and unity. The event was nonetheless subject to
moments of crisis and renewal could be found in
fictive representations, as we saw in the drawing
nature. Even prior to his death, Louis XVI was
proposed by Dugourc from the previous chapter.
pictured as being brought down to the level of the
earth. His presence at the Fête de la Fédération,
help break ground in the name of liberty, equality,
held on July 14, 1790, was heralded at the celebra-
and fraternity, a point emphatically made by the
tion, which marked the first anniversary of the
prints of the period depicting the festival under
Revolution and France’s national unity. Nearly
construction. The image of the king at work,
34
Fig. 53 Anonymous, Travaux du Champ de Mars pour la Confédération du 14 juillet 1790 par les citoyens de Paris: Louis XVI y travailla le 9, 1790. Engraving, 19 × 24 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
144
Luxury After the terror
Everyone was supposed to pick up an axe and
Fig. 54 (left) Anonymous, Le roi, piochant au Champ de Mars, 1790. Engraving, 12.5 × 8.5 cm. Private collection. Fig. 55 (right) Anonymous, faience plate with execution of Louis Capet, January 21, 1793, ca. 1793. Tin-glazed earthenware. Musée de la Picardie, Amiens, Inv 5500. Photo © RMN–Grand Palais / Art Resource, New York (Agence Bulloz).
shown breaking a sweat while breaking ground
of France into a well-tilled, bountiful earth, the
with an axe alongside his compatriots, signaled
decapitated king was found nourishing the earth-
the newfound sense of equality and productivity
enware surfaces of plates that circulated as forms
of all of France’s citizens, the head of the nation
of anti-monarchical propaganda (fig. 55). The
brought down to the level of the people (fig. 54).
prints of his head being held aloft were accompa-
The hieratic scale aimed at emphasizing the king’s
nied by the calls for his impure blood to water the
stature is undone by the steep backdrop, crowded
furrows of the French nation. In death, he would
with figures atop the peak of the mountain. After
serve as an example: in the words of Robespierre,
his death, the body of the king was made to do the
“What more surefire way to degrade [the other
symbolic work of nourishing the French people.
European monarchs] in the eyes of their people,
Instead of being pictured turning the foundations
and to strike them with fear, than the spectacle of
Alexandre Brongniart
145
their accomplice sacrificed to the betrayed liberty
tombs at Saint-Denis, disinterring the corpses of
[of France]? This spectacle will be a Medusa’s head
kings and queens, including the bodies of Henri IV,
for them.”
Louis XIV, and Louis XV. Precious jewels and bits
of gold were carefully put aside while the workers
36
Festivals of nature became mandatory for the
youth of the nation threatened by its enemies, and
piled the remnants of royal coffins and debris to
failure to participate in these exercises of col-
create a makeshift monument to Jean-Paul Marat
lective will could be fatal, as Brongniart himself
and Louis-Michel le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau.40
discovered. On August 10, 1793, the twenty-three-
year-old should have been in Paris standing before
ers unearthed the remains of dead kings and
the statue of Nature on the ruins of the Bastille cel-
queens, Brongniart embarked on a different kind
ebrating the Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility
of digging at Fontainebleau. Needing a break from
of the Republic. Orchestrated by David to celebrate
his strenuous coursework at the Société d’Histoire
the defeat of federalism and the overthrow of the
naturelle and teaching duties at the newly estab-
Girondin faction on the anniversary of the popular
lished Lycée des arts, he had decided to travel with
uprising at the Tuileries, the festival was a sweep-
two friends to Fontainebleau to go herborizing. His
ing allegorical history of the events so far.37 David
courses of instruction included worms, amphib-
intended to make clear the links between national
ians, frogs, tortoises, corals, and shells, along with a
regeneration and “the rising of the day’s star,
number of topics about which he knew hardly any-
which makes us tremble with the joy of nature.”
thing. Upset after a failed attempt to secure a posi-
Four principal moments of the Revolution were
tion at the newly established Muséum, Brongniart
represented by an Egyptian statue of Nature placed
saw the trip to Fontainebleau as one that promised
upon the ruins of the Bastille, an arch of triumph
“great pleasure to this party of savages.”41 The
dedicated to the women who had led the march
friends made sure to pack essential provisions,
to Versailles in October 1789, a figure of Liberty
such as “potatoes, cheese, chocolate and flour,” but
commemorating the execution of the king, and
forgot to pack their passports, which were required
a colossal plaster statue of Hercules bashing the
for travel beyond a citizen’s district. After spend-
Hydra of federalism while standing astride a
ing a night in Champrosay and passing through
mountain at Les Invalides. The festival culminated
the Sénart forest, the trio arrived at Fontainebleau,
in an oath sworn to the constitution of 1793 at the
where they set up camp near some rocks. Realizing
Champ de Mars. The regeneration promised by
that they were running low on provisions, they
38
39
146
On that day of unity and indivisibility, as work-
such collective gatherings was increasingly accom-
traveled to a nearby village on August 10, which
panied by acts of annihilation. The same day that
happened to be the day of the festival. Just after he
the festivalgoers processed through Paris and the
had devoured an omelet, a group of vigilant citizens
monuments erected to the “natural history” of
demanded to see Brongniart’s papers. Considered
the Revolution, the National Convention sanc-
suspect for camping on the day of a national
tioned the destruction and desecration of royal
festival, he was sent to jail in Nemours, where he
tombs. In the days leading up to the Fête de l’Unité
remained under arrest for five days after being
et de l’Indivisibilité, workers dug up the royal
accused of taking an unauthorized countryside trip.
Luxury After the terror
His cousin, the chemist Antoine-François Fourcroy,
on in a portrait of the seven-year-old by the family
whom we will encounter again in Paris later in this
friend and sculptor, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and
chapter, sprang him from jail. This was not the last
evidenced by the youthful expeditions that defied
time that Brongniart’s herborizing would land him
(however innocently) revolutionary protocols. His
in trouble with the Committee of Public Safety. Less
mother’s hopes were dashed when an insatiable
than a year later, he was jailed once more when he
curiosity led him to an interest in the pure sciences,
42
unwisely decided to go hunting for botanical speci-
studying the methods of Carl Linnaeus and under-
mens in the southwest of France while stationed
taking experiments in chemistry. He was par-
as an army pharmacist in the Haute-Pyrénées
ticularly entranced by Antoine Lavoisier’s recent
border town of Barèges. Bored, Brongniart had
experiments regarding the theory of combustion.
encountered an older botanist named Pierre-
Auguste-Marie Broussonet, with whom he agreed
Brongniart traveled extensively during the
to travel to the mountain town of Gavarnie to col-
Revolution. At a time when young architects and
lect specimens on July 18, 1794, just days before the
artists went to Rome to study antiquities, he chose
journée of 9 Thermidor overthrew Robespierre in
instead to travel to England for three months,
Paris. Gavarnie was, at the time, at the frontier with
where he encountered naturalists in London,
the Spanish army, and, unbeknownst to Brongniart,
observed the lead and coal mines in Derbyshire,
Broussonet had decided to defect to the Spanish
and studied flour mills powered by steam engines;
side. Brongniart and another companion who had
he traveled mostly on foot. Upon his return to
remained on the French side were declared suspects
France, Brongniart trudged once again on foot
due to the fugitive and placed in jail in Pau, where
throughout southwest France as an army phar-
he remained for months until his Paris connections
macist and undertook expeditions in Normandy
finally had him freed.
as part of the newly formed Corps des Mines,
a body of mining engineers tasked with discover-
43
In spite of an insatiable curiosity that landed
An acute observer with a wanderlust,
him in jail, Brongniart’s political proclivities were
ing new mining deposits and natural resources
decidedly in favor of the Revolution, perhaps more
that would benefit the nation at war. Visiting a
so than any other individual in this book. The son
vast range of mines for lead, iron, and copper,
of one of the ancien régime’s most famous archi-
Brongniart also managed to squeeze in a hike up
tects, Brongniart’s early path proved much more
Mont Blanc with the famous mineralogist Déodat
meandering than that of his father’s disciplined
Gratet de Dolomieu.45 Along the way, he collected
character, though he certainly benefited from
specimens of all sorts. While in Dieppe, the same
the social connections of the illustrious archi-
coastal town where the goldsmith Auguste had
tect, which came in handy at particularly difficult
sought to ship his crates off to Haiti, the young
moments. His mother had initially hoped that her
Brongniart discovered and evidently pocketed
son would become a doctor, carrying on the line
examples of seaweed, insects, and fish.46
of pharmacists on his father’s side of the family. Yet
his own parents described the young Brongniart
adventures was undergoing considerable changes,
as distracted and reckless, a quality captured early
in no small part as a result of the Revolution’s
44
Geology at the time of Brongniart’s unlikely
Alexandre Brongniart
147
military expansion into terrains far beyond its for-
at the Société philomathique. Alongside courses at
mer borders. As Brongniart’s case reveals, the disci-
the newly established École des Mines and infor-
pline emerged in tandem with the reconnaissance
mal lessons in chemistry led by his uncle, in 1788,
missions undertaken to chart military routes and
Brongniart became a founding member of the
assess and extract France’s natural resources. For
voluntary society, where young men gathered
much of the eighteenth century, mineralogy had
to discuss recent developments in the sciences
consisted primarily of three branches: the study
and to conduct experiments in a range of topics
of collections, geognosy, and geology. The first
that included natural history, anatomy, physics,
consisted of studying rocks and minerals along-
chemistry, math, and archaeology. After the end of
side shells and fossils, provided by a far-ranging
the Royal Academy of Sciences, informal organi-
network of scientific correspondents from around
zations provided a gathering place for savants to
the globe, in collections assembled in museums or
share the findings of rigorous scientific research.49
curiosity cabinets, as seen in the watercolor image
Alert, cunning, and opportunistic, Cuvier, who
by François Louis Swebach-Desfontaines (the
had been working as a tutor for a Lutheran family
father of the artist and engraver who would gain
in Normandy, arrived in Paris at the beginning
fame during the Revolution). He depicted rock
of 1795, after 9 Thermidor signaled the end of the
samples as if they had been placed within a display,
Terror.50 The move marked the beginning of a
emphasizing the aesthetic differences to be found
long career in the French sciences that culminated
in a comparison of the color, texture, and forma-
during the Restoration in fierce debates about evo-
tions of each specimen (plate 23). Fossils, like min-
lution that pitted him against his former mentor
erals, were studied in terms of their formal charac-
and later archrival Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.51
teristics, without regard to their placement within
He joined the newly established Muséum, which
a larger stratigraphic context. Geognosy, or the
replaced the king’s natural history collection, as a
study of rock formations, was, as Martin Rudwick
suppléant, or understudy, to the old professor of
notes, a structural science, “primarily concerned
animal anatomy, Jean-Claude Mertrud, and also
with the structural relations of rock masses,” with
became a member of the Société philomathique,
the aim of providing sources that would be useful
where he befriended Brongniart. The latter wrote
to the mining industry.48 At that moment, the term
dejectedly of his friend’s superior talent for dis-
“geology” consisted primarily of speculative theo-
section in his journal on March 18, 1795, “Cuvier
ries of the Earth, which built systems without close
comes in the morning. We dissect a cuttlefish
scrutiny of either specimens or rock formations.
together. He saw everything that I saw. I abandon
Brongniart’s experience in undertaking scientific
this work.”52 As the dissection incident reveals,
fieldwork made him a key asset in the discoveries
Cuvier had begun his scientific research on marine
made by his friend and collaborator, Cuvier, at the
fauna and invertebrates before turning his atten-
Muséum d’Histoire naturelle.
tion to mammals and their fossilized remains.53
47
148
The two budding scientists first encountered
Just as Brongniart’s fieldwork was under-
each other in Paris, just as the Directory govern-
taken while employed in the revolutionary army,
ment sought to erase the memories of Robespierre
Cuvier benefited from the military plundering
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 56 Georges Cuvier, figure of the jaw of an Indian elephant and the fossil jaw of a mammoth, from Mémoires de l’Institut des Sciences et des Arts, vol. 2, 1799. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
that brought European treasures from afar to the
alongside shells, minerals, taxidermied animals,
Muséum d’Histoire naturelle. A year after his
and, among other things, porcelain, as rarities.55
arrival in Paris, Cuvier created a sensation at the
However, displayed as mere fragments of fantasti-
inaugural public lecture of the Institut national,
cal beasts, no one had sought to systematically
the organization that replaced the Royal Academy
reconstruct the fossilized remains of creatures
of the ancien régime, where, on April 4, 1796,
and to picture their former existence as proof
he presented his discoveries on “the species of
of a world before man. Cuvier used his skills in
elephants, both living and fossil.” A year earlier,
comparative anatomy to show not only that the
looted goods from Belgium and the royal collec-
two elephants were distinct species but also that
tions at the Hague had been distributed among
they both differed from another set of elephant-
Paris’s public museums, which included the natu-
like bones belonging to a creature that was no
ral history institution. A total of 150 crates of speci-
longer extant (fig. 56). This comparison led him to
mens were unloaded at the museum; they included
conclude that such facts “seem to me to prove the
two elephant skulls from the Cape of Good Hope
existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed
and Ceylon. This made it possible for Cuvier to
by some kind of catastrophe. But what was this
compare the two skulls with earlier elephant fossils
primitive earth? What was this nature that was not
from Siberia in the collection. Fossils, of course,
subject to man’s dominion? And what revolution
had been studied in the natural history cabinets
was able to wipe it out to the point of leaving no
of antiquarians and collectors, who placed them
trace of it except some half-decomposed bones?”56
54
Alexandre Brongniart
149
Published in scientific journals, including
the Bulletin de la Société philomathique, Cuvier’s
the sublime had already reconfigured much of the discursive landscape and collective imagination
research represented a novel approach to the study
of eighteenth-century France. Revolutionary ter-
of fossils.57 It built upon the previous work of
ror, Ronald Schechter writes, depended on prior
naturalists such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
cultural understandings of sublime nature that had
and William Hunter. However, two features
developed over the course of the Enlightenment
distinguished his approach. By describing fos-
period. By the end of the century, radical ora-
sils as nature’s “documents” or “archives,” Cuvier
tors relied upon a lexicon of terror-laced terms to
introduced a language of antiquarianism and the
persuasively describe just policies and beautiful
possibility of reconstructing the Earth’s history in
laws because the public already understood terror
a manner similar to the ways in which monuments
as a word that encompassed aesthetic, cultural,
were used to resurrect the antique past. Cuvier’s
and political dimensions.58 As a consequence,
theory transformed the Earth into a natural
it was natural to turn to the language of sublime
archive, where each object and its placement,
catastrophe in order to conceptualize the sudden
as well as the ground itself laid the foundations
and abrupt transformations that took place in the
for a natural history that could be documented
physical landscape of Paris before the arrival of
and knowable. The subsequent discovery of fossil
man. When Cuvier presented his theory of extinc-
bones of an extinct creature in the nearby gypsum
tion to the public at the Institut national in 1796,
quarries of Montmartre led him to the realiza-
his depictions of a destroyed world that left noth-
tion that their location in the ground played a
ing behind “except some half-decomposed bones”
crucial role in reconstructing the Earth’s history.
would have resonated with an audience that had
Understanding how rock formations determined
only recently experienced and witnessed the effects
the historical strata of a particular fossil required
of the Terror firsthand. Though he himself did
fieldwork, a type of study that was in many ways
not espouse the radical ideology of the Jacobins,
inimical to his scientific inclinations. In order to
the political language of the period infiltrated the
begin understanding and mapping the terrains
antiquarian desire to reconstruct the past, along
of Paris, Cuvier turned to his wanderlust friend
with the catastrophic visions of a universal revolu-
Brongniart, who had recently been appointed
tion “on the surface of the globe.” It would not
the head of Sèvres and begun digging in the
have been difficult for the inhabitants of Paris to
city’s terrain in search of raw materials to make
picture what this ancient disaster on the surface of
porcelain.
the globe had looked like, for the city retained the architectural scars left behind by the recent acts of violence and destruction.
Porcelain, Paris, and Posterity
Before returning to consider Brongniart’s
revival of the Sèvres manufactory and his geologi-
150
The remapping of Paris by Cuvier and Brongniart
cal research with Cuvier, it is worth describing the
in the postrevolutionary period was made pos-
context of Paris in the Directory period, where
sible by the fact that the language of terror and
industry, the sciences, and the arts converged to
Luxury After the terror
create an atmosphere of experimentation born
out of the rapidly changing circumstances of the
based in Paris, Dihl et Guérhard had begun
nation’s capital. The Paris-based manufactory of
during the ancien régime as a rather modest
Dihl et Guérhard was exemplary in this respect.
enterprise that was seen as a cheaper alterna-
Located just down the street from the Temple
tive to Sèvres. The factory was established on
prison where the royal family had been incarcer-
February 25, 1781, through an acte de société
ated, it channeled the anxious language of extinc-
(partnership contract) signed by the porcelain
tion into a turbulent new aesthetic that challenged
modeler Christophe Erasimus Dihl, the Paris
the porcelain forms that had been upheld as stan-
bourgeois Antoine Guérhard, and Guérhard’s
dards of perfection at Sèvres. Take, for example,
wife, Louise-Françoise-Madeleine Croizé, in order
a plate made by the manufactory during the
“to handle the manufacture and marketing of any
revolutionary period. Shells are shown washed up
porcelain that may come from the factory that
on a murky shore, surrounded by misty weather
Sieur Dihl proposes to establish.”59 An immigrant
(plate 24). They appear to have been violently
from Neustadt in the Palatinate who arrived in
displaced on the shore, in a landscape defined
France in 1778, Dihl, a modeler, had a specialist’s
by the unsettling chill of the finely painted mist in
knowledge of the chemical processes needed to
the background, a mottled effect reminiscent of
manage a porcelain factory, although his foreign
David’s painting of the adolescent martyr Joseph
status and lack of capital made it impossible for
Bara cast upon the dappled ground. Reading
him to strike out on his own. Monsieur Guérhard’s
David’s unfinished brushwork as a signal of what
status as an official bourgeois of Paris allowed the
has been described as the Revolution’s politics of
company to be established inside the city; Dihl
provisionality, its displacement onto the Dihl et
oversaw production, while Madame Guérhard was
Guérhard plate is both a deliberate gesture toward
manager of the firm, looking after the company’s
the painting practices taking place outside of the
books and the day-to-day running of the fac-
purely decorative context of porcelain and perhaps
tory (duties that echoed those of the goldsmith
a tacit acknowledgment of the ways in which the
Auguste’s wife, Madeleine-Julie Coustou). In 1782
politics of the period had nearly rendered luxury
the factory obtained the protection of the duc
extinct. The shells could be read as the remains
d’Angoulême, nephew of Louis XVI, enabling it
of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some
to stamp its wares “Manufacture de Monsieur le
kind of ancient catastrophe. Within the immedi-
duc d’Angoulême,” a mark that can be found on its
ate geographic context of Paris, the newfound
early productions. Angoulême’s name functioned
emphasis on the alliances between art, industry,
as a brand franchise licensed to the firm that gave
technology, and the sciences made it possible for a
the company greater visibility. By 1785, the factory
porcelain manufacturer not only to have an aware-
employed twelve sculptors and thirty painters,
ness of the latest developments in science, includ-
and in 1787 the growing firm moved from the rue
ing the theory of extinction that Cuvier had shared
de Bondy to a larger space at the hôtel Bergeret,
with the public at the Institut national, but to use
a property that was once located at the junction of
such ideas as haunting forms of design.
the rue du Temple and the rue Meslay.
Like many of the private porcelain firms
Alexandre Brongniart
151
As an affordable alternative to Sèvres, the
firm’s porcelain wares appealed to frugal foreign
of the Terror, change arrived at the Paris factory
visitors such as Gouverneur Morris, who went to
when Antoine Guérhard died and Dihl mar-
Paris as part diplomat, part buying agent for the
ried the widow Guérhard, officially changing the
new American president, George Washington. His
factory mark to Dihl et Guérhard. That summer,
demonstrated tastes for porcelain veered toward
workers arrived from the Niderviller faience and
the plain, as indicated by the service he purchased
porcelain manufactory, after its owner, the comte
in 1790 from the comte de Moustier, decorated
de Custine, at one point a celebrated military hero
with nothing more than gilded dent-de-loup bor-
of the Revolution, had been guillotined.62
ders. A number of the replacement pieces added
to Washington’s service had actually been sup-
the innovator of the factory, in the midst of the
plied by the manufactory of the duc d’Angoulême
groundbreaking scientific discoveries and devel-
(fig. 57). While in Paris, Morris chose on behalf
opments of the period, which were now open
of the new American president a surtout de table,
to the public through the myriad institutions
or centerpiece, of biscuit figures, along with vases
that replaced the royal academies of the ancien
by the manufactory for Washington’s official
régime. The Institut national des sciences et arts,
residence. He carefully coached the president in
established in 1795, played host to new research
matters of taste, writing, “I think it of very great
undertaken by ambitious young men like Cuvier,
60
Being in the center of Paris placed Dihl,
Importance to fix the Taste of our Country prop-
while painters of genres formerly considered
erly, and I think your Example will go very far in
marginal filled the Paris Salon. Dihl recruited a
that Respect. It is therefore my Wish that every
number of the most successful artists of the period
Thing about you should be substantially good and
to work at the firm. In addition to hiring former
majestically plain; made to endure.” Populated
painters from Sèvres, such as Étienne-Charles
with white and gold plates and white biscuit
Le Guay, Dihl worked with the engraver Jacques-
figures, the plainness of Washington’s dinner table
François Swebach-Desfontaines, the landscape
formed a remarkable contrast to the lavish service
painter Jean-Louis Demarne, and the genre painter
that Louis XVI had commissioned yet off of which
Martin Drolling, all of whom were painted by
he had never managed to dine.
Louis-Léopold Boilly in the gathering of artists at
From the tabula rasa of taste found in the
the atelier of Jean-Baptiste Isabey. Just as industrial
American president’s penchant for a dignified
arts like porcelain were held on the same footing as
plainness, Dihl et Guérhard quickly distinguished
the fine arts and sciences, Dihl, in a similar man-
its wares from Sèvres after its former royal rival
ner, considered his work with such artists to be a
was left on the brink of extinction. With the end
collaborative endeavor.
of Sèvres’s royal privilege on porcelain, private
61
152
restricted to Sèvres alone. In 1793, in the midst
In Paris, porcelain was transformed from
manufacturers in Paris fired objects at unprec-
an aristocratic collectible to an experimental
edented rates and decorated wares with ample
medium of national interest, shaped in large part
gilding, brilliant enamels and glazes, and sculp-
by Dihl’s contributions as an entrepreneur, inven-
tural forms, all of which had previously been
tor, and scientific innovator. A central moment
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 57 Duc d’Angoulême Manufactory, dinner plate, 1780–88. Hard-paste porcelain with gilding, 3.49 × 25.08 cm. Purchase, 1956, W-2132/F. Mount Vernon Museum. Photo courtesy of Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association.
in his career took place in 1797, when members
had undergone the heat of the kiln. It was espe-
of the Institut national visited the firm to observe
cially difficult to render halftones on porcelain,
his invention of enamel for hard-paste porcelain
since the delicate hues were especially susceptible
that would not alter when fired, which Régine
“to being destroyed or becoming dry and dull in
de Plinval de Guillebon described as “an event
the fire.”65 Dihl’s invention provided a range of
in the field of porcelain.” On November 16,
stable colors that could be subjected to high firing
1797, Jean Darcet, Antoine-François Fourcroy
temperatures, which “promise, for the painter of
(the cousin of Brongniart), and Louis-Bernard
oils, on canvas, and on other bodies, an inalter-
Guyton de Morveau visited the manufactory.
ability and a durability that will be priceless for the
The men had a keen scientific interest in Dihl’s
conservation of paintings.”66 For artists anxious
work, since Darcet had been employed at Sèvres
about the unstable nature of their works, the
as a chemist and both of them had worked with
invention promised the survival of art by provid-
Lavoisier to create the standard nomenclature
ing “the means to immortalize their works and to
for chemistry. The Journal de physique, de chimie,
transmit to posterity the most interesting things
d’histoire naturelle et des arts, which published the
that history and nature could offer.”67 Though
results the following year, described Dihl’s search
the members of the Institute were impressed by the
for a type of enamel paint that would achieve
results, Brongniart himself hardly saw Dihl’s work
“a nuanced palette, composed of colors that would
as an achievement. He later wrote that the German
not be changed at all by vitrification.” Color
entrepreneur had intentionally failed to include
enamels presented problems for the porcelain
any pinks, purples, and violets derived from the
painter, in that one could not know what the
purple of Cassius in the enamels he showed to
hues, composed of crushed and pigmented bits
the Institute members, “which change under the
of minerals and glass, would look like once they
heat whatever the vehicle that carries them.”68
63
64
Alexandre Brongniart
153
In spite of Brongniart’s harsh judgment, the
quest for permanence, inalterability, and durabil-
Wedgwood’s collaborations with the British painter
ity described in Dihl’s enamel invention echoed
but may also have actively sought to emulate (if not
broader anxieties in both the sciences and the arts
surpass) the British entrepreneur, whose products
during the postrevolutionary period. In direct
were popular in Paris during the Revolution.70
opposition to the kinds of ephemera that consti-
tuted the republican arts—including Dugourc’s
attention even though portraiture has gained
set of republican playing cards—Directory Paris
interest among scholars of the French Revolution
sought to reclaim the stability of the past through
eager to document the changes that took place in
its artistic, scientific, and cultural products. A 1797
political identities.71 It is exemplary of what Amy
portrait of Dihl by Le Guay, probably painted to
Freund has described as the collaborative practice
commemorate his invention, not only represented
of portraiture in the picturing of modern self-
a novel form of painting on porcelain but also
hood. Witness in particular the double signature
instantiated the promise of immortality in a stable
of Le Guay and Dihl inscribed on the side of the
medium that would “transmit to posterity the most
secretaire. Dihl felt the need to sign the portrait
interesting things that history and nature could
that had been painted by Le Guay because the
offer,” much in the way that Cuvier’s conception of
painterly support provided an opportunity to
fossils as natural documents conveyed the existence
publicize the hard-paste porcelain plaque manu-
This exceptional painting has received little
of a prior world (plate 25). In the portrait, the
factured by the Paris firm. This points both to the
inventor and entrepreneur sits before a secretaire
shared production of the work and to the hybrid
with compartments that contain not papers or ink
qualities of the porcelain plaque as a singular work
but jars and cans full of pigments and minerals
of art and reproducible commercial support for
used to make the ground colors and enamels that
painting. While Sèvres had produced porcelain
are painted on a small tablet before him. Of par-
plaques prior to the Revolution, the royal factory
ticular interest is the top of the secretaire, where
had never used them in the portrayal of private cit-
Le Guay has painted a range of Dihl’s products,
izens (and certainly not in the depiction of ambi-
from a vase in imitation agate with a trompe l’oeil
tious rival porcelain manufacturers). Moreover, the
band by the painter Piat-Joseph Sauvage to a
double signature would have been inconceivable at
yellow-ground cup to a biscuit figure of a reading
a factory that strongly deterred its decorators from
girl. The sheer range of glazes, finishes, and models
signing their works.
is arresting. The spotted Dalmatian is an unusual
addition to a portrait already crammed full of the
ment of enamels clearly found their way into
products of the inventor and entrepreneur depicted
Sèvres, as suggested in two palettes for soft-paste
in the painting. The curled dog tucked below
and hard-paste porcelain created in year VI, the
the desk resembles the spotted leopard that had
very same year that Dihl invited members of the
been painted by George Stubbs in 1777, as the first
Institute to his Paris manufactory (plate 26). The
example of his work rendered on a ceramic plaque
limited palette and murky range of colors found on
provided by Josiah Wedgwood (fig. 58). The visual
the two nuanciers, samplers used to show the range
69
154
quotation suggests that Dihl not only knew of
Luxury After the terror
Anxieties around color and Dihl’s develop-
Fig. 58 George Stubbs, Sleeping Leopard, 1777. Enamel on Wedgwood biscuit earthenware, 10.8 × 16.8 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2001.2.209. Photo: Yale Center for British Art.
of a manufactory’s enamel colors, indicate Sèvres’s
VI, where they would have encountered Dihl’s
struggles in keeping abreast of the developments
enamels on display again, but this time in the
emerging from Paris and the factory of Dihl et
vibrant plumage of Jacques Barraband’s birds
Guérhard. Sèvres’s hard-paste lozenge of colors is
(plate 27).72 Exhibited at the Muséum central des
sad-looking when compared to the vibrant hues
arts, Barraband’s painting on porcelain depicts
contained on the palette in the portrait of Dihl.
exotic specimens—a Chinese golden pheasant,
The barren yellow and brown landscapes contain-
two Brazilian golden parakeets, and an Amazon
ing a funeral urn appear to function as a cipher for
parrot—set against a barren landscape with leafless
the moody scenes that such a limited palette could
tree limbs.73 The rock bobbing in water in the right
achieve.
foreground of the painting once again reminds the
viewer of the double status of the work as both a
One can only imagine the astonishment
and despair that the workers at Sèvres must
piece of porcelain and a painting, containing the
have experienced at the Salon of Thermidor year
signature of the artist’s name accompanied by that
Alexandre Brongniart
155
of the manufactory. The painting helped secure
found its way into the luxury items made in Paris.
Barraband’s reputation as a bird painter. After
The unsettling effects of the period can be seen
making a version of the same composition in an oil
in a pair of storm vases by the manufactory made
painting, Barraband received commissions to work
around 1797–98 (plate 28). In direct contrast to
as an avian specialist contributing to François
the recto–verso format of vases made at Sèvres,
Levaillant’s natural history of parrots, illustrating
a painted panoramic landscape wraps around
birds for the Description de l’Egypte, and execut-
the circumference of each vase just below the
ing the decoration for Charles Percier and Pierre-
shoulder. The grisaille vistas of a storm at sea and
François-Léonard Fontaine’s platinum cabinet for
on land move in a horizontal format that works
Charles IV at the Casa del Labrador in Aranjuez.
against the vertically positioned arabesques layered
In contrast to the lively birds depicted by Sèvres’s
atop the rich yellow ground color, heightened
most celebrated bird painter, Louis-Denis Armand,
with gilded elements (fig. 59). Although dramatic
during the ancien régime, Barraband’s painting,
weather patterns had been depicted before by
probably based upon taxidermy models, is a rather
artists like Joseph Vernet, in his series of French
stiff, taxonomic depiction of exotic birds that
ports commissioned by Louis XV from 1754 to
seems to hover between life and death. The con-
1765, the potential meanings of such weather had
trast between the brilliant plumage and the barren
considerably changed. The gray-scale scenes on
landscape almost calls for an allegorical reading,
the vases might be more readily situated along-
as if the birds represent the fashionable Incroyables
side the prints, calendars, and other provisional
and Merveilleuses who reveled in macabre displays
forms of reproduction that proliferated during the
of splendor, attending events such as the bals des
French Revolution and that directly influenced
victimes, dances allegedly held for those whose
the aesthetic changes in the Salon. The heightened
relatives had succumbed to the guillotine, which
sense of movement in the trees, the lack of narra-
both commemorated and sought to efface memo-
tive focal point, and the landscapes’ resemblance
ries of the Terror. Given the brilliant colors and
to exaggerated silhouette imagery of the period
the technically difficult compositions achieved
suggest the likelihood that the porcelain painter
by the artists who worked with Dihl et Guérhard,
had in mind experimental forms of imagery that
it is not hard to see why the art critic Pierre-Jean-
pushed against the aesthetic ideals championed
Baptiste Chaussard wrote that in the manufactory’s
during the Enlightenment.
hands, porcelain “is not to be scorned, for it opens
new prospects to industry and the arts, it gives lux-
of windswept trees on a rocky terrain found on
ury a tasteful and elegant character, and expands
the pair of vases were probably original composi-
the domain of art.”
tions painted by the landscape artist Jean-Baptiste
Coste, who worked at Dihl et Guérhard during the
74
75
76
156
Dihl et Guérhard’s porcelains contain a ner-
The coastal vista and its pendant in the form
vous, tense energy, as if channeling the political
Revolution. Coste executed a number of studies
tumult of the period. Though landscapes were
from the same period that bear a strong resem-
commonly depicted on porcelain decoration, the
blance to the images depicted in such fine detail
discourse of nature as a source of regeneration
on the vases (fig. 60). Trained in Rome during
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 59 Dihl et Guérhard Manufactory, vase with landscape (one of a pair), ca. 1797–98, detail. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
the ancien régime, Coste eventually published the
Coste reserves the most attention for the depic-
results of his studies in the 1809 publication
tion of trees, stressing that they “must above all be
Cours d’études de paysages, a manual on land-
treated with feeling, and in a manner similar to
scape painting with crayon-manner engravings.
each particular species.”78 Hence, he emphasizes
Coste’s publication has been grouped as part of
the twisted qualities of the trunk of the holm oak
the didactic manuals intended for students who
tree depicted on plate sixteen, in order to convey
sought to practice depictions of antique-inspired
its “tormented” form. By contrast, the elongated
landscapes, one of the many publications that
downward sloping branches of the weeping willow
emerged in the early part of the nineteenth
depicted on plate thirty-nine suggest its melan-
century. Though he incorporated the numerous
cholic aspect, and Coste notes that “one generally
Italian structures he had seen in his publication,
places them with tombs.”79 The weeping willow
77
Alexandre Brongniart
157
Fig. 60 (left) Jean-Baptiste Coste, figures resting in a wooded landscape, 1794. Pen and ink and watercolor on card with painted frame border, 26.75 × 37.75 cm. Photo courtesy of Martel Maides Auctions. Fig. 61 (below) Jean-Baptiste Coste, Jacques Marchand (engraver), Saule Pleureur (with hidden silhouettes of Louis XVI, MarieAntoinette, and the Dauphin). Crayon-manner engraving, 37 × 49 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
conjures the trees with hidden silhouettes. He had
of Sèvres porcelain, the forms are old and they
actually issued a nearly identical print with the
displease her; do you think it would be possible to
royal profiles present (fig. 61). Given what we know
get her something from the Temple manufac-
of Coste’s views on the emotive possibilities of
tory that would be of a more modern and purer
landscapes and trees from his drawing manual, the
taste?”80 English aristocrats such as William
compositions on the Dihl et Guérhard vases take
Beckford also purchased Paris porcelain, and, even
on a more symbolic aspect, as if they participated
though George IV maintained a fascination for
in the melancholy vision of nature that emerged
ancien régime examples of Sèvres, he also acquired
after the Terror. Shed of their classical references
works from the Paris factory.81 Dihl et Guérhard
and Arcadian guises, the landscapes depicted on
thus churned out luxury for the Spanish court and
Dihl et Guérhard’s porcelain functioned as elo-
English aristocrats during the Directory period
quent disquisitions on the subject of what arrives
as, after the Terror, the delirious return of fashion
in the aftermath of revolution.
and luxury was celebrated. Yet given the paranoia
Of course, it is possible to read too much
of surveillance and subsistence that had character-
meaning and intentionality into porcelain objects
ized the Terror, when any symbol of despotism—
that were ultimately made for those who could
no matter how small—had to be removed, luxury
afford to spend on costly luxury items. Dihl et
objects and even quotidian forms of plates and
Guérhard actively competed with Sèvres in solicit-
cups retained an air of precarity.
ing a distinguished clientele that included not
only the president of the United States but also the
channel both the desire for novelty and “some-
crowned heads of Europe. Alongside developing a
thing different” and the anxieties that accom-
robust export market to England, the Paris-based
panied a society seeking to escape the traumas
factory produced a number of its most lavish and
of the recent past. For the same years that saw
expensive works of art for foreign courts, includ-
the return of fashion and luxury also marked
ing that of Charles IV, who was a target for several
a period of intense political uncertainty. From
self-exiled French luxury producers, including
the outset, the Directory confronted multiple
Dugourc (as we saw in chapter 3). Moreover, the
obstacles, from the quelling of popular upris-
exchange of porcelain as diplomatic gifts con-
ings led by Gracchus Babeuf and the Conspiracy
tinued after 1789, suggesting the ancien régime’s
of the Equals to the “White Terror” of royalist
rituals of civility persisted after the Terror. Then,
revolts that swept through the provinces bent on
too, the love of novelty remained fashionable,
seeking revenge. Where the promise of the future
as Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier discovered when
brought an obsession with new beginnings in 1789,
he became France’s newly appointed ambas-
the Thermidorian Reaction was energized by the
sador to Spain. In a letter from 1800 to Foreign
urgent desire to bring the revolutionary process to
Minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord,
an end. It was marked, too, by a period of collec-
he requested the work of Dihl et Guérhard, writing
tive mourning. Porcelain made in Paris could not
that “The queen already has in her cabinets a lot
help but look somewhat somber.
In the postrevolutionary period, luxury could
Alexandre Brongniart
159
Regeneration at Sèvres
to choose a “chemist” such as Brongniart to bring energy to the government support of the indus-
160
In 1800, Brongniart took over Sèvres at a turning
trial arts. Though he was encouraged early on to
point in both the naturalist’s career and the political
undertake experiments on a variety of materials
trajectory of postrevolutionary France; Napoleon’s
alongside that of porcelain production, Brongniart
coup of 18 Brumaire, year VIII (November 9,
encountered nearly insurmountable obstacles at
1799), had brought the Directory period to an end
Sèvres. The workers had not been paid since the
and consolidated power in the general’s hands.82
ancien régime and the material resources had been
Napoleon’s brother Lucien, a former Jacobin and
completely depleted. In order to generate enough
supporter of Robespierre who was instrumental in
money to pay the workers and suppliers, Brongniart
staging the coup, took over as minister of the inte-
sold off the old pieces in the manufactory “that
rior during the Consulate, before the First Consul
encumber our warehouses and harm the manufac-
sent him off to serve as the ambassador to Spain
tory by suggesting to visitors that it still produces
in the fall of 1800, a result of simmering politi-
these gothic things.”84 In an echo of the government
cal tensions between the two brothers that would
sales of the royal collections, Brongniart organized
eventually lead Lucien to go into exile. More so
another sale, arranged through the marchands de
than Napoleon, he had a direct hand in appointing
curiosités Lignereux and Coquille, who helped to
Brongniart as the head of the ailing porcelain man-
ship the old models off to buyers abroad.85
ufactory, which he had been tasked with overseeing.
In a letter sent to the manufactory’s then directors
elimination of soft-paste production subsequently
on May 17, 1800, Lucien envisioned restoring the
proved the most controversial. Expensive and out-
past glory of the former royal manufactory so that it
dated, soft-paste production was viewed, like the
would set an example for other private firms (which
old stock Brongniart sold off to refresh the manu-
undoubtedly included Dihl et Guérhard chief
factory, as epitomizing “the aesthetic excesses asso-
among them): “The fabrication of porcelain is fully
ciated with the rococo.”86 From a technical view-
established in France, and in upholding it at Sèvres
point, the decision to end soft-paste production
my primary view has been to make it an object
would prove costly; Antoine d’Albis has argued that
of emulation for private establishments. Thus any
from a scientific perspective, its end “effectively
future work undertaken should serve to advance
doomed an entire body of expertise. . . . The
this fabrication; but to implement this project it
knowledge needed for success had been relegated
seemed to me that a chemist should direct the
to oblivion. The body of work that had been the
manufactory. . . . Citizen Brongniart will concern
foundation of Sèvres’s prestige both at home and
himself not only with things pertaining to the fabri-
abroad in the eighteenth century proved impossible
cation of porcelain; in addition, he will also perform
to duplicate.”87 Nonetheless, many of Brongniart’s
experiments relating to glassware and pottery.”83 For
early decisions to wipe the slate clean at Sèvres and
Bonaparte, the key to reviving the factory rested
to clear the material remainders of the past from
not in artistic innovations or business acumen but
the manufactory echoed the policies of the new
in advancing scientific progress; hence his decision
Consulate government under Napoleon, which
Luxury After the terror
Among other cost-cutting measures, the
sought to sever its ties to the recent past by declar-
ing that the constitution of year VIII marked the
his own wealth of knowledge in geology and the
official end to the “principles” of the Revolution.
natural sciences to introduce decorative motifs that
replaced the jewel-like tones and brilliant enamels
88
While paying off the old, accumulated debts
Alongside his father, Brongniart drew upon
occupied a considerable amount of the young
used in the production of soft-paste porcelain. The
director’s time, Brongniart also sought new models,
factory began to recreate mineralogical specimens
designs, and decorative motifs that would revital-
using trompe l’oeil techniques, which blurred the
ize the manufactory and signal a stylistic rupture
line between scientific specimen and porcelain
with the past. He formally requested the minister
facsimile. Rich hardstones, such as sardonyx, agate,
of the interior to eliminate the positions of artistes-
and carnelian, replaced the more stylized forms of
en-chef, deciding instead to ask for drawings and
caillouté (pebbled) and marbré (marbled) decora-
designs from individuals working outside of the
tion used on soft-paste porcelain. Cups and saucers
manufactory. Doing so, he argued, would allow
resembled carved and chiseled forms of stone, seen
him to “renew the forms of the Sèvres manufactory
in an example from around 1804 to 1805 (fig. 62).
which is reproached for not having kept up with the
Painted in rust red shot through with light brown
progress of the arts.”89 Brongniart’s personal connec-
veins and framed by a gilded rim, the surface simu-
tions to the artistic world based in Paris provided
lates the rich effects of porphyry and provides evi-
him with enough confidence that the director was
dence of a gifted porcelain painter nimbly willing
able to issue a public statement declaring the new
his paintbrush to perform a trompe l’oeil play on
status of Sèvres porcelain: “The greatest possible
durability in creating a veined and meaty texture
effort has been made to emulate the antique and
that belies the dainty hard-paste porcelain body it
keep in step with advancing taste. The advice and
covers. Meanwhile, with the service iconographique
work of the most skillful artists in Paris have been
grec gifted to Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s uncle,
turned to account for these different genres.”90
painters conveyed the translucent effects of antique
gemstone cameos within borders that imitated
Digging into the antique past provided the
means for postrevolutionary reinvention. The
lapis lazuli, as if the plates had not been fired but
excavation of classical antiquity brought new per-
carved from an adamantine material (fig. 63).
spective to recent events. Percier, one of Napoleon’s
official architects and a proponent of a more
porate the imitation of natural specimens; Dihl
restrained version of antiquity, supplied designs
had already pioneered the agate-effect porcelain
inspired by recent archaeological discoveries and
vases and wares. However, the reproduction of
the classical monuments he had studied in Rome.
mineral specimens had great personal meaning
Brongniart’s own father also offered a wide variety
for Brongniart, whose pockets had once been
of models for antique-inspired monumental vases,
stuffed with samples he picked up while traipsing
Egyptian-style plates, and a “Paestum” teapot to
through the mountains of France and the British
his son, demonstrating the influence that archi-
countryside in his youth, and who, despite hopes
tects, rather than sculptors, had at Sèvres after the
for a career in the hard sciences (and much to
Revolution.
the chagrin of his mother), had been passed up
91
92
Sèvres was not the first factory to incor-
Alexandre Brongniart
161
Fig. 62 Sèvres Manufactory, cup and saucer, 1804–5. Hard-paste porcelain with enamel decoration and gilding, 7.6 cm (cup diam.), 13.2 cm (saucer diam.). Purchase, The Charles E. Sampson Memorial Fund, and Gift of Mrs. Herbert N. Straus, by exchange, 1989, 1989.295.1, .2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
for academic positions at the Muséum in favor of
for porcelain coincided with less salutary forms
his friend and sometime rival Cuvier and forced
of digging that took place in the aftermath of
to settle instead for a position at Sèvres in order to
the Terror: the burial of the dead. Raw materials
support his family. Nevertheless, Brongniart’s deci-
and corpses often inhabited the same contested
sion to work at Sèvres proved prescient, for there
grounds of the city. The rotting corpse came to
he combined his love of experimentation and field-
replace the figure of Hercules in the postrevolu-
work with the practical aims of state-sponsored
tionary political imaginary of Paris, as the con-
industry. Returning to the wanderlust work of his
crete realities of death supplanted the celebratory
youth, he scoured the local terrain near Sèvres in
festivals and sublime language of nature that had
search of raw material, particularly kaolin, to sup-
formerly reshaped the commemorative spaces
ply the manufactory. The search for local resources
of the city. Overcrowded cemeteries and mass
became even more urgent during the Continental
graves threatened the living with putrid smells
Blockade in 1806, when Napoleon cut off British
and unsightly, heap-like mounds of dead bod-
trade routes and sought to ramp up domestic pro-
ies covered with quicklime. Corpses “saturated”
duction of commercial goods in France.
already overcrowded graves, while former pleasure gardens designed for wealthy speculators, such as the Parc Monceau, became makeshift graveyards.93
Fragile Terrains
As early as 1792, the September Massacres had left behind corpses that had to be quickly buried.
162
Brongniart’s fieldwork exploring the terrains of
Makeshift mass graves scattered across five differ-
Paris in search of raw materials such as kaolin
ent burial sites within the city walls, including the
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 63 Sèvres Manufactory, Jean- Marie DeGault (decorator), plate with cameo portrait of Moschion, 1811–18. Hard-paste porcelain with enamel decoration and gilding, 23.8 cm (diam.). The Charles E. Sampson Memorial Fund, 1989, 1989.84. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Paris catacombs, provided a temporary solution to
make space for the dead.96 A series of government
the problem. One visitor from Bordeaux vividly
reports issued from 1794 to 1796 revealed problems
described a scene where “at every step you can see
of overcrowding and hygiene alongside horrific
94
the hideous and bloody remains of mutilated bod-
burial practices. These dire conditions prompted
ies in open graves. I saw for my part, seven of these
public proposals for new cemeteries and burial
graves, filled with more corpses than they could
grounds that would restore a sense of respect for
hold; the horrifying carts left trails of blood in
the dead.
their wake; the image of death and of the massacre
was present everywhere and in the most terrifying
tine had often overshadowed broader collective
ways.”95 Alongside the disinterment of royal tombs
anxieties about who should be accorded a right
that formed part of the strategy of eliminating the
to be commemorated and publicly mourned and,
memory of France’s despotic past, the question
on a more practical level, where the dead should
of how to commemorate the remains of the dead
be laid to rest. More than factories, cemeteries
after the dissolution of the church became central
presented a major problem for the city with the
to public debates on dechristianization and how to
mounting number of bodies that required burial
The widely publicized deaths by guillo-
Alexandre Brongniart
163
after a succession of violent journées, such as the
government commissioned him to design a new
journée of August 10. Along with the transforma-
cemetery that would eventually become known as
tion of church property into biens nationaux,
Père-Lachaise. He was not the only architect with
cemeteries that had formerly been overseen by the
ideas on how to reshape Paris through its funereal
church gave way to mass graves, which, accord-
spaces. In 1798, Pierre Giraud, an architect for the
ing to Richard Etlin, “contained several hundred
prisons of the Department of the Seine, published
to over a thousand corpses.” As government
a proposal for an unusual cemetery in Les tom-
officials scrambled to find suitable sites for bury-
beaux, ou Essai sur les sépultures (republished in
ing Paris’s dead, proposals were made to create
1801).
vast “fields of rest” where the dead could reside in
tranquil parks that would enable the melancholy
took luxury, it is worth dwelling on his text.
contemplation of death instead of the gruesome
Giraud opened his essay by invoking the Manes,
spectacle of decaying bodies in the middle of the
the ancient Roman spirits of the dead, in order to
street. Provisional cemeteries were established at
exclaim “that all of humanity penetrates into this
Monceau, Clamart, Vaugirard, and the Hôpital
unwavering truth: that any individual who does
de la Charité.98 A new cemetery opened at the
not respect the dead, is close to assassinating the
Place de Clichy, just under Montmartre, in 1798.
living.”100 The architect compared the funeral prac-
Far from offering a picturesque landscape strewn
tices of the ancients and the moderns, followed by
with elegiac ruins, Montmartre quickly became so
a proposal for what he described as a “process for
appalling that in 1802 one official wrote, “This is
dissolving the flesh, cremating [calciner] human
not a cemetery, it is an abyss.” The same year that
bones, converting them into an indestructible
the cemetery at Montmartre opened, the remains
substance, and composing from them medallions
of an animal were recovered in the nearby gypsum
of each individual.”101 Following a brief compari-
quarries. These unusual remains became of central
son of the different burial practices among ancient
interest to Cuvier, who had pondered the discov-
Egyptians and Jews, the author contemplated the
ery of shells, mollusks, and other marine creatures
Roman practice of burying individuals in lav-
in the earthly strata of Paris and its environs.
ish tombs, practicing cremation, and placing the
human ashes in urns “of different materials; they
97
99
164
The public proposals for new burial sites
Because of the macabre ends to which Giraud
reflected a broader shift in the funeral culture of
were of copper, gold, silver, alabaster, porphyry,
the period, from religious monuments intended
marble, and terracotta.”102 Shifting his attention to
to instill fear in the living, toward secular Elysian
modern-day practices, Giraud discusses the burial
fields, where the dead were laid to rest in an
rites of Catholics, Protestants, “Muscovites,” and
“eternal sleep.” Antiquity, despite its invocation as
Muslims, before ending with the North American
a source of stylistic renewal at the Sèvres manu-
Indians, who he claims were far more reveren-
factory in the hands of talented architects and
tial for their dead than what he calls the ultra-
designers, was also tied to visions of death in the
revolutionary modern “Vendales [sic]” of France,
city. In 1804, while Brongniart’s father was busy
who “opened and abandoned tombs, trampled
supplying designs for porcelain to Sèvres, the
underfoot and threw about the sad remains of
Luxury After the terror
Fig. 64 Pierre Giraud, plan of proposed funerary monument, from Essai sur les sépultures, 1801. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Photo: BnF.
your ancestors.”103 The architectural proposal that
the central monument would feature a gallery
concludes the book features a vast burial ground
of glass columns made from human remains
that would encompass a field of rest, including
“taken from the old abandoned cemeteries”; the
a pyramidal furnace in the center, surrounded
remaining columns would be made from the most
by a “hall of immortality,” where the remains of
durable stone (fig. 64).104 Such a project had the
the dead would inspire the living to virtue. The
principal advantage of eliminating “the fear of the
architect suggested three possible sites for new
putrid and pestilential emanations that present
burial grounds—one near the Place de l’Étoile (the
tombs emit, especially mass graves, which were
location of the modern-day Champs Élysées), the
only imagined from ignorance and barbarism.”105
second at the hill of Montparnasse, and the final
one at Buttes-Chaumont near Belleville (then on
of transforming human remains into structural
the outskirts of Paris). Surrounded by a deep pit,
pieces of glass—indicates that the industrial arts
The material specificity of Giraud’s project—
Alexandre Brongniart
165
could be harnessed to new commemorative ends.
more literal sense, the city’s foundations pro-
Giraud’s proposal was actually based on the ideas
vided the fertile site upon which scientists such as
of the German chemist Johann Joachim Becher,
Cuvier and Brongniart could hypothesize about
who had argued before the Revolution that
ancient and alternative histories that predated
“human remains could be saved from the hor-
the arrival of its human inhabitants and human
rors of putrefaction by being transformed into a
dramas, and prove such theories by sampling the
beautiful, imperishable, luminous glass.”
106
Inspired
ter with a consideration of Cuvier and Brongniart’s
sented to the public by a founder named Gautier,
most significant collaborative work, Essai sur la
the chemist Dufourni allegedly undertook the
géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, for
experiment of transforming human remains into
the ways in which it resituated porcelain within
glass around 1796, just two years before the Paris
a broader landscape where both natural history
porcelain manufacturer Dihl began his trials for
and human catastrophe formed part of the same
creating a new method of making stained glass.
fragmented and ruinous composition.
Solid glass columns, or what could be described as
an architecture of transparency (one, by the way,
rons de Paris resulted from fieldwork that Cuvier
long predating Le Corbusier’s fetishistic invocation
and Brongniart had undertaken to map the earthly
of glass as the medium of modern architecture)
terrain around Paris beginning in 1806, enlisting
functioned in this instance as a substitution for the
the help of Cuvier’s brother in surveys undertaken
corporeal metaphors of the living body politic that
during the weekends. The publication included the
had fueled the festive language of revolutionary
most important part of their research, the “geog-
regeneration. However unrealizable, Giraud’s uto-
nostic map,” and ideal sections that represented
pian project reveals the genuine anxiety of those
the findings of their extensive fieldwork. The large
who experienced the events of the Revolution in
map included in the volume shows the area around
seeking to process its physical and unavoidable
Paris color coded to represent different geological
remainders and incorporate them into monuments
formations (plate 29). For example, a blue wash
of lasting permanence (one might also add here
represented gypsum deposits, such as the small
the uncanny resonance between Giraud’s proposal
ringed section of Montmartre, just north of Paris,
and the glass sculpture of Marie-Antoinette made
while the yellow signaled limestone. The light
by Pierre Haly).
orange indicated areas where gypsum beds con-
107
166
earth around them. Thus, I want to end this chap-
by the ideas of Becher, which had been pre-
Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des envi-
For those living through the uncertainties of
tained fossils. Each colored portion represented
the postrevolutionary period, Paris clearly served
a section that had been surveyed, with the team
as the threshold site where the living encountered
moving outward from Paris; uncolored sections
the phantasmagorical projections and fantasies
were areas that remained to be fully mapped.
of the dead, where desires for the fulfillment of
utopian visions of transparency and regenera-
unusual succession of terrains, which included
tion commingled with the horrific spectacle of
fossil deposits of freshwater shells and seashells,
open mass graves and landscapes of ruin. In a
as well as “the bones of completely unknown
Luxury After the terror
In the Essai, the authors wrote that Paris’s
terrestrial animals,” provided a remarkably rich
where marine life had flourished in a basin now
source for providing knowledge on “the last
populated with humans. Such remains provided
revolutions that concluded the formation of our
evidence of a Paris that had been covered with suc-
continents.”108 At a glance, the geographical map
cessive bodies of water and marine creatures that
of Paris could be seen as part of a broader impe-
were once alive but now extinct (fig. 65).
rial project to map France and bring its expand-
ing colonial territories under ideological control,
and Brongniart’s pioneering fieldwork is the fact
much as engineering maps played an instrumental
that, at the very moment they were surveying the
role in Napoleon’s military campaigns. Some
deeper geological strata of the city, the spectacle
cartographic endeavors, such as the monumental
of death and the human history of revolution
achievement of mapping Upper and Lower Egypt
had reshaped the outermost layers of Paris. What
in the Description de l’Egypte, constituted proleptic
Cuvier and Brongniart were after is a mapping
pictorial conquests that took place on paper in lieu
of time, of prior histories of life and destruction
of real territorial acquisitions. However, Cuvier
knowable only by the fragmentary traces they
and Brongniart’s maps contrast with the repre-
left behind. As Rudwick writes, “their imagined
sentational matrix of Napoleonic cartography by
picture of successive seas . . . did not portray the
translating the familiar territory around Paris into
inexorable. . . . Rather it was a geohistory just as
a completely foreign world. This is especially the
unpredictable, complex, and contingent as the tur-
case with the long foldout plate featuring sections
bulent political history that both authors had lived
of the grounds that Cuvier and Brongniart had
through during the previous two decades. It was a
surveyed. Although Notre Dame in Paris func-
complex story of successive ‘revolutions’ . . . pieced
tions as the nominal point zero, with locations
together from ‘nature’s documents.’ ”109 The Essai
radiating outward from the center, the landmarks
sur la géographie minéralogique is a record of the
are by no means systematic, with the landscape
disaster.110
fractured into different locations and represen-
tational formats. Close-ups of Clignancourt and
of a speculative attempt to imagine the city after
Drury are positioned above a sectional view of
it had been reshaped by the political events of the
Fontainebleau, the same forest where Brongniart
Revolution, when porcelain became a fraught site
had once been arrested. Human military conquest
and material of contestation where fragmented
would register as no more than a superficial mark
identities and ideas were worked out in the absence
on the uppermost surface of the section, just as
of the ideological dictates of a sovereign ruler.
the Paris observatory, the forest of Fontainebleau,
As this chapter has sought to argue, porcelain, once
and Versailles are but arbitrary markers floating
divorced from its royal prerogatives, was swept
atop foundations that reach deep into succes-
up into the tide of artistic, economic, and cultural
sive layers of chalk, clay, stone, gypsum, and fine
changes of Paris, a city reshaped by the politics of
sand. Fossil deposits, illustrated with shells and
extinction and regeneration. When read together,
corals that Cuvier and Brongniart had discovered
the porcelain objects made at Sèvres from the
above the gypsum formations, indicate the places
resource deposits caught between the stratigraphic
Among the more prominent elisions in Cuvier
Cuvier and Brongniart’s map of Paris was part
Alexandre Brongniart
167
Fig. 65 Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart, Corps organisés fossiles des couches marines des environs de Paris, plate 2 from Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, 1811. Engraving, 25 × 19 cm. Photo courtesy of David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries.
168
layers of Cuvier and Brongniart’s map registered
Cuvier, thinking about porcelain and geological
a collective desire to visualize and process extinc-
fieldwork together reveals an unlikely episte-
tion, and to see survival after the end of things,
mological practice that supplanted the orderly
much in the way that the revolutionaries promised
realm of collecting: digging. Sources of kaolin
a new beginning after the death of the monarchy.
had to be dug up from the ground in order to
make refined pieces of hard-paste porcelain,
More than any formal characteristics that
shaped the connections between Brongniart’s
just as mapping the invisible hidden parts of the
work at Sèvres and his scientific findings with
earth entailed digging into the earth. Bodies had
Luxury After the terror
to be dug from graves and reburied in cemeter-
desire to exterminate and regenerate, to establish
ies for the public, even as Napoleon’s cultural
new foundations and political authority upon the
advisor Dominique Vivant-Denon orchestrated
unstable and shifting grounds of the recent past.
the unearthing of relics to secure the emperor’s
Perhaps in Cuvier’s obsession with fossil recon-
political destiny. The earth was dug to plant trees
struction and Brongniart’s interest in plumbing the
of liberty. A leveling of all bodies to a humble
depths of Paris’s mineralogical terrain—in other
posture meant to bring the upright body nearer to
words, in their collective search for firm ground
the earth in a gesture toward gleaning, digging is
amid the fragile terrains of Paris—we see an ongo-
also indirectly referenced in the famous image of
ing political urgency that seeks to arrest time even
the beheaded Louis XVI, captioned with the lyrics
as it rewrites the past. In light of this volatile con-
of “La Marseillaise,” declaring that “an impure
text, it might be possible to see pieces of porcelain
blood waters our furrows.” This base action, both
not only as the product of stylistic developments
collectively shared by those participating in the
or the instruments of politeness but as evidence of
Fête de la Fédération and individually practiced
deeper engagements with collective memories
by Brongniart and Cuvier seeking the grounds of
of revolutionary violence. In beholding a cup and
a new theory of the Earth, also represents the fun-
saucer, one also grasps the revolutionary desire for
damental tensions at the heart of the revolutionary
new foundations.
111
Alexandre Brongniart
169
Every source—more exactly, every remnant we transform into a source through our questions—refers us to a history which is either more, less, or in any case something other than the remnant itself. —Reinhart Koselleck
A
fter the Revolution, the luxuries that had once figured amid the great collections of the ancien régime were revived
once more by scholars in the nineteenth century nostalgic for a past that no longer existed. Both the king’s death and the dispersal of royal col-
Coda
lections became interpreted as part of the tragic consequences of the period, a great unmitigated disaster for the national heritage of France that nonetheless made its treasures accessible to a new generation of buyers. In the pages of connoisseurs such as the Goncourt brothers and Baron Jean Charles Davillier, the world of splendor was recuperated once more, indicating the singular power that curiosity and the quest for novelty had in the development of art in the course of the eighteenth century. Though the discovery of each rare bibelot or trouvaille in the crowded spaces of the antique shops vividly captured in the novels of Balzac warranted excitement, the world of collecting was also entrenched in the deadly language of nostalgia and the impossible longing for the past.1
Dispersal and disinheritance were not only
the inevitable parts of a tragedy but also a vital aspect of the dialectics of revolutionary culture; ultimately, this complex period of history has lasting ties to our own world, forming a common but deeply contested cultural inheritance. Dispossession became part of the political matrix at the end of the eighteenth century, reshaping identities in ways as equally powerful as the collecting and acquisition of luxury had done in
the ancien régime. Removed from the context of
personal toilet sets to dining vessels, the goldsmith
ownership and possession, singular objects became
Martin-Guillaume Biennais furnished the impe-
vehicles for alternative meanings beyond signs of
rial retinue with objects of gold and silver, which
taste or personal wealth. They became, to quote
sought to surpass the rituals of the ancien régime.
Reinhart Koselleck’s statement at the beginning of
this coda, “remnants” of the past translated into
as the authority and ultimate arbiter of taste came
sources of history. To think about luxury after
undone in the wake of the Revolution. While
the Terror means not only to consider it in terms
Napoleon built institutions and administra-
of fashion and newness, or the historical revivals
tions with greater bureaucratic ferocity than the
that permeated the production of goods in the
monarchy, a nagging sense of inauthenticity crept
early nineteenth century, but to contemplate how
into every attempt to reassert order. Critics of
luxury became tied to a language of endings and
the regime, such as Benjamin Constant and René
extinction.
de Chateaubriand, viewed the very newness of
Napoleonic power as the source of its illegitimacy.
Can a world of luxury survive without its
distinguished patrons, especially royal ones such
The language of novelty, once the preserve of
as Louis XVI? This is the question I have posed
princely patrons and cultivated taste in the ancien
in the book by exploring the ways in which new
régime, became a source of hypocrisy. Standing
beginnings for luxury and its makers emerged in
before the temporary facade that had been hast-
the wake of dispersal and disinheritance. In focus-
ily built by the architects Percier and Fontaine
ing on this particular set of individuals and their
for Napoleon’s coronation at Notre Dame, one
search for new markets, I do not mean to argue
observer marveled at the multiplicity of symbols
that the patronage of luxury objects came to a
and decorations at the same time that he was left
complete end. Such an assertion is belied by the
disgusted: “my curiosity was more actively excited
resurgence of decorative art objects that Napoleon
by the strangeness of all that I saw, by the multi-
commissioned as he sought to establish a new
plicity, the variety, the minutiae and stiffness of
imperial court and strengthen the central author-
details. . . . I had a profound aversion and disgust
ity of the French state. Averse to the old, Napoleon
for falsehood, and all I saw was falsehood and
demanded that everything be made new. The impe-
hypocrisy.”3 While Napoleon sought to trans-
rial government helped to revive the silk industry
fer the language of regeneration to the renewal of
in Lyon by commissioning new furnishing fabrics
the luxury industry, a literary tradition emerged
for the former royal palaces it occupied, even as a
that valorized worn, faded, and ruined things,
number of the old silks stored in the former Garde-
including Christianity itself.4 Chateaubriand thus
Meuble de la Couronne, which had been made for
attacked the new regime from the protective space
Marie-Antoinette, found their way into imperial
of the tomb, celebrating the superstitious ritu-
palaces such as Fontainebleau. Working at the
als of Christianity and writing his memories from
revived Sèvres porcelain manufactory, Brongniart
“beyond the grave.”5
supplied staggering services and table displays to
convey the opulence of the imperial court. From
forms. Instead of providing a neat ending to the
2
172
Nonetheless, the mythic status of the patron
Coda
The remnants of history could assume many
tangle of individual narratives and objects that
child projecting himself into the image cast on
this book has pursued, I conclude with an unas-
the wall, enacting a Freudian family romance by
suming object that nonetheless distills the idea of
rejecting his own neglectful parents and imagin-
luxury as a dialectical engagement with the past.
ing himself as the secret inheritor of royal lineage.
The fan chosen here is an example from 1795 that
All sorts of fantasies abound in this implement of
is mounted in ivory. At the center of the pleated
fashion, which functioned as a popular form of
leaf, covered with small sequins that sparkle when
royalist propaganda. Both containing and mimick-
the folded surface is manipulated, is a vignette that
ing the projective cast of the magic lantern, the
contains a couple gazing at a void cast upon the
fan demonstrates how royalist imagery could be
wall by a child adroitly working a magic lantern
hidden in a variety of innocuous objects produced
(plate 30). Dressed as a fashionable couple in the
in Directory France. A semicircular object excised
style of a Merveilleuse and Incroyable, the scene
from a sheet of paper that was folded and placed
appears to feature a bourgeois family enjoying a
on a tractable mount, the multiple meanings of the
lighthearted amusement within the comfortable
fan were not always apparent but were inscribed
confines of a domestic space. Holding the fan
within its material registers, requiring intense
up to the light in a gesture mimicking the man
scrutiny by the holder and the beholder of the
with the spectacles, one can see the portraits of
image. The small family looks at the spectacle of
Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and the dauphin
the past from a removed but proximate distance,
materialize from the paper blank spot encircled
savoring the pleasures of the moment as survivors
by a pansy, or fleur de pensée. Encountering these
of history.
6
spectral historical figures, one pictures the small
Coda
173
Introduction
Notes
1. On furniture as a form of state ideology, see Auslander, Taste and Power. Curiously, the Revolution does not figure largely in her narrative. 2. See Comay, Mourning Sickness; Fritzsche, Specters of History; and Dodman, What Nostalgia Was. 3. Bordes and Michel, Aux armes et aux arts; Clark, “Painting in the Year Two”; Crow, Emulation; Lajer-Burcharth, Necklines; Grigsby, Extremities. Subsequent scholars have focused on the work of David’s pupils. See, for example, O’Brien, After the Revolution. 4. Dowd, Pageant-Master of the Republic. 5. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre. 6. See Siegfried, “Visual Culture of Fashion.” See also Porterfield and Siegfried, Staging Empire. 7. Dubin, Futures and Ruins; Freund, Portraiture and Politics; Halliday, Facing the Public; Taws, Politics of the Provisional; Reichardt and Kohle, Visualizing the Revolution. 8. Quoted in McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 106. 9. See Panzanelli and Preti-Hamard, Circulation des oeuvres d’art. 10. On the history of “salvage architecture,” see Harris, Moving Rooms. 11. On Morris’s purchases in Paris, see Schreider, “Gouverneur Morris.” 12. See Naginski, “Object of Contempt,” 32–53. See also Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, 36–37. 13. See, for example, Hellman, “Furniture.” 14. See Hellman, “Joy of Sets.” 15. On the discourse of luxury during the Enlightenment, see Provost, Luxe. 16. See Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV. 17. Scott, Rococo Interior; Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets. 18. For a synopsis of luxury in Europe, see Berg and Clifford, Consumers and Luxury. 19. Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue. 20. On collecting the French school of paintings in prerevolutionary France, see Bailey, Patriotic Taste. 21. Quoted in McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 108. For the selection of objects at the original opening on August 10, 1793, see Catalogue des objets, especially 104–20.
22. McClellan, Inventing the Louvre, 109. On Lebrun and a Sèvres porcelain garniture, see Moon, “Sèvres Elephant Garniture.” 23. Tackett, Coming of the Terror, 3. On the question of how to end the Terror, see Baczko, Ending the Terror. 24. On this work, see Moon, “Mirabeau in Biscuit.” 25. See Spang, “Frivolous French,” who interprets the Directory period myth of the “frivolous French” in terms of an emergence of a liberal tradition in France. 26. Scurr, Fatal Purity, 293. 27. Ibid. 28. On the fluctuating meanings of luxury, see Coquery and Bonnet, Commerce du luxe. 29. Coquery, “Luxury Goods Beyond Boundaries,” 286. 30. Ibid., 290. 31. See Ross, Communal Luxury. 32. Taws, “Trompe l’Oeil and Trauma.” 33. On the question of a French consumer revolution, see Kwass, “Consumption and the World of Ideas.” 34. On connoisseurship and collecting in the context of drawings, see Smentek, Mariette. 35. Gaillard, “Commissaires-priseurs,” 183–85. 36. Stammers, Purchase of the Past; and see Davis, Tastemakers. 37. Stammers, Purchase of the Past, 31. 38. Walczak, Artistische Wanderer, 8. 39. See in particular Coquery et al., Progrès de l’industrie perfectionnée. 40. See Rosenberg and Yang, “Introduction.” 41. Hunt, Family Romance, 3. 42. Comay, Mourning Sickness, 79. 43. On the question of Haiti and Hegel’s philosophy of history, see Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. 44. See Crow, Emulation. 45. See Lemonnier-Mercier, “Travaux de Pierre-Adrien Pâris.” 46. Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue, 192. 47. Walczak, Artistische Wanderer, 8, as in the case of the widow of the painter Pierre Danloux. 48. See Jordanova, “Medical Mediations”; and Lajer- Burcharth, Necklines. 49. Brongniart, Traité des arts céramiques. 50. I use “subject position” here in a deliberate nod to Stuart Hall, who reminds us that culture or identity is not about fixed essence, but about taking
176
Notes to Pages 7–23
strategic positions and the politics of location. See Hall, “Who Needs ‘Identity’?”
Chapter 1
1. Gaillard, “Vente du mobilier royal,” 91. 2. Beurdeley, “Ventes du mobilier royal,” 115. 3. Ibid., 117. 4. Stammers, Purchase of the Past, 4. 5. Verlet, French Royal Furniture, 168. See Beurdeley, France à l’encan. 6. Verlet, French Royal Furniture, 54. 7. On Žižek’s notion of the canceled Kantian subject in the context of finance capitalism and the slave trade in eighteenth-century England, see Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 53–59. 8. On Charles I’s collection, see Beurdeley, Trois siècles de ventes publiques, 19–25. 9. Gaillard, “Vente du mobilier royal,” 91. 10. For a discussion of the royal family’s move from Versailles to the Tuileries in 1789, see Forray- Carlier, “Famille royale aux Tuileries,” 17–51. 11. Battestini, “Famille royale aux Tuileries,” 65. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 66. 14. Quoted in Standen, “Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier,” 258. The full commission included four tapestries of The Four Continents with two matching canapés (a type of sofa) and twelve armchairs, along with four tapestries of the arts, sciences, agriculture, and commerce, with two matching canapés and twelve armchairs. 15. Ibid., 260–61. 16. Quoted in Beurdeley, France à l’encan, 192. 17. Jacqué, “Wallpaper in the Royal Apartments,” 2–3. 18. Ibid., 7. 19. Battestini, “Famille royale aux Tuileries,” 66. 20. Ibid., 11. 21. See Trey, Madame Élisabeth, 66–67. 22. On the theatricality of the execution, see Huet, Rehearsing the Revolution. 23. This is the version in Jordan, King’s Trial, 217–21. 24. Walzer, Regicide and Revolution, 13. 25. Ibid., 5. 26. Hours, “Bonne mort des rois,” 33–41. 27. Sabatier, “Roi est mort,” 22.
28. Ibid., 25. 29. Hardman, Life of Louis XVI, 232–33. 30. Fureix, France des larmes, 205. 31. [Louis XVI], Testament de notre bon roi, 1. 32. Ibid., 9. 33. Ibid. 34. See, for example, Weber, Terror and Its Discontents, especially 71–74, and Baecque, Body Politic, 29–75, where he emphasizes that much of the work to discredit the king’s body took place prior to the Revolution. 35. Jordan, King’s Trial, 220. On royal silhouettes in the revolutionary period, see Goudie, “Smuggled Silhouettes,” 40–55. 36. Jordan, King’s Trial, 220. 37. Wahnich, In Defense of the Terror. 38. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 6:320n. 39. Ibid. 40. For the chapel that was ultimately built by Napoleon’s architect, Fontaine, see Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, 155–62. 41. Fureix, France des larmes. 42. Taws, “Dauphin and His Doubles,” 72–100. 43. Convention nationale, Recueil des décrets, 3:502. 44. Blaufarb, Great Demarcation, 3. 45. Ibid., 4. 46. Morcillo, “Staging Power and Authority,” 154. 47. Ibid., 162. 48. Beurdeley, Trois siècles de ventes publiques, 26. 49. Ibid., 29. 50. Alcouffe, “Ventes de Louis XV,” 47. 51. Ibid. 52. Wall, “English Auction.” 53. On Saint-Aubin’s catalog drawings, see Bailey, “ ‘Indefatigable, Unclassifiable Art Lover,’ ” 75–102. 54. Beurdeley, Trois siècles de ventes publiques, 57. 55. Cabinet du duc d’Aumont, xv. 56. Beurdeley, Trois siècles de ventes publiques, 53. 57. Ibid., 56. 58. Gaillard notes that the items from the royal residences were as follows: 17,000 pieces from Versailles, 5,900 from Marly, 10,000 from Saint- Cloud, and 6,700 from Bellevue. See Gaillard, “Commissaires-priseurs,” 185. 59. Ibid. 60. Convention nationale, Recueil des décrets, 3:504. 61. Ibid., 3:506.
62. Ibid., 3:507–8. 63. Clerc, “Mobilier à l’heure du choix,” 94. 64. On the prince de Condé garniture, see Moon, “Sèvres Elephant Garniture.” 65. Archives départementales des Yvelines et de l’ancienne Seine-et-Oise 2Q707, 7/2770–2773, “8bre-16 du 1er mois au 23 du meme 1er mois de l’an II.” 66. See Freddolini and Helmreich, “Inventories, Catalogues.” 67. Gaillard, “Vente du mobilier royal,” 94. 68. Ibid. 69. Beurdeley, “Ventes du mobilier royal,” 116. 70. On Treuttel and Würtz, see de Bellaigue, Louis XVI Service, 3–4. 71. Beurdeley, “Ventes du mobilier royal,” 117. 72. Ibid. 73. Prevost-Marcilhacy, “Grandes collections anglaises,” 186. See Davis, Tastemakers. 74. Beurdeley, France à l’encan, 99. 75. Ibid., 184–91. 76. See Kisluk-Grosheide, “French Royal Furniture.” 77. Verlet, French Royal Furniture, 138. Although Verlet did not find the precise sum that Riesener received for the secretaire, it is likely that he was paid around 8,000 livres for the delivery in 1780. For the history of a related secretaire and commode by Riesener, see Rieder, “Royal Commode and Secretaire by Riesener,” 83–96. See also Buckland, “Karriere eines Kunstschreiners.” 78. Beurdeley, France à l’encan, 80. 79. Verlet, French Royal Furniture, 8–11. 80. Beurdeley, “Ventes du mobilier royal,” 120. 81. Ibid. 82. Grimm, Mémoire historique, 43. 83. Cotté, “Comte d’Angiviller,” 145. On d’Angiviller’s ties to court capitalists, see Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue, 155–56. 84. See McClellan, Inventing the Louvre. 85. Cotté, “Comte d’Angiviller,” 160. 86. Ibid., 145. 87. Morris, Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, 2:87. 88. Ibid., 2:86. 89. On this chair, see Kisluk-Grosheide, “French Royal Furniture,” 22–24. 90. On the private collectors who helped to shape the history of the French Revolution, see Stammers, Purchase of the Past.
Notes to Pages 24–37
177
91. Stammers, “Bric-a-Brac of the Old Regime,” 296. 92. Davillier, Vente du mobilier, 259. 93. Ibid., 3–4. 94. I thank John Whitehead for the connection. 95. See Hellman, “Joy of Sets.” 96. In the print context, see Reichardt and Kohle, Visualizing the Revolution. 97. On archives, history, and memory, see Steedman, Dust.
Chapter 2
1. Beurdeley, France à l’encan, 24–25. 2. Ibid., 24. 3. Lefuel, “Fastes de l’ère impériale,” 253. 4. Ibid., 252–53. 5. On the debates about monetary policy, see Spang, Stuff and Money. 6. See ibid. 7. De Brosses, Du culte des dieux fétiches, 53; quoted in Naginski, “Object of Contempt,” 32. On de Brosses and the concept of fetishism, see also Leonard, “Fetishism and Figurism.” 8. Taws, “Trompe l’Oeil and Trauma.” 9. On Beckford’s purchases in revolutionary France, see Eschapasse, “William Beckford in Paris,” 99–115. 10. Christie’s Paris, November 4, 2015, “Collection du Comte Thierry de Ganay lot 519.” 11. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 195. 12. See Cole, Cellini, 15–42. 13. For a Northern Renaissance goldsmith’s work in the devotional context, see van der Velden, Donor’s Image. 14. Nocq, Poinçon de Paris, vol. A–C, 33. Though his name is at times spelled Henri, I have retained the version used by Carlier. 15. Dennis, French Domestic Silver, 9. 16. Ibid., 9–10. 17. Ibid., 10–11. 18. Ibid., 12. On the rampant cases of fraud, see Bimbenet-Privat and de Fontaines, Datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne, 66. 19. Markezana, Poinçons français, 12. 20. Ibid., 21. 21. Bimbenet-Privat and de Fontaines, Datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne, 160–61.
178
Notes to Pages 37–53
22. Saule, “Quand Versailles était meublée d’argent,” 27. 23. On the complexities of global capital and the distribution of silver in the early modern period, see Flynn and Giráldez, “Cycles of Silver.” 24. Ibid., 54. 25. Ibid., 55. 26. Bottineau, “Retour à l’antique,” 203–4. 27. Ibid., 204. 28. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 195. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 196. 31. On Robert-Joseph Auguste’s sculpture models, see Le Corbeiller, “Robert-Joseph Auguste.” 32. Lebreton, “Notice historique,” 28. 33. Campbell, “Jean-Guillaume Moitte,” 7. 34. Gramiccini, Jean-Guillaume Moitte, 1:2. 35. Quoted in Campbell, “Jean-Guillaume Moitte,” 232. 36. Gramiccini, Jean-Guillaume Moitte, 1:2. 37. Lebreton, “Notice historique,” 30. 38. Of the 531 drawings from the workshop of Odiot stamped with “collection J. B. C. Odiot” held at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris, approximately 120 are from the workshop of Auguste and attributed to Moitte. See Gay-Mazuel, Odiot, 32. 39. For a discussion of the drawing, see Myers, French Architectural and Ornament Drawings, 1–2. 40. See Arizzoli-Clémentel, “Percier and Biennais Album,” 195–201. 41. See Myers, French Architectural and Ornament Drawings, 6, cat. no. 4. 42. Lebreton, “Notice historique,” 30. 43. See Vignon and Baulez, Pierre Gouthière. 44. Eschapasse, “William Beckford in Paris,” 28. See also Baker and Snodin, “William Beckford’s Silver,” 738–39. 45. Baker and Snodin, “William Beckford’s Silver,” 739. 46. Quoted in ibid., 736. 47. For Willes Maddox’s painting of Beckford on his deathbed, see Ostergard, Hewat-Jaboor, and McLeod, William Beckford, 404, cat. no. 150. 48. Jones, European Silver, 253 and 254. The goldsmith’s English market possibly initiated the anglicized spelling of his name as “Henry.” 49. On the prints of the Fête de la Fédération and their role in transforming the experience of revolutionary festivals, see Taws, Politics of the Provisional, 71–96.
50. On the aesthetic significance of commercial shop signs in ancien régime France, see Wrigley, “Between the Street and the Salon,” 45–67. 51. The workshop was destroyed in 1801. See Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 210n30. 52. Lefuel, “Fastes de l’ère impériale,” 251. 53. Markezana, Poinçons français, 71. 54. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 196. 55. See Dion-Tenenbaum, Orfèvre de Napoléon, 12–13. 56. See Le Corbeiller, “Platinum Bowl by Janety.” See also Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, especially chapter 4. 57. See Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 119. 58. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 210n13. 59. Mercier, Argent des révolutionnaires, 7. 60. Ibid., 9. 61. Ibid., 74. 62. Spang, Stuff and Money, 107. 63. Spang, “Ghost of Law,” 7. 64. Ibid., 13. 65. Spang, Stuff and Money, 146. 66. Auguste, Moyens de faciliter l’échange, 3: “il faut un numéraire réel, adapté aux circonstances, et qui se prête par ses subdivisions au paiement des plus petites denrées.” 67. Ibid., 4. In contrast to the interest-bearing mortgage, the hypothèque refers to the ancien régime practice of borrowing money against fixed property used as collateral. See Spang, Stuff and Money, 35. 68. Auguste, Observations sur le projet. 69. Auguste, Moyens de faciliter l’échange, 6. 70. Bimbenet-Privat and de Fontaines, Datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne, 67. 71. Auguste, Observations de Henri Auguste. 72. Bimbenet-Privat and de Fontaines, Datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne, 66–67. 73. On alchemy’s relationship to artisanship in the early modern period, see Smith, Body of the Artisan. 74. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 447. 75. See, for example, Gauthier, Précis pour le citoyen Gauthier, the 1795 case that Gauthier, a founder of metal scraps, brought against Auguste. 76. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 210n13. 77. Freeman, Compromising of Louis XVI, 21. 78. Ibid., 50. 79. Melville, Life and Letters of William Beckford, 179–80.
80. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 196. 81. Ibid., 199. 82. On intellectual property, inventors, and patents during the Revolution, see Galvez-Behar, République des inventeurs; and Demeulenaere- Douyère, “Inventeurs en Révolution.” 83. Gramiccini, Jean-Guillaume Moitte, appendix, 270. 84. Bordes, Représenter la Révolution, 88. On the Salon of 1798, see Halliday, Facing the Public. 85. The painting remains in a private collection. 86. See Adam and Gérard, Collection des portraits historiques. 87. Quoted in Salmon, Peintre des rois, 15. 88. Ibid. 89. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 451. 90. Nocq, Poinçon de Paris, vol. 1, 34–35. 91. Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” 212. 92. On the sociability of science in Enlightenment France, see Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility. 93. For a partially published version of the inventory, see Carlier, “Aspects inédits,” appendix, 212–14. 94. See the note from C. Beche, January 10, 1975, “Coeur reliquaire exhumé lors des travaux d’agrandissement de l’église de l’Hay-les-Roses,” Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne 1977/03/29. 95. Scurr, Fatal Purity, 275. 96. Given the subject matter, it is probable that this sculpture was made later than the date of 1790 suggested by the glass dealer Sylvie L’Hermite- King, who sold the piece to the Corning Museum of Glass. See the online catalog of the Corning Museum of Glass, accession number 2003.3.35. 97. For the history of heart-shaped reliquaries and the heart in general, see Nagle, Civilization du coeur. 98. Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne 1977/03/29. 99. On the legal changes to family structures during the Revolution, see Desan, Family on Trial. 100. On Simonides and memory, see Yates, Art of Memory. 101. Carson, Economy of the Unlost, 78. 102. Schechter, “Gothic Thermidor.” 103. On the discovery of human remains at the Chapelle expiatoire, see Taws, “Bones of Contention.” 104. On Deseine’s bust of Gabrielle Danton, see Syamken, “Der Geist der Natur.” On the sculptor’s
Notes to Pages 54–64
179
work during the Revolution, see Bordes, “Mirabeau de Claude-André Deseine,” 61–66. 105. On the use of boxes in Georgian England, see Vickery, Behind Closed Doors. 106. See Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, 221. 107. For another mystery box by John Harris, circa 1820/1, owned by Beckford’s agent Gregorio Franchi, see Alcorn, English Silver, 2:270–73. 108. Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 192. Beckford’s own wealth depended on family plantations in Jamaica. See Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste, especially 131–37. 109. Dion-Tenenbaum, “Orfèvrerie Parisienne,” 42–44. 110. Carlier, “Henry Auguste,” 202. 111. The pair of tureens and stands in the Royal Collection by Auguste provides some sense of the splendor he was called upon to create for Napoleon. See Jones, European Silver, 252–53, cat. no. 151. Tommaso di Somma, marchese di Circello, who served as ambassador for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to Paris, originally commissioned the pieces from 1786 to 1793, roughly the same dates that Beckford was in Paris. 112. Murgia, “Crafty Link,” 48–49. 113. Quoted in ibid., 45. 114. Bouilhet, Orfèvrerie française, 59–60. See also Dion-Tenenbaum, “Orfèvrerie Parisienne,” 45–46. 115. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 448. 116. Bouilhet, Orfèvrerie française, 60. 117. Dion-Tenenbaum, “Orfèvrerie Parisienne,” 46. 118. On notions of reputation, social credit, and regard in the ancien régime, see Crowston, Credit, Fashion, Sex. 119. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 451. 120. Nicholas William to William Beckford, Paris, October 10, 1797, in Melville, Life and Letters of William Beckford, 197. 121. In ibid., 248. 122. Viljoen, “Laocoon’s Snakes,” 22. 123. Carlier, “Henry Auguste,” 207. 124. Ibid., appendix 2, 216–17. 125. Ibid., 208. 126. Ibid. 127. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 452. 128. Ibid., 453.
180
Notes to Pages 64–73
129. Archives de Paris Dq10/645 dossier 3363, Paris le 32 mai 1819. This document also summarizes the lawsuit that took place between the royal treasury and the proprietor of Auguste’s home in Paris over the 22,500 livres from the auctioning of Auguste’s seized goods. 130. Saunier, “Artiste romantique,” 453. 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid., 455. 133. Archives de Paris Dq10/645, dossier 3363, Paris le 18 fevrier 1819, No. 12221 A 4 “Reclamation des sieurs Auguste.” 134. Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 3. 135. Ibid., 17. 136. On Boulton’s coins, see Tungate, “Matthew Boulton and the Soho Mint.” 137. I thank Joseph Guerdy Lissade for the helpful information regarding the genealogical records. On Haitian money, see his Guide de numismatique haïtienne. 138. See James, Black Jacobins. 139. Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, 13. 140. Ibid., 35–36.
Chapter 3
1. Cléry, Captivité de Louis XVI, 33–34. 2. Quoted in Scurr, Fatal Purity, 243. 3. Dugourc and Jaume, Nouvelles cartes à jouer, 1. 4. Ibid. Victoria and Albert Museum, E.409–2005. The Victoria and Albert catalogue erroneously attributes the design to the cartier Jacques Coissieux, which is unlikely, given that Dugourc and Jaume applied for the brevet d’invention. For other attributions, see Depaulis, Cartes de la Révolution, 20. 5. Taws, “Wargaming,” 56. 6. See Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc”; Gastinel- Coural, “Notes et documents”; and Benito Garcia, “ ‘Intrépide’ fabricant.” Junquera’s resesarch in the Spanish royal archives established the evidence of Dugourc’s role at the court of Charles IV; see Junquera, Decoración y el mobiliario. 7. Scott, Becoming Property, 283. 8. On passports, see Taws, Politics of the Provisional; on Robespierre’s last signed document, see Huet,
Mourning Glory, 107–24. On paper’s place in the production of structures of knowledge, see Gitelman, Paper Knowledge. 9. Kafka, Demon of Writing, 41. 10. Ibid., 16. 11. On Hubert Robert’s role in these projects, see Dubin, Futures and Ruins. 12. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 1:224. 13. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 101. On “court capitalists,” see Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue, 154–59. 14. Woodbridge, “Bélanger en Angleterre,” 11–12. 15. Archives nationales de France R1 315 “Note des ouvrages,” in Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 15. 16. Ibid. 17. On the École royale gratuite de dessin, see Leben, Object Design. 18. On how the complexities of architect-patron relations manifest in eighteenth-century drawings, see Fuhring, Design into Art. 19. Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 12. 20. Ibid., 14. 21. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 101. 22. Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 14. 23. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 101. 24. Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 12–13. 25. Archives nationales de France T/258/5-6, especially the dossier marked “Succession de mon père, poursuittes, de ses créanciers renseignments des dettes passives.” For more on the papers of Jozeau, see Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 17–18. 26. Crow, Emulation. 27. Belhaouari, “Jean Démosthène Dugourc et le dessin d’histoire,” 67–78. 28. On Dugourc’s training under Saint-Aubin, see Gastinel-Coural, “Jean-Démosthène Dugourc.” 29. See Jones, Carey, and Richardson, Saint-Aubin Livre de caricatures, 8–9. See also Mauriès, Sur les papilloneries humaines. 30. Shovlin, Political Economy of Virtue, 154. 31. Castelluccio, Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 231. 32. Ibid., 236. 33. Ibid. 34. See González-Palacios, “Daguerre.” 35. Sterne, À l’ombre de Sophie Arnould, 2:186–87. 36. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 101.
37. For examples of Dugourc’s sketches for Pernon, see Soieries de Lyon, cat. nos. 70, 71, 73, and 78. 38. Camille Pernon to Jean-Démosthène Dugourc, October 5, 1781, Archives nationales de France T/258/5-6. The drawing proposed by Dugourc of the eagle balancing a vase on its head is found on the verso of the letter. 39. Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 17. 40. For a succinct account, see Beckman, How to Ruin a Queen. 41. On the jewel cabinet’s iconography and Marie- Antoinette’s identity, see Sheriff, “Cradle Is Empty.” 42. On this episode, see Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs, chapter 4. 43. On the body of Marie-Antoinette as a generative subject, see Goodman, Marie-Antoinette. 44. Guichard, “Amateurs and the Culture of Etching,” 137. 45. Musée historique des Tissus de Lyon, De Dugourc à Pernon, 54, cat. no. 5. 46. See Gilet, Giovanni Volpato. 47. Dacos, Découverte de la Domus Aurea, 10. 48. Cellini, Autobiography, 63. 49. See, for example, Stein, “Amédée Van Loo’s Costume turc.” 50. Quatremère de Quincy, Architecture, vol. 1, 73. 51. Ibid., vol. 1, 74. 52. Chastel, Grottesque. 53. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 16:76–77. 54. On the history of artists’ signatures as grafitti, see Guichard, Graffitis, 121–38. 55. On the use of loops in Renaissance medals, see Syson, “Holes and Loops.” 56. Wagner, Mother Stone, 124. 57. Winnicott, “String,” 51. The illustration is taken from Winnicott, “Child Psychiatry Case,” 350. 58. On the historical imaginary of the nineteenth century, see Bann, Inventions of History. On the literary theory of the obsolete, see Orlando, Obsolete Objects. 59. Wyss, Hegel’s Art History, 10. 60. Thomas, Wicked Queen, 138. 61. Bougault, “Vaupalière,” 150–55. 62. Gastinel-Coural, “Notes et documents,” 79. 63. See Jolly, Fürstliche Interieurs, 142–47. It is highly unlikely that Picard alone would have been able to
Notes to Pages 74–92
181
design such a complex pattern, particularly given the inclusion of the figures, which were a specialty of Dugourc’s arabesques. 64. Castelluccio, Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 248. 65. Gastinel-Coural, “Notes et documents,” 71. 66. Ibid., 79. 67. See Wrigley, Politics of Appearances. 68. Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety, 747. 69. Cobb, Death in Paris, 17. 70. Godineau, “Tricoteuses,” 102. 71. Ibid., 101. 72. Jolivet, Nouveaux moyens. 73. Weil, “Assignats de soie.” 74. Gastinel-Coural, “Notes et documents,” 71. 75. Longfellow, “Silk Weavers.” 76. Prudhomme, Dictionnaire des individus, 2:13. 77. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 103. 78. Faroult, Hubert Robert, 404. 79. Ibid., 408. 80. Dugourc, “Autobiographie,” 102. 81. Taws, Politics of the Provisional, 75. 82. On the creation of letterhead designs in the revolutionary period, see Boppe and Bonnet, Vignettes emblématiques. 83. Quoted in Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 27. 84. See Jacqué and Pastiaux-Thiriat, Joseph Dufour, 21. For possible examples of Cietty’s wallpaper made on behalf of Bélanger, see Fuhring, François Joseph Bélanger. 85. On a copyright dispute over wallpaper between Jacques-Louis Bance and Pierre Simon in 1802, see Scott, Becoming Property, 297–300. 86. On Cietty, another specialist of arabesque wallpaper during the Revolution, see Baulez, “De Belanger à Réveillon.” 87. Quoted in Velut, “Between Invention and Production,” 61. 88. On the complexity of printing assignats, see Taws, Politics of the Provisional, especially 34–35. 89. Baulez notes that the lease for the space at the hôtel de Longueville was dated January 26, 1792, while Anisson-Dupéron signed a private agreement for the partnership with Dugourc and frère Gouron on January 31, 1793. However, Depaulis indicates that the wallpaper business ended in March 1793. This means that there was an overlap between Dugourc’s participation in the wallpaper enterprise and his
182
Notes to Pages 92–109
playing card partnership with Jaume. See Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 43n80. 90. I am grateful to Paul Harper for his help in researching Dugourc’s card business. 91. Depaulis, Cartes de la Révolution, 20. 92. Scott, “Chardin and the Art of Building Castles,” 41. 93. Dugourc and Jaume, Nouvelles cartes à jouer, 2. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid., 3. 96. Ibid., 4. 97. Author correspondence with Thierry Depaulis, May 4, 2016. 98. On the importance of language and linguistic signs in revolutionary politics, see Rosenfeld, Revolution in Language. 99. Dugourc, “Demande de gratification,” 103. 100. Sancho, “Arts at the Court of Charles IV,” 27. 101. For examples of the same fabric panel in other collections, see Jolly, Fürstliche Interieurs, 178–82. 102. Charles IV appointed Dugourc on August 7, 1802. See Sancho, “Arts at the Court of Charles IV,” 27n40. 103. Baulez, “Imaginations de Dugourc,” 30. 104. On Dugourc’s failures as an architect in Spain, see ibid., 30. 105. Jordán de Urríes y de la Colina, Real Casa del Labrador, 61. 106. Rijdt, De Watteau à Ingres, 243. See also Baarsen, Paris, 1650–1900, 445. 107. Rijdt, De Watteau à Ingres, 243. 108. See Renouvier, Histoire de l’art pendant la Révolution, 374–81. 109. On the decorative arts during the Restoration, see Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, Âge d’or des arts décoratifs.
Chapter 4
1. Quoted in Murat, Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon, 23. 2. Arasse, Guillotine and the Terror, 55. 3. Quoted in Murat, Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon, 33. On the emergence of psychiatry in nineteenth-century France, see Goldstein, Console and Classify. 4. Ibid., 34.
5. On Fontaine’s Chapelle expiatoire, see Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, coda. 6. Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.866–69; Marx, Poverty of Philosophy. 7. On carvers’ tools and the carving process, see Esterly, Lost Carving. 8. Baxandall, Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, 32. 9. Ibid., 206. 10. On the work of the Dutch sculptor, see Esterly, Grinling Gibbons. 11. On the subject of color in sculpture, see Syson, “Polychromy and Its Discontents.” 12. Streeter, “Two Carved Reliefs,” 60. 13. Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 59. 14. See Bonafoux, Behind the Scenes in Versailles, 156–57. 15. Archives nationales de France O 1 1171, quoted in Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 59. 16. The carving was not sold during the revolutionary auctions but was instead placed on reserve. In 1821, it was moved to the apartment of the duchesse d’Angoulême (Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette’s oldest and only surviving daughter) at the Petit Trianon and was sent to the mobilier national and on to Valenciennes, before it was eventually restored to Versailles. 17. Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 59. 18. Auricchio, “Pahin de la Blancherie’s Commercial Cabinet,” 47–48. 19. On the establishment of the Salon de la Correspondance in 1779, see Michel, Commerce du tableau, 155–59. 20. Maze-Sencier, Livre des collectionneurs, 2:661. 21. See Kisluk-Grosheide and Munger, Wrightsman Galleries, 88–89, cat. no. 32. 22. See Sotheby’s New York, January 30, 2014, lot 134. 23. Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent to the comte d’Angiviller, quoted in Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 60. 24. Académie de France à Rome, Correspondance des directeurs, 14:421, no. 8518. 25. Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 62. 26. Quoted in ibid. 27. Streeter, “Two Carved Reliefs,” 53–54. 28. Ibid., 57. 29. Ibid. 30. For a summary of the 1791 constitution, see Jones, Longman Companion, 66–69.
31. Streeter, “Two Carved Reliefs,” 59. 32. For an image of Démontreuil’s work, see Jordán de Urriés y de la Colina, Real Casa del Labrador, 171, fig. 128. On Greuze, see Fried, Absorption and Theatricality. 33. Maze-Sencier, Livre des collectionneurs, vol. 1, 662. 34. On a particularly unusual floral portrait of the Révellière-Lépeaux family by Van Spaendonck and the trompe l’oeil painter Piat-Joseph Sauvage, see Freund, Portraiture and Politics, 173–75. 35. On the political uses of allegory during the reign of Louis XIV, see Harth, Ideology and Culture. 36. For a discussion of Kant’s bog walk, see Neer, “Connoisseurship and the Stakes of Style,” 1–26. 37. Not all would agree with the antipoetic nature of wood. See Esterly, Lost Carving. 38. French and Co. stock sheet, Object File, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 39. Walczak, Artistische Wanderer. 40. Jones, Longman Companion, 195–96. See also Rance, “Historiographie de l’émigration,” 356–57. 41. Rance, “Historiographie de l’émigration,” 359. 42. Cotté, “Comte d’Angiviller,” 160. 43. Kerneis, “Aubert Parent,” 63. 44. On the notion of eighteenth-century Switzerland as “Helvetica mediatrix,” see Cook, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany, especially chapter 3. 45. Lavater, Essai sur la physiognomie, 1:vii. 46. Ibid., 1:7. 47. Ibid., 1:22. 48. Getty Research Institute, Lavater, Règles physiognomiques, n.d., n.p. 49. Katz, Franziska von Hohenheim, 71–72, notes that the new title cost the duke 7,096 guilders and 30 kreuzer, which he listed in his account books as “unforeseen expenses.” 50. Ibid., 137. 51. Quoted in Kühn, Ehen zur linken Hand, 252–53. 52. On Lavater’s Denkzeichen, see Müller, Aus Lavaters Brieftasche. 53. I thank Elizabeth Kieffer for her help with the translation of this text. 54. See, for example, Parent, Instruction pour les élèves. 55. Johann Caspar Lavater to Juliane Schaumburg- Lippe, December 3 [X], 1795, in Ochwadt, “Briefwechsel.”
Notes to Pages 109–128
183
56. “Projekt zu einem Monument nach einer Idee des Ministers Lavater,” colored drawing. NLU BU S 1 B 2979, Niedersachsen Federal State Archives, Bückeburg, Germany. If this is indeed the sketch for the monument to Juliane’s mother, the date has possibly been erroneously listed as 1793, since she did not die until 1795. 57. Ochwadt, “Briefwechsel,” 85. 58. See Bindman, Ape to Apollo. 59. Percival, Appearance of Character, 159. 60. Ibid., 175. 61. Arasse, Guillotine and the Terror, 36. On the physionotrace in postrevolutionary portraiture, see Taws, “Dauphin and His Doubles,” 83. See also Mazeau, “Portraits de peu.” 62. See Stoffler, German Pietism. 63. Bergengruen, “Physiognomy of Inner Bodies,” 42. 64. Ibid., 43. 65. Ibid. 66. For the distinctions between migration, emigration, and displacement during the revolutionary period, see Walczak, Artistische Wanderer, especially 13–16. For a reprint of the list of émigrés from 1793 compiled by the National Convention, see Vallée, Émigrés de 1793. 67. Lavater, Letter to the French Directory, 9. 68. See Taws, “Dauphin and His Doubles.” 69. On these questions in the context of history, see Koselleck, Futures Past.
Chapter 5
1. On dealers and the English taste for French luxury in the nineteenth century, see Davis, Tastemakers. 2. De Bellaigue, Louis XVI Service, 8. 3. Ibid. 4. See d’Albis, “Two Controversial Decisions.” 5. For a comprehensive list of Brongniart’s publications, see the bibliography in Ostergard and Préaud, Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, 399–400. 6. See, for example, Richardson, “Unlikely Citizens?” 7. Brunet and Préaud, Sèvres, 30–32. 8. On caillouté patterns and natural history in ancien régime France, see Carey, “Mineralogy, Microscopes, and Caillouté,” 118–31. 9. Brunet and Préaud, Sèvres, 32.
184
Notes to Pages 128–142
10. On the science of Sèvres hard-paste and soft-paste clay bodies and glazes, see d’Albis, “Sèvres.” 11. On the longer history of a “Golden Age” and the concept of “natural republicanism” in France before and after the Revolution, see Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 13–14. 12. De Bellaigue, Louis XVI Service, 13. 13. Ibid., 4. De Bellaigue notes that there are discrepancies between the two primary documents recording delivery of the service. 14. On porcelain and diplomacy, see Cassidy-Geiger, Fragile Diplomacy. 15. Schwarz and Munger, “Gifts of Meissen Porcelain,” 145. 16. Quoted in Perrin-Khelissa, “De l’objet d’agrément,” 160. 17. See Blaufarb, Great Demarcation. 18. Perrin-Khelissa, “De l’objet d’agrément,” 161. 19. See Richardson, “Unlikely Citizens?,” 136–37. 20. See ibid., figs. 65 and 74–84. 21. For a more lavish example of a revolutionary cup and saucer painted by two ancien régime artists who worked on the Louis XVI dinner service, see de Bellaigue, French Porcelain, 3:869–71, cat. no. 236. For another cup decorated by Chanou, see Roditi, “Minute Sèvres Revolutionary Gobelet.” 22. Sèvres did, however, continue making services during the revolutionary period primarily for the export market. See Peters, Sèvres Plates, especially 1:208–53, which offers a fascinating glimpse of the change in clientele for Sèvres decorated plates from 1789 to 1801. 23. See de Bellaigue, French Porcelain, 3:926–27, cat. no. 260, which features a similar déjeuner set with painted decoration from the early nineteenth century. 24. These evocative descriptors were used by members of the commission tasked with the revolutionary auctions. See Gaillard, “Commissaires-priseurs,” 184. 25. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, especially 106–10. See also Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 231–49. 26. Quoted in Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 110–11. 27. Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 249–50. 28. Richardson, “Unlikely Citizens?,” 148, 179.
29. I am grateful to Matthew Shaw for his help in deciphering the sundial’s system. 30. On the difference between temps vrai (real time) and mean time, see Landes, Revolution in Time, 121–22. 31. See Alder, Measure of All Things. 32. Shaw, Time and the French Revolution, 128. 33. On the cultural politics of the calendar, see Perovic, Calendar in Revolutionary France. 34. On nature and extinction, see Kolbert, Sixth Extinction. 35. Taws, Politics of the Provisional, 80. 36. Weber, Terror and Its Discontents, 67. 37. See Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class, 96–98. 38. Quoted in Miller, Natural History of Revolution, 1. 39. Ibid., 1–2. 40. Lagacey, Making Space for the Dead, 33–34. 41. De Launay, Brongniart, 60. 42. Ibid., 61. 43. Ibid., 64–67. 44. Ibid., 51; De Launay notes that Brongniart volunteered in the national guard in 1789 while still a student. 45. Ibid., 70. 46. Ibid., 52. 47. Rudwick, “Cuvier, Brongniart, William Smith,” 25–26. 48. Ibid., 26. 49. De Launay, Brongniart, 3; on the voluntary scientific societies, see Belhoste, Paris Savant, 234–37. 50. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, 334. On Cuvier’s life in the intellectual milieu of postrevolutionary Paris, see Outram, Georges Cuvier. 51. On the Cuvier-Geoffroy debates in the context of romantic science, see Tresch, Romantic Machine, 160–67. 52. De Launay, Brongniart, 73. 53. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, 354. 54. Ibid., 360–61. On the military’s contributions to French natural history during the Revolution, see Lipkowitz, “ ‘Elephant in the Room.’ ” On the distinction between mammoths and elephants, see Cohen, Fate of the Mammoth. 55. On wonder and collections, see Daston and Park, Wonder. See also Bredekamp, Lure of Antiquity. 56. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, 363. 57. Though Cuvier’s lecture was published in 1796, he later published a more comprehensive account
of his findings in Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles. 58. Schechter, Genealogy of Terror. 59. Plinval de Guillebon, “Manufacture de porcelaines,” 177. 60. On the surtout de table purchased by Morris, see Detweiler, George Washington’s Chinaware, 107–18. On the service purchased from Moustier, see in the same book, 123–34. On another service made by the factory for the American market, see Frelinghuysen, “Paris Porcelain Dinner Service,” 283–90. 61. Quoted in Schreider, “Gouverneur Morris,” 480. 62. See Moon, “Stormy Weather,” 112–27. 63. Plinval de Guillebon, Porcelain of Paris, 49. 64. Delamétherie, Journal de physique, 355. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 361. 67. Ibid., 358. 68. Plinval de Guillebon, Porcelain of Paris, 51. 69. On porcelain and preservation during the Bourbon Restoration, see Harkett, “Medium as Museum.” 70. On Stubbs’s work with Wedgwood, see Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter. On Wedgwood in France, see Edwards, “Dominique Daguerre and Josiah Wedgwood.” 71. On revolutionary portraiture, see Freund, Portraiture and Politics; and Halliday, Facing the Public. 72. See Guinot, Jacques Barraband. 73. I thank Cyrille Froissart for this information. 74. Froissart believes that Joseph Chavane de Dalmassy, a naturalist, purchased the porcelain plaque at the 1798 Salon. Froissart, auction report for November 17, 2018, sale at Briscadieu, Bordeaux, 6. 75. See Schechter, “Gothic Thermidor” and Lajer- Burcharth, Necklines. 76. Quoted in Plinval de Guillebon, “Manufacture de porcelaines,” 185. 77. On Coste in the context of architectural manuals in the early nineteenth century, see Garric, Recueils d’Italie, 123–24. 78. Coste and Marchand, Cours d’études de paysages, “Explication des planches,” (n.p). 79. Ibid., plate 39. 80. Michel Alquier to Tallyrand, Aranjuez, 20 Floréal, year VIII (May 10, 1800), quoted in Bottineau, Art de cour dans l’Espagne, 189.
Notes to Pages 143–159
185
81. See, for example, de Bellaigue, French Porcelain, 1133–35, cat. nos. 340–42 biscuit figures, probably purchased as a group by François Benois from Dihl et Guérhard for George IV. 82. For a summary of the coup, see Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, 129–30. 83. Préaud, “Brongniart as Administrator,” 43. 84. Ibid., 44. 85. Ibid. 86. Brongniart officially ended soft-paste production at Sèvres on 1 Germinal, year IX (March 22, 1801); Préaud, “Brongniart as Administrator,” 53. 87. D’Albis, “Two Controversial Decisions,” 150. 88. See Moon, Architecture of Percier and Fontaine, 130. 89. Préaud, “Brongniart as Administrator,” 45. 90. Ibid. 91. See Blix, From Paris to Pompeii. 92. See Préaud, “Catalogue of the Exhibition,” 167, cat. no. 2. 93. Etlin, Architecture of Death, 249–50. 94. See Lagacey, Making Space for the Dead, 31–32. 95. Quoted in ibid., 31. 96. See Clarke, Commemorating the Dead. 97. Etlin, Architecture of Death, 229. 98. Ibid., 250. 99. Ibid., 251. 100. Giraud, Les tombeaux, preface.
186
Notes to Pages 159–173
101. Giraud, Les tombeaux, title page. 102. Ibid., 7. 103. Ibid., 16. 104. Ibid., 18. 105. Ibid., 20. 106. Etlin, Architecture of Death, 255. 107. Fourcroy and Mulot, Notice, 13. 108. Cuvier and Brongniart, Essai sur la géographie minéralogique, 2. 109. Rudwick, Bursting the Limits of Time, 483. 110. See Blanchot, Writing of the Disaster. 111. Porterfield and Siegfried, Staging Empire.
Coda
1. On Daviller, see Stammers, “Historian, Patriot and Paragon of Taste.” On the culture of nostalgia in postrevolutionary France, see Dodman, What Nostalgia Was. See also Fritzsche, “Specters of History.” 2. See the furnishing fabrics in Jolly, Fürstliche Interieurs, 164–71. 3. Quoted in Lentz, Sacre de Napoléon, 78. 4. See Orlando, Obsolete Objects. 5. See Huet, Culture of Disaster, especially chapter 6. 6. Falluel, “Éventails révolutionnaires,” 34–39.
Manuscript and Archival Sources
Bibliography
Archives de Paris. “Auguste, Henry ancien fermier des affinages de Paris et de Lyon,” correspondence relating to the seizure and liquidation of Auguste’s assets, 1810–20, D. Q 10 645 dossier 3363. Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne. C. Beche, “Coeur reliquaire exhumé lors des travaux d’agrandissement de l’église de l’Hay-les-Roses,” 1977/03/29. Archives départementales du Val-de-Marne. J. Pellissier, Le Directeur départemental des Impôts and C. Beche, Le Directeur des Services d’Archives du Val-de-Marne, “Procès-verbal,” document officially transferring the heart of Madeleine-Julie Coustou to the departmental archives of Val-de-Marne, February 9, 1978, 1977/03/29. Archive des Yvelines et de l’ancienne Seine-et-Oise, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. “Château de Versailles, État décadaire des ventes de meubles,” 1793–94, 2Q 70–71. Archives nationales, Paris. “Inventaire des papiers du C. Jozeau, condamné. Pièces relatives à la succession Dugourc et aux interessés à la ventillation des fosses d’aisance. Cotte 26,” Papiers Jozeau, T/258/1–2. Getty Research Institute, Special Collections, Los Angeles. Johann Caspar Lavater, Règles physiognomiques, ou Observations sur quelques Traits caractéristiques. Manuscrit pour mes amis, 1795, manuscript copy dedicated to Aubert Parent, 850007. Metropolitan Museum of Art, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department. “French and Co. Stocksheet,” curatorial file, 1971.206.39.
Published Sources
Académie de France à Rome. Correspondance des directeurs de l’Académie de France à Rome, avec les surintendants des bâtiments. Edited by Anatole de Montaiglon and Jules Marie Joseph Guiffrey. 18 vols. Paris: Charavay frères, 1887. Adam, Pierre Michel, and François Gérard. Collection des portraits historiques de M. Le Baron Gérard, gravées à l’eau forte par M. Pierre Adam. Paris: Urbain Canel, 1826.
Albis, Antoine d’. “Sèvres 1756–1783: La conquête de la porcelain dûre.” Dossiers de l’Art 54 (January– February 1999): 1–116. ———. “Two Controversial Decisions by Alexandre Brongniart.” In Ostergard and Préaud, Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, 149–56. Alcorn, Ellenor. English Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2 vols. Boston: MFA, 2000. Alcouffe, Daniel. “Les ventes de Louis XV.” In Charles, De Versailles à Paris, 47–51. Alder, Ken. The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World. New York: Free Press, 2002. Alpaugh, Micah. Non-violence and the French Revolution: Political Demonstrations in Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Arasse, Daniel. The Guillotine and the Terror. Translated by Christopher Miller. New York: Viking, 1990. Arizzoli-Clémentel, Pierre. “The Percier and Biennais Album in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.” Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1140 (1998): 195–201. Auguste, Henri. Moyens de faciliter l’échange des assignats proposés au Comité des monnoies. Paris: L’auteur, 1790. ———. Observations de Henri Auguste, sur le Mémoire de la Commission générale des monnoies, concernant la refonte des espèces présenté à la Convention nationale, le 30 octobre 1792, l’an premier de la République. Paris: Champigny, 1792. ———. Observations sur le projet proposé à l’Assemblée nationale de couler le métal de cloches sans le decomposer, pour en faire une monnoie courante. Paris: L’auteur, 1791. Auricchio, Laura. “Pahin de la Blancherie’s Commercial Cabinet of Curiosity.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 1 (2002): 47–48. Auslander, Leora. Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Baarsen, Reinier. Paris, 1650–1900: Decorative Arts in the Rijksmuseum. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2013. Baczko, Bronislaw. Ending the Terror: The French Revolution After Robespierre. Translated by Michel Petheram. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
188
Bibliography
Baecque, Antoine de. The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770–1800. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Bailey, Colin. “ ‘The Indefatigable, Unclassifiable Art Lover’: Saint-Aubin’s Curiosité.” In Gabriel de Saint- Aubin: 1724–1780, edited by Colin Bailey, 75–102. Paris: Somogy Art and the Musée du Louvre, 2007. ———. Patriotic Taste: Collecting Modern Art in Pre- Revolutionary Paris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Baker, Malcolm, and Michael Snodin. “William Beckford’s Silver: I, II.” Burlington Magazine 122, no. 932 (November 1980): 735–48, 820–34. Bann, Stephen. The Inventions of History: Essays on the Representation of the Past. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Battestini, Marc. “La famille royale aux Tuileries et l’installation du mobilier.” In Charles, De Versailles à Paris, 65–70. Baucom, Ian. Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Baulez, Christian. “De Belanger à Réveillon: Ignace et Pierre Cietty. Décors et papiers peints.” Les Cahiers d’histoire de l’art 16 (2018): 45–54. ———. “Les Imaginations de Dugourc.” In Musée historique des Tissus de Lyon, De Dugourc à Pernon, 11–43. Baxandall, Michael. The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Beckman, Jonathan. How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair. London: John Murray, 2014. Belhaouari, Luis. “Jean Démosthène Dugourc et le dessin d’histoire dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle.” Histoire de l’Art 20 (December 1992): 67–78. Belhoste, Bruno. Paris Savant: Capital of Science in the Age of Enlightenment. Translated by Susan Emanuel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Bellaigue, Geoffrey de. French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. 3 vols. London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 2009. Louis XVI Service. ———. The Louis XVI Service. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Benito Garcia, Pilar. “ ‘L’intrépide’ fabricant de soieries Juan Antonio Miquel et l’introduction en Espagne du métier à tisser muni du mécanisme Jacquard en 1818.” In Mélanges offerts à Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel, edited by Raphaël Masson, 52–59. Versailles: Artlys, 2009. Berg, Maxine, and Helen Clifford, eds. Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Bergengruen, Maximilian. “The Physiognomy of Inner Bodies: Hermetic and Sensualist Patterns of Argument in the Work of Johann Caspar Lavater.” In Physiognomy in Profile: Lavater’s Impact on European Culture, edited by Melissa Percival and Graeme Tytler, 39–51. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. Beurdeley, Michel. La France à l’encan, 1789–1799: Exode des objets d’art sous la Révolution. Fribourg, Switzerland: Office du livre, 1981. ———. Trois siècles de ventes publiques. Fribourg, Switzerland: Office du livre, 1988. ———. “Ventes du mobilier royal de Versailles.” In Charles, De Versailles à Paris, 115–29. Bimbenet-Privat, Michèle, and Gabriel de Fontaines. La datation de l’orfèvrerie parisienne sous l’Ancien Régime: Poinçons de jurande et poinçons de la Marque, 1502–1792. Paris: Commission des travaux historiques de la Ville de Paris, 1995. Bindman, David. Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century. London: Reaktion, 2002. Blanchot, Maurice. The Writing of the Disaster. Translated by Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Blaufarb, Rafe. The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Blix, Göran. From Paris to Pompeii: French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Bonafoux, Pascal. Behind the Scenes in Versailles. Paris: Éditions du Chêne Hachette, 2009. Boppe, Auguste, and Raoul Bonnet. Les vignettes emblématiques sous la révolution. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1911. Bordes, Philippe. “Le Mirabeau de Claude-André Deseine.” La Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 26, no. 2 (1976): 61–66.
———. Représenter la Révolution: Les Dix-Août de Jacques Bertaux et de François Gérard. Lyon: Fage; Vizille: Musée de la Révolution française, 2010. Bordes, Philippe, and Régis Michel, eds. Aux armes et aux arts! Les arts de la Révolution, 1789–1799. Paris: Adam Biro, 1988. Bottineau, Yves. L’art de cour dans l’Espagne des Lumières, 1746–1808. Paris: De Boccard, 1986. ———. “Le retour à l’antique.” In Frégnac, Grands orfèvres, 203–4. Bougault, Valérie. “La Vaupalière, une demeure hors du temps.” Connaissance des arts (September 2008): 150–55. Bouilhet, Henry. L’orfèvrerie française au XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Paris: H. Laurens, 1910. Bredekamp, Horst. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art, and Technology. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1995. Brongniart, Alexandre. Traité des arts céramiques ou des poteries: Considérées dans leur histoire, leur pratique et leur théorie. 2 vols. Paris: Béchet jeune, 1844. Brosses, Charles de. Du culte des dieux fétiches. Paris: Fayard, 1988. Brunet, Marcelle, and Tamara Préaud. Sèvres: Des origines à nos jours. Fribourg, Switzerland: Office du livre, 1978. Bruson, Jean-Marie, and Anne Forray-Carlier, eds. Au temps des merveilleuses: La société parisienne sous le Directoire et le Consulat; 9 mars–12 juin 2005, Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris. Paris: Paris musées, 2005. Buckland, Frances. “Die Karriere eines Kunstschreiners: Johann Heinrich Riesener am Hofe Ludwigs XVI.” Kunst und Antiquitäten 6 (1980): 22–40. Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Campbell, Richard. “Jean-Guillaume Moitte: The Sculpture and Graphic Art, 1785–1799.” PhD dissertation, Brown University, 1982. Carey, Juliet. “The Riches of the Earth: Mineralogy, Microscopes, and Caillouté Patterns on Sèvres Porcelain.” French Porcelain Society Journal 5 (2015): 118–31.
Bibliography
189
Carlier, Yves. “Aspects inédits de la carrière de l’orfèvre Henry Auguste (1759–1816).” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français 2001 (2003): 195–219. Carson, Anne. Economy of the Unlost (Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Castelluccio, Stéphane. Le Garde-Meuble de la Couronne et ses intendants du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Editions de CTHS, 2004. Catalogue des objets contenus dans la Galerie du Muséum français, Décreté par la Convention nationale, le 27 juillet 1793 l’an second de la République Française. Paris: De l’Imprimerie de C.-F. Patris, Imprimeur du Muséum national, [1793]. Cellini, Benvenuto. Autobiography. Translated by John Symonds. New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1910. Charles, Jacques, ed. De Versailles à Paris: Le destin des collections royales. Paris: Centre Culturel du Panthéon, 1989. Chastel, André. La grottesque. Paris: Le Promeneur, 1988. Christie’s Paris. Collection du Comte Thierry de Ganay, 4 November 2015. Paris: Christie’s, 2015. Clark, T. J. “Painting in the Year Two.” Representations 47 (Summer 1994): 13–63. Clarke, Joseph. Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Clerc, Marianne. “Le mobilier à l’heure du choix révolutionnaire: La notion d’oeuvre d’art en question.” In Musées perdus, musées retrouvés: L’Expérience de l’Italie et de la France: Actes de la journée d’étude du 22 avril 1999, edited by Sandra Costa and Maria Luigia Pagliani, 91–99. Grenoble: Centre de Recherche et d’Histoire de l’Italie et des Pays Alpins, 2000. Cléry, Jean-Baptiste. La captivité de Louis XVI, relation qui s’est passé dans la tour du Temple, ou Journal de Cléry, suivi des dernières heures de Louis XVI. Tournai: J. Casterman, 1848. Cobb, Richard. Death in Paris: The Records of the Basse- Geôle de la Seine, October 1795–September 1801, Vendémiaire Year IV–Fructidor Year IX. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Cohen, Claudine. The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth, and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
190
Bibliography
Cole, Michael. Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Comay, Rebecca. Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Convention nationale. Recueil des décrets de la Convention nationale, avec les principaux discours qui y ont été lus, les proclamations du pouvoir exécutif provisoire, et une liste double des députés à la Convention nationale. Vol. 3. Nancy: H. Haener, Year II [1793]. Cook, Alexandra. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: The Salutary Science. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, 2012. Coquery, Natacha. “Luxury Goods Beyond Boundaries: The Parisian Market During the Terror.” In A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe: Display, Acquisition and Boundaries, edited by Johanna Ilmakunnas and Jon Stobart, 283–302. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Coquery, Natacha, and Alain Bonnet, eds. Le commerce du luxe: Production, exposition, et circulation des objets précieux du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Paris: Mare et Martin, 2015. Coquery, Natacha, Jörg Ebeling, Philippe Sénéchal, and Anne-Perrin Khelissa, eds. Les progrès de l’industrie perfectionnée: Luxe, arts décoratifs, et innovation de la Révolution française au Premier Empire. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Midi, 2016. Coste, Jean-Baptiste, and J. Marchand. Cours d’études de paysages ou Choix des plus belles fabriques et vues d’Italie avec arbres, plantes, rochers, terreins, etc, etc, dessinés d’après nature. Paris: J. Marchand, 1809. Cotté, Sabine. “Le comte d’Angiviller à Versailles à la veille de la Révolution.” Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de l’art français 2010 (2011): 141–67. Crow, Thomas. Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Crowston, Clare Haru. Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. Cuvier, Georges. Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes: Où l’on rétablit les caractères de plusieurs espèces d’animaux que les révolutions du globe paroissent avoir détruites. 4 vols. Paris: Deterville, 1812.
Cuvier, Georges, and Alexandre Brongniart. Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, avec une carte géognostique, et des coupes de terrain. Paris: Baudouin, 1811. Dacos, Nicole. La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance. London: Warburg Institute, 1969. Daston, Lorraine, and Katherine Park. Wonder and the Orders of Nature, 1150–1750. New York: Zone, 1998. Davillier, Charles. La Vente du mobilier du Château de Versailles pendant la Terreur: Documents inédits. Paris: Chez A. Aubry, 1877. Davis, Diana. The Tastemakers: British Dealers and the Anglo-Gallic Interior, 1785–1865. Los Angeles: Getty, 2020. Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Delamétherie, Jean-Claude, “Rapports sur les couleurs pour la porcelain de Dihl.” Journal de physique, de chimie, d’histoire naturelle et des arts, avec des planches en taille-douce 46 (Nivôse, year VI [1798]): 354–61. De Launay, Louis. Les Brongniart: Une grande famille de savants. Paris: G. Rapilly, 1940. Demeulenaere-Douyère, Christiane. “Inventeurs en Révolution: La Société des inventions et découvertes.” Documents pour l’histoire des techniques 17, no. 1 (2009): 19–45. http://dht.revues.org/483. Dennis, Faith. Three Centuries of French Domestic Silver: Its Makers and Marks. 2 vols. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1960. Depaulis, Thierry. Les cartes de la Révolution: Cartes à jouer et propagande; 17 novembre 1989–12 février 1990, Ville d’Issy-les-Moulineux, Musée français de la carte à jouer. Issy-les-Moulineux: Musée français de la carte à jouer, 1989. Desan, Suzanne. The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Detweiler, Susan Gray. George Washington’s Chinaware. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982. Dion-Tenenbaum, Anne. L’orfèvre de Napoléon: Martin- Guillaume Biennais. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003. ———. “L’orfèvrerie Parisienne.” In Napoléon Ier, ou, La légende des arts, 1800–1815, edited by Fleur
Pellerin and Malgorzata Omilanowska, 42–47. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux–Grand Palais, 2015. Dodman, Thomas. What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Dowd, David Lloyd. Pageant-Master of the Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1948. Dubin, Nina. Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2013. Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Dugourc, Jean-Démosthène. “Autobiographie.” In Musée historique des Tissus de Lyon, De Dugourc à Pernon, 101–2. ———. “Demande de gratification par J. D. Dugourc, au marquis de Lauriston, Ministre de la Maison du Roi, 1823.” In Musée historique des Tissus de Lyon, De Dugourc à Pernon, 103–4. Dugourc, Jean-Démosthène, and Urbain Jaume. Nouvelles cartes à jouer de la République française. Paris: Authors, 1793. Edelstein, Dan. The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Edwards, Diana. “Dominique Daguerre and Josiah Wedgwood.” The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, 70–71 (2012–13): 43–48. Egerton, Judy. George Stubbs, Painter: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2007. Eschapasse, Anne. “William Beckford in Paris, 1788– 1814: ‘Le Faste Solitaire.’ ” In Ostergard, Hewat- Jaboor, and McLeod, William Beckford, 99–115. Esterly, David. Grinling Gibbons and the Art of Carving. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1998. ———. The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making. New York: Viking Press, 2012. Etlin, Richard. The Architecture of Death: The Transformation of the Cemetery in EighteenthCentury Paris. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984. Falluel, Fabienne. “Éventails révolutionnaires.” L’Oeil 404, no. 34 (March 1989): 34–39.
Bibliography
191
Faroult, Guillaume, ed. Hubert Robert, 1733–1808: Un peintre visionnaire. Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, Louvre éditions, 2016. Flynn, Dennis O., and Arturo Giráldez. “Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity Through the Mid- Eighteenth Century.” Journal of World History 13, no. 2 (2002): 391–427. Forray-Carlier, Anne. “La famille royale aux Tuileries.” In La famille royale à Paris: De l’histoire à la légende, organized by Musée Carnavalet, 17–51. Paris: Éditions des musées de la Ville de Paris, 1993. Fourcroy, Antoine-François comte de, and François Valentin Mulot. Notice sur la vie et les travaux de Lavoisier: Précédée d’un discours sur les funérailles, et suivie d’un ode sur l’immortalité de l’âme. Paris: Feuille du Cultivateur, year IV [1796]. Freddolini, Francesco, and Anne Helmreich. “Inventories, Catalogues and Art Historiography: Exploring Lists Against the Grain.” Journal of Art Historiography 11 (2014). https://arthistoriography .files.wordpress.com/2014/11/freddolini_helmreich _introduction.pdf. Freeman, Andrew. The Compromising of Louis XVI: The Armoire de Fer and the French Revolution. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1989. Frégnac, Claude, ed. Les grands orfèvres de Louis XIII à Charles X. Paris: Hachette, 1965. Frelinghuysen, Alice Cooney. “A Paris Porcelain Dinner Service for the American Market.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 37 (2002): 283–90. Freund, Amy. Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014. Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting in the Age of Diderot. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Fritzsche, Peter. “Specters of History: On Nostalgia, Exile, and Modernity.” American Historical Review 106, no. 5 (2001): 1587–1618. Fuhring, Peter. Design into Art: Drawings for Architecture and Ornament; The Lodewijk Houthakker Collection. London: P. Wilson; New York: Distributed by Harper & Row, 1989. ———. François Joseph Bélanger. Paris: Didier Aaron, Galerie de Bayser, 2006.
192
Bibliography
Fureix, Emmanuel. La France des larmes: Deuils politiques à l’âge romantique (1814–1840). Paris: Champ Vallon, 2009. Gaillard, Rémi. “Les commissaires-priseurs et les ventes révolutionnaires du mobilier royal.” Bibliothèque de L’École des Chartes 170, no. 1 (2012): 183–207. ———. “La vente du mobilier royal sous la Révolution: Le dysfonctionnement administrative en question.” In La Collégialité et les dysfonctionnements dans la décision administrative, edited by Jean-Michel Leniaud and François Monnier, 90–96. Paris: École pratique des hautes études, 2011. Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. Un âge d’or des arts décoratifs, 1814–1848: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 10 octobre–30 décembre 1991. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991. Galvez-Behar, Gabriel. La République des inventeurs: Propriété et organisation de l’innovation en France (1791–1922). Rennes: PUR, 2008. Garric, Jean-Philippe. Recueils d’Italie: Les modèles italiens dans les livres d’architecture français. Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga, 2004. Gastinel-Coural, Chantal. “Jean-Démosthène Dugourc.” Grove Art Online. https://doi-org.metlibrary .idm.oclc.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article .T023978. ———. “Notes et documents.” In Soieries de Lyon: Commandes royales au XVIIIe S. (1730–1800), organized by Musée historique des tissus, 28–103. Lyon: Musée des Tissus / Musées de la Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Lyon, 1988. Gauthier, Joseph G. Précis pour le citoyen Gauthier, fondeur de déchets métalliques à Paris, appellant, contre le citoyen Auguste, ci-devant fermier de l’affinage, à Paris, intimé. France: n.p., 1797. Gay-Mazuel, Audrey. Odiot: Un atelier d’orfèvrerie sous l’Empire et la Restauration. Paris: Musée des arts décoratifs, 2017. Gikandi, Simon. Slavery and the Culture of Taste. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Gilet, Annie, ed. Giovanni Volpato: Les Loges de Raphaël et la Galerie du Palais Farnèse. Milan: Silvana Editoriale; Tours: Musée des Beaux-arts, 2007. Giraud, Pierre. Les tombeaux, ou Essai sur les sépultures, ouvrage dans lequel l’auteur rappelle les coutumes des anciens peuples, cite sommairement celles observées par les modernes, donne les procédés pour dissoudre
les chairs, calciner les ossements humains, les convertir en une substance indestructible et en composer le médaillon de chaque individu, seconde édition revue, augmentée . . . Paris: Jacquin, 1801. Gitelman, Lisa. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. Godineau, Dominique. “Les tricoteuses: Entre histoire et fantasme.” In Amazones de la Révolution: Des femmes dans la tourmente de 1789, edited by Martial Poirson, 100–109. Montreuil: Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2016. Goldstein, Jan. Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. González-Palacios, Alvar. “Daguerre, Lignereux and the King of Naples’s Cabinet at Caserta.” Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1203 (2003): 431–42. Goodman, Dena, ed. Marie-Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. New York: Routledge, 2003. Goudie, Allison. “Smuggled Silhouettes: Opacity and Transparency as Visual Strategies for Negotiating Royal Sovereignty During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.” In Padiyar, Shaw, and Simpson, Visual Culture, 40–55. Gramiccini, Gisela. Jean-Guillaume Moitte (1746–1810): Leben und Werk. 2 vols. Berlin: Akademie, 1993. Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo. Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, baron de. “Mémoire historique sur l’origine et les suites de mon attachement pour l’Impératrice Catherine II, jusqu’au décès de Sa Majesté impériale, par Grimm (1797).” In Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, vol. 1, 15–63. Paris: Garnier frères, 1877–82. Guichard, Charlotte. “Amateurs and the Culture of Etching.” In Artists and Amateurs: Etching in 18th- Century France, edited by Perrin Stein, 136–55. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. ———. Graffitis: Inscrire son nom à Rome XVIe–XIXe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2014. Guinot, Robert. Jacques Barraband: Le peintre des oiseaux de Napoléon Ier. Paris: Guénégaud, 2002. Hall, Stuart. “Who Needs ‘Identity’?” In Questions of Cultural Identity, edited by Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay, 1–17. London: Sage, 1996.
Halliday, Anthony. Facing the Public: Portraiture in the Aftermath of the Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Hardman, John. The Life of Louis XVI. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Harkett, Daniel. “Medium as Museum: Marie- Victoire Jacquotot’s Porcelain Painting and Post- Revolutionary Fantasies of Preservation.” In Time, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France, edited by Iris Moon and Richard Taws, 169–93. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. Harris, John. Moving Rooms: The Trade in Architectural Salvages. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2007. Harth, Erica. Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Hellman, Mimi. “Furniture, Sociability, and the Work of Leisure in Eighteenth-Century France.” Eighteenth- Century Studies 32, no. 4 (1999): 415–45. ———. “The Joy of Sets.” In Furnishing the Eighteenth Century: What Furniture Can Tell Us About the European and American Past, edited by Dena Goodman and Kathryn Norberg, 129–53. New York: Routledge, 2011. Hours, Bernard. “La bonne mort des rois.” In Le roi est mort: Louis XIV—1715, edited by Gérard Sabatier and Béatrix Saule, 33–41. Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2015. Huet, Marie-Hélène. The Culture of Disaster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. ———. Mourning Glory: The Will of the French Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. ———. Rehearsing the Revolution: The Staging of Marat’s Death. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Hunt, Lynn. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ———. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Jacqué, Bernard. “Wallpaper in the Royal Apartments of the Tuileries, 1789–1792.” Translated by Kristel Smentek. Studies in the Decorative Arts 13, no. 1 (2005–2006): 2–31.
Bibliography
193
Jacqué, Bernard, and Georgette Pastiaux-Thiriat, eds. Joseph Dufour: Manufacturier de papier peint. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010. James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1989. Jolivet, Etienne. Nouveaux moyens pour fabriquer des assignats de toute valeur, qu’il sera impossible de contrefaire. N.p: n.d. Jolly, Anna. Fürstliche Interieurs: Dekorationstextilien des 18. Jahrhunderts. Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg- Stiftung, 2005. Jones, Colin. The Longman Companion to the French Revolution. London: Longman, 1995. Jones, Colin, Juliet Carey, and Emily Richardson, eds. The Saint-Aubin Livre de caricatures: Drawing Satire in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012. Jones, Kathryn. European Silver in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen. London: Royal Collection Trust, 2017. Jordan, David P. The King’s Trial: Louis XVI vs. the French Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Jordán de Urríes y de la Colina, Javier. La Real Casa del Labrador de Aranjuez. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2009. Jordanova, Ludmilla. “Medical Mediations: Mind, Body and the Guillotine.” History Workshop 28 (Autumn 1989): 39–52. Junquera, Juan José. La decoración y el mobiliario de los palacios de Carlos IV. Madrid: Sala Editorial, 1979. Kafka, Ben. The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork. New York: Zone, 2012. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. London: Hackett, 1987. ———. The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Katz, Gabriele. Franziska von Hohenheim / Herzogin von Württemberg. Stuttgart: Belser, 2010. Kerneis, Anne-Marie. “Aubert Parent (1753–1835)—Une vie d’artiste.” PhD dissertation, Université de Lille, 1989. Kisluk-Grosheide, Daniëlle. “French Royal Furniture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 63, no. 3 (2006): 1–48.
194
Bibliography
Kisluk-Grosheide, Daniëlle, and Jeffrey Munger. The Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Picador, 2014. Koselleck, Reinhardt. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Translated by Keith Tribe. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Kühn, Joachim. Ehen zur linken Hand in der europäischen Geschichte. Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler, 1968. Kwass, Michael. “Consumption and the World of Ideas: Consumer Revolution and the Moral Economy of the Marquis de Mirabeau.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37, no. 2 (2004): 87–213. Lagacey, Erin Marie. Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780–1830. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa. Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David After the Terror. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Landes, David. Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983. Lavater, Johann Caspar. Essai sur la physiognomie, destiné à faire connoître l’homme et à le faire aimer. 3 vols. The Hague: n.p., 1781–1803. ———. Letter to the French Directory. London: J. Hatchard, 1799. Leben, Ulrich. Object Design in the Age of Enlightenment: The History of the Royal Free Drawing School. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004. Lebreton, Joachim. Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Moitte . . . lue dans la séance publique du 3 octobre 1812. Paris: Au Bureau du Magasin encyclopédique, 1812. Le Cabinet du duc d’Aumont: A Facsimile Reprint of the 1870 Edition Recording the Auction of 1782 with a New Introduction by James Parker. New York: Acanthus, 1986. Le Corbeiller, Claire. “A Platinum Bowl by Janety.” Platinum Metals Review 19, no. 4 (1975): 154–55. ———. “Robert-Joseph Auguste: Silversmith—and Sculptor?” Metropolitan Museum Journal 31 (1996): 211–18.
Lefuel, Olivier. “Les fastes de l’ère impériale.” In Frégnac, Grands orfèvres, 250–69. Lemonnier-Mercier, Aline. “Les travaux de Pierre-Adrien Pâris pour ses amis havrais.” In Les arts des Lumières: Essais sur l’architecture et la peinture en Europe au XVIIIe siècle. Les publications en ligne du GHAMU, Annales du Centre Ledoux, 2019. https://www .ghamu.org/lemonnier-mercier-aline-les-travaux-de -pierre-adrien-paris-pour-ses-amis-havrais. Lentz, Thierry, ed. Le sacre de Napoléon, 2 décembre 1804. Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2003. Leonard, Daniel. “Fetishism and Figurism in Charles de Brosses’s Du culte des dieux fétiches: Natural Historical Facts and Historical Fictions.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 45 (2016): 107–30. Lipkowitz, Elsie. “The ‘Elephant in the Room’: The Impact of the French Seizure of the Dutch Stadholder’s Collection on Relations Between Dutch and French Naturalists.” In Of Elephants and Roses: French Natural History, 1790–1830, edited by Sue Ann Prince, 101–9. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2013. Lissade, Joseph Guerdy. Guide de numismatique haïtienne: Les monnnaies métalliques. Port-au-Prince: Banque de la République d’Haïti, 2015. Longfellow, David L. “Silk Weavers and the Social Struggle in Lyon During the French Revolution, 1789–1794.” French Historical Studies 12, no. 1 (1981): 1–40. [Louis XVI]. Testament de notre bon roi Louis XVI. Paris, 1792–93. Lucretius. De rerum natura. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. London: William Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam, 1924. Mantel, Hilary. A Place of Greater Safety. New York: Picador / Henry Holt, 2006. Originally published 1992. Markezana, Yves. Les poinçons français d’or, d’argent, de platine de 1275 à nos jours. Dourdan: Éditions Vial, 2005. Marx, Karl. The Poverty of Philosophy. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1995. Mauriès, Patrick. Sur les papilloneries humaines. Paris: Gallimard, 1996. Maza, Sarah. Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Mazeau, Guillaume. “Portraits de peu: Le physiognotrace au début du XIXe siècle.” Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle 45 (2012): 35–52. Maze-Sencier, Alphonse. Le livre des collectionneurs. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1886. McClellan, Andrew. Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Melville, Lewis, ed. The Life and Letters of William Beckford of Fonthill (Author of “Vathek”). 2 vols. London: William Heinemann, 1910. Mercier, Alain. L’argent des révolutionnaires: Exposition réalisé du 4 avril au 31 août 1989 . . . Paris: Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, 1989. Mercier, Louis Sébastien. Tableau de Paris. 2 vols. Paris: Mercure de France, 1994. Michel, Patrick. Le commerce du tableau à Paris: Dans la seconde motié du XVIIIe siècle. Villeneuve- d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires de septentrion, 2007. Miller, Mary Ashburn. A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, 1789–1794. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Moon, Iris. The Architecture of Percier and Fontaine and the Struggle for Sovereignty in Revolutionary France. New York: Routledge, 2017. ———. “Mirabeau in Biscuit: Political Reputations and the Changing Aesthetics of Porcelain During the French Revolution.” French Porcelain Society Journal (2018): 29–48. ———. “The Sèvres Elephant Garniture and the Politics of Dispersal during the French Revolution.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 56 (2021): 79–94. ———. “Stormy Weather in Revolutionary Paris: A Pair of Dihl et Guérhard Vases.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 51 (2016): 112–27. Morcillo, Marta García. “Staging Power and Authority at Roman Auctions.” Ancient Society 38 (2008): 153–81. Morris, Ann Cary, ed. The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888. Reprint, 1970. Müller, Gustav Adolf, ed. Aus Lavaters Brieftasche: Neues von Johann Caspar Lavater: ungedruckte
Bibliography
195
Handschriften nebst anderen Lavater-Errinerungen mit Facsimiles. Munich: Seitz and Schauer, 1897. Murat, Laure. The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon: Toward a Political History of Madness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Murgia, Camilla. “The Crafty Link: Fine Arts and Industrial Exhibitions Under the Consulate and the Empire.” In Coquery et al., Progrès de l’industrie perfectionnée, 45–51. Musée historique des Tissus de Lyon. De Dugourc à Pernon: Nouvelle acquisitions graphiques pour les musées; 1890–1990 centenaire du Musée des Tissus; Exposition décembre 1990–mars 1991. Les dossiers du Musée des Tissus 3. Lyon: Musée historique des Tissus, 1990. Myers, Mary. French Architectural and Ornament Drawings of the Eighteenth Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991. Naginski, Erika. “The Object of Contempt.” Yale French Studies no. 101 (2001): 32–53. Nagle, Jean. La civilization du coeur: Histoire du sentiment politique en France, du XIIe au XIXe siècle. Paris: Fayard, 1998. Neer, Richard. “Connoisseurship and the Stakes of Style.” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 1 (2005): 1–26. Nocq, Henry. Le poinçon de Paris: Répertoire des maîtres- orfèvres de la juridiction de Paris depuis le moyen- âge jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. 3 vols. Paris: H. Floury, 1926–31. O’Brien, David. After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda Under Napoleon. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Ochwadt, Curd. “Briefwechsel zwischen Johann Kaspar Lavater und der Fürstin Juliane zu Schaumburg- Lippe.” Schaumburg-Lippe Mitteilungen 23 (1974): 85–86. Orlando, Francesco. Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures. Translated by Gabriel Pihas and Daniel Seidel, with the collaboration of Alessandra Grego. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Ostergard, Derek E., Philip Hewat-Jaboor, and Bet McLeod, eds. William Beckford, 1760–1844: An Eye for the Magnificent. New Haven: Yale University Press for the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 2001.
196
Bibliography
Ostergard, Derek E., and Tamara Préaud, eds. The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory: Alexandre Brongniart and the Triumph of Art and Industry, 1800–1847. New Haven: Yale University Press for The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 1997. Outram, Dorinda. Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984. Ozouf, Mona. Festivals and the French Revolution. Translated by Alan Sheridan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Padiyar, Satish, Philip Shaw, and Philippa Simpson, eds. Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. New York: Routledge, 2016. Panzanelli, Roberta, and Monica Preti-Hamard, eds. La circulation des oeuvres d’art / The Circulation of Works of Art in the Revolutionary Era, 1789–1848. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes; Paris: Institut national d’histoire de l’art; Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2007. Parent, Aubert-Henri-Joseph. Instruction pour les élèves de la classe d’architecture de la ville de Valenciennes, et des ouvriers qui la fréquentent, suivie de: La valeur comparative des nouvelles mesures avec les anciennes. Valenciennes: Prignet, 1820. Percival, Melissa. The Appearance of Character: Physiognomy and Facial Expression in Eighteenth- Century France. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1999. Perovic, Sanja. The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture, Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Perrin-Khelissa, Anne. “De l’objet d’agrément à l’objet d’art: Légitimer les manufactures d’état sous la Révolution (Sèvres, Gobelins et Savonnerie).” In Coquery and Bonnet, Commerce du luxe, 159–68. Peters, David. Sèvres Plates and Services of the 18th Century. 7 vols. Little Berkhamsted, UK: David Peters; London: French Porcelain Society, 2015. Plinval de Guillebon, Régine de. “La manufacture de porcelaines de Dihl et Guérhard, rue de Bondy et rue du Temple.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France 109 (1982): 177–212. ———. Porcelain of Paris. New York: Walker, 1972. Porterfield, Todd, and Susan L. Siegfried. Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.
Préaud, Tamara. “Brongniart as Administrator.” In Ostergard and Préaud, Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, 43–51. ———. “Catalogue of the Exhibition.” In Ostergard and Préaud, Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, 165–382. Prevost-Marcilhacy, Laurent. “Les grandes collections anglaises de meubles royaux français au XIXe siècle.” In Charles, De Versailles à Paris, 185–92. Provost, Audrey. Le luxe, les lumières et la révolution. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2014. Prudhomme, Louis-Marie. Dictionnaire des individus envoyés à la mort judiciarement, révolutionnairement et contre-révolutionnairement pendant la Révolution, particulièrement sous le règne de la Convention Nationale. 2 vols. Paris: Rue des Marais, 1796. Quatremère de Quincy, Antoine Chrysostôme. Architecture. 3 vols. Encyclopédie méthodique. Paris: Panckoucke; Liège: Plomteux, 1788–1825. Rance, Karine. “L’historiographie de l’émigration.” In Les noblesses françaises dans l’Europe de la Révolution: Actes du colloque international de Vizille (10–12 septembre 2010), edited by Philippe Bourdin, 355–68. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes; Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires de Blaise- Pascal, 2010. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pur .129876. Recueil d’arabesques, contenant les loges du Vatican, gravées d’après Raphaël d’Urbin et grand nombre d’autres compositions du même genre, dans le style antique, d’après Normand, Quéverdo, Salembier, Prieur, Boucher, Dugourg, et autres. Paris: Joubert, year X [1802]. Reichardt, Rolf, and Hubertus Kohle. Visualizing the Revolution: Politics and the Pictorial Arts in Late Eighteenth-Century France. London: Reaktion, 2008. Renouvier, Jules. Histoire de l’art pendant la Révolution, 1789–1804. Geneva: Slatkin Reprints, 1996. Richardson, Emily. “Unlikely Citizens? The Manufacturers of Sèvres Porcelain and the French Revolution.” PhD dissertation, University College London, 2007. Rieder, William. “A Royal Commode and Secretaire by Riesener.” Furniture History 38 (2002): 83–96. Rijdt, R. J. te. De Watteau à Ingres: Dessins français du XVIIIe siècle du Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Paris: Fondation Custodia; Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2003.
Riskin, Jessica. Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Roditi, Pamela. “A Minute Sèvres Revolutionary Gobelet ‘litron’ et soucoupe and Its Possible Sources.” French Porcelain Society Journal 3 (2007): 168–78. Rosenberg, Jordana, and Chi-Ming Yang. “Introduction: The Dispossessed Eighteenth Century.” In “The Dispossessed Eighteenth Century,” special issue, Eighteenth Century 55, nos. 2–3 (2014): 137–52. Rosenfeld, Sophia. A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Ross, Kristen. Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune. New York: Verso, 2015. Rudwick, Martin. Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. ———. “Cuvier, Brongniart, William Smith, and the Reconstruction of Geohistory.” Earth Sciences History 15, no. 1 (1996): 25–36. Sabatier, Gérard. “Le roi est mort.” In Le roi est mort: Louis XIV, 1715, edited by Gérard Sabatier and Béatrix Saule, 16–31. Paris: Tallandier, 2015. Salmon, Xavier. Peintre des rois, roi des peintres: François Gérard, 1770–1837; Portraitiste. Château de Fontainebleau, 29 mars–30 juin 2014. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux–Grand Palais, 2014. Sancho, José Luis. “The Arts at the Court of Charles IV.” In Royal Splendor in the Enlightenment: Charles IV of Spain, Patron and Collector, edited by Bridget Marx and Isabel Morán Suárez, 15–30. Dallas: Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University; Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2010. Sargentson, Carolyn. Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris. London: Victoria and Albert Museum; Malibu, CA: in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996. Saule, Béatrix. “Quand Versailles était meublée d’argent.” In Quand Versailles était meublé d’argent, edited by Catherine Arminjon, 27–59. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2007. Saunier, Charles. “Un artiste romantique oublié: Monsieur Auguste.” Gazette des beaux-arts (1859): 441–60.
Bibliography
197
Schechter, Ronald. A Genealogy of Terror in Eighteenth- Century France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. ———. “Gothic Thermidor: The Bals des victimes, the Fantastic, and the Production of Historical Knowledge in Post-Terror France.” Representations 61 (Winter 1998): 78–94. Schreider, Louis, III. “Gouverneur Morris: Connoisseur of French Art.” Apollo 93 (June 1971): 470–83. Schwarz, Selma, and Jeffrey Munger. “Gifts of Meissen Porcelain to the French Court.” In Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, ca. 1710–63, edited by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, 141– 73. New Haven: Yale University Press for The Bard Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 2007. Scott, Katie. Becoming Property: Art, Theory and Law in Early Modern France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. ———. “Chardin and the Art of Building Castles.” In Taking Time: Chardin’s Boy Building a House of Cards and Other Paintings, edited by Juliet Carey, 36–52. London: Paul Holberton, 2012. ———. The Rococo Interior: Decoration and Social Spaces in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution. New York: Henry Holt, 2006. Shaw, Matthew. Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789–Year XIV. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011. Sheriff, Mary D. “The Cradle Is Empty: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette, and the Problem of Intention.” In Women, Art, and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, edited by Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam, 164–87. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003. Shovlin, John. The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. Siegfried, Susan. “The Visual Culture of Fashion and the Classical Ideal in Post-Revolutionary France.” Art Bulletin 97, no. 1 (2015): 77–99. Smentek, Kristel. Mariette and the Science of the Connoisseur in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. Sotheby’s New York. “The Courts of Europe.” January 30, 2014. New York: Sotheby’s, 2014.
198
Bibliography
Spang, Rebecca L. “The Frivolous French: ‘Liberty of Pleasure’ and the End of Luxury.” In Taking Liberties: Problems of a New Order from the French Revolution to Napoleon, edited by Howard G. Brown and Judith A. Miller, 110–25. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. ———. “The Ghost of Law: Speculating on Money, Memory and Mississippi in the French Constituent Assembly.” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 31, no. 1 (2005): 3–25. ———. Stuff and Money in the Time of the Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Stammers, Tom. “The Bric-a-Brac of the Old Regime: Collecting and Cultural History in Post- Revolutionary France.” French History 22, no. 3 (2008): 295–315. ———. “Historian, Patriot and Paragon of Taste: Baron Jean-Charles Davillier (1823–83) and the Study of Ceramics in Nineteenth-Century France.” French Porcelain Society Journal 7 (2018): 1–27. ———. The Purchase of the Past: Collecting Culture in Post-Revolutionary Paris, c. 1790–1890. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Standen, Edith. “Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier and Two Revolutions.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989): 255–74. Steedman, Carolyn. Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Stein, Perrin. “Amédée Van Loo’s Costume turc: The French Sultana.” Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (1996): 417–38. Sterne, Jean. À l’ombre de Sophie Arnould: François- Joseph Belanger, architecte des Menus Plaisirs, premier architecte du comte d’Artois. 2 vols. Paris: Plon, 1930. Stoffler, F. Ernest. German Pietism in the Eighteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Streeter, Colin. “Two Carved Reliefs by Aubert Parent.” J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 13 (1985): 53–66. Syamken, Georg. “Der Geist der Natur: Zu einer Frauenbüste des Claude-André Deseine.” Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunsthalle 9 (1990): 121–30. Syson, Luke. “Holes and Loops: On the Display and Collection of Medals in Renaissance Italy.” In “Approaches to Renaissance Consumption,” special issue, Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002): 229–44.
———. “Polychromy and Its Discontents.” In Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body, edited by Luke Syson and Sheena Wagstaff, 14–41. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven; London: Distributed by Yale University Press, 2018. Tackett, Timothy. The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015. Taws, Richard. “Bones of Contention—What Does the Discovery of Human Remains at the Chapelle Expiatoire Mean?” Apollo, July 22, 2020. https:// www.apollo-magazine.com/human-remains -chapelle-expiatoire. ———. “The Dauphin and His Doubles: Visualizing Royal Imposture After the French Revolution.” Art Bulletin 98, no. 1 (2016): 72–100. ———. The Politics of the Provisional: Art and Ephemera in Revolutionary France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. ———. “Trompe l’Oeil and Trauma: Money and Memory after the Terror.” Oxford Art Journal 30, no. 3 (2007): 355–76. ———. “Wargaming: Visualizing Conflict in French Printed Board Games.” In Padiyar, Shaw, and Simpson, Visual Culture, 56–70. Thomas, Chantal. The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antoinette. New York: Zone, 2001. Toledo Museum of Art. Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks. Toledo: Toledo Museum of Art, 2009. Tresch, John. The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology After Napoleon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Trey, Juliette, ed. Madame Élisabeth: Une princesse au destin tragique. Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana, 2013. Tungate, Sue. “Matthew Boulton and the Soho Mint: Copper to Customer.” PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2010. Vallée, Micheline, ed. Les émigrés de 1793. 3 vols. Secqueville-en-Bessin, France: Publications Micheline Vallée, 1991. Velden, Hugo van der. The Donor’s Image: Gerard Loyet and the Votive Portraits of Charles the Bold. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000. Velut, Christine. “Between Invention and Production: The Role of Design in the Manufacture of Wallpaper in France and England at the Turn of the
Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Design History 17, no. 1 (2004): 55–69. Verlet, Pierre. French Royal Furniture. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1963. Vickery, Amanda. Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. Vignon, Charlotte, Christian Baulez, et al. Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court. New York: The Frick Collection; London: in association with D. Giles, 2016. Viljoen, Madeleine. “Laocoon’s Snakes: The Reception of the Group in Renaissance Italy.” In Towards a New Laocoon, edited by Penelope Curtis and Stephen Feeke, 21–25. Leeds: Henry Moore Institute, 2007. Wagner, Anne Middleton. Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture. New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2005. Wahnich, Sophie. In Defense of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution. London: Verso, 2012. Walczak, Gerrit. Artistische Wanderer: Die Künstler(e)migranten der Französischen Revolution. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2019. Wall, Cynthia. “The English Auction: Narratives of Dismantlings.” In “In Circulation,” special issue, Eighteenth-Century Studies 31, no. 1 (1997): 1–25. Walzer, Michael, ed. Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI. Translated by Marian Rothstein. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Weber, Caroline. Terror and Its Discontents: Suspect Words in Revolutionary France. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Weil, Alan. “Les assignats de soie de Jolivet.” Revue numismatique 161 (2005): 177–89. Winnicott, D. W. “A Child Psychiatry Case Illustrating Delayed Reaction to Loss.” In D. W. Winnicott: Psycho-Analytic Explorations, edited by Clare Winnicott, Ray Shepherd, and Madeleine Davis, 341–68. London: Routledge, 1989. ———. “String.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 1, no. 1 (January 1960): 42–52. Woodbridge, Kenneth. “Bélanger en Angleterre: Son carnet de voyage.” Architectural History 25 (1982): 8–19 and 138–50.
Bibliography
199
Wrigley, Richard. “Between the Street and the Salon: Parisian Shop Signs and the Spaces of Professionalism in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Oxford Art Journal 21, no. 1 (1998): 45–67. ———. The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France. Oxford: Berg, 2002. Wyss, Beat. Hegel’s Art History and the Critique of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Yates, Francis. The Art of Memory. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
200
Bibliography
Italicized page references indicate illustrations. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number.
index
Adam, Pierre, 60 aesthetic authority, transfer to open market after fall of monarchy, 19, 172 Affiches, annonces et avis divers, ou Journal général de France, advertisements for second-hand luxury goods, 8–9 Alberti, Leon Battista, 111 Albis, Antoine d’, 160 Alcan, Abraham, 33 d’Allarde law of 1791, 7, 54 Allégorie de l’amour de Louis XVI pour ses sujets (Parent), 113–14, 193n16, plate 17 allegory, stable framework of shared meaning required for, 120 all-seeing eye, as revolutionary symbol of vigilant surveillance, 142–43 Alquier, Charles-Jean-Marie, 159 ancien régime feudal system of, and hierarchical system of ownership, 28 fragmented financial system of, 55 persistence of culture after Revolution, 102 See also luxury objects in ancien régime Angiviller, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billarderie, comte d’ dinner party before Revolution, 36 dispossession of, 36 Dugourc and, 77 exile of, 122 flight to Spain, 36 Morris’s covert sale of silver for, 36 and Parent, funds for education of, 114, 115 role in royal government, 36 Anglo-French taste, origin of, 32–33 Angoulême, duc d’, 151 Anisson-Dupéron, Étienne-Alexandre-Jacques Dugourc’s distancing from, 99 printing of assignats by, 55, 99 See also Manufacture républicain wallpaper company (Dugourc and Anisson-Dupéron) Anne of Brittany, heart-shaped reliquary made for, 62 arabesque decorations in antiquity, 87
arabesque decorations (continued) association with Oriental licentiousness, 87 collective myths of the feminine (maternal economy) activated by, 73–74 Dugourc and, 72–73 design of, post-revolution, 73 design of, under monarchy, 72 historical malaise in, 89 resurgence at end of 18th century, 72 signature design techniques of, 75–76 similar designs by others, 86 use of figures in, 75 Winnicott’s string therapy for traumatized children and, 89 and grottesche, 87 history of, 85–88 loose marks as characteristic of, 88 nonmimetic quality of, 87 popularity during Revolution, 72 popularity in prerevolutionary France, 74 resurgence at end of 18th century, 72 Arabesques (Dugourc) and allegory imposed on arabesque, 85 as amateur print-making experiment, 84–85 and arabesque as artwork, 85, 88 and arabesques as symbolic entanglement in past paths of others, 90 and claimed invention of arabesques, 86 and deviation from Renaissance standards, 88 and Dugourc’s anxiety about the feminine, 88–89 Dugourc’s later use of motifs from, 104 Dugourc’s signatures on plates in, 88 free play and invention in, 88 plates in, 85, 86 title page of, 84, 85 Vénus ou la Coquetterie plate in, 85, 89, 90 Archives de la Seine, records on river suicides, 93 Archives de Seine-et-Oise, records of Versailles auctions in, 31–32 Armand, Louis-Denis, 156 Armoire de Fer scandal, 58 art, new post-revolution understanding of, 11 L’art du brodeur (Saint-Aubin), 77 artisans and exiled French court, disassociation from, 10 flight of some to other markets, 10, 44 identities, “family romances” shaping, 12
202
Index
and irreplaceable royal patronage, 33–34 in Paris, royal government oversight of, 46 reduced regulation after Revolution, 54 and remaking of standards of taste, 9–10 shifting meanings of works, 9–10 varying political positions of, 10 work removing royal insignias from objects, 33–34 artists, post-revolution and irreplaceable royal patronage, 33–34 licensing of, 73 post-revolution equality with artisans, 73 and subjective responses to Revolutionary environment, 3 survival and self-reinvention, 1–2 use of courts to protect intellectual property, 73 Artois, comte d’ and Bagatelle, 75 flight from France, 122 See also Charles X (king of France) arts, promotion of, in post-revolution France, 7 Asselin, Charles-Éloi, 135 assignats anxieties raised by, 55–56 deflation of, 9, 11, 31 engraving and printing of, 55 financial havoc caused by, 42 first issue, picture of Louis XVI on, 55, 55 initial issued as bonds, 42, 55 issue by National Assembly, 42 and memories of past failed efforts at paper currency, 56 printing by Anisson-Dupéron, 99 removal from circulation, 42 and small change, lack of, 56, 57 transition into national paper currency, 42, 55 trompe l’oeil images of, 42, 43 use at Versailles auctions, 17, 33 wildly fluctuating value of, 33 auctions and Auguste’s liquidation of assets, 68 credit extended to buyers in, 30 in eighteenth century, competition among collectors at, 29 English-style, introduction of, 29 history of, 28–29 near end of Louis XVI’s reign, and crown’s entanglement with Parisian luxury, 29–30
newly-created auction houses to sell confiscated luxury items, 34–35 as temporal rupture in life of object, 29 use for political dispossessions, history of, 28 auctions by revolutionary government of confiscated jewels, 31 of contents of royal residences, 17 from court, church, and émigrés, 17 elimination of traces of monarchy as goal of, 17–18 National Convention authorization of, 28, 30 number of items from each royal residence, 177n58 and redistribution of luxury, 37 See also Versailles auctions (1793-94) Auguste, Charles-Louis in Géard’s portrait of Auguste family, 60 name change by, 68 renouncement of father, 68 Auguste, Henry accusations of dishonesty against, 67 Beckford’s admiration for work of, 52 Beckford’s commissions for, 51–52 candelabra pair for Duke of York, 52, 52 casket with figure of Morpheus, 64, plate 9 change of profession after Revolution, 44 condemnation by French state, 44 and currency, debates on, 44, 54–55, 56–57 damaged reputation of, 67, 68, 70 death in Haiti, 68 and Haiti as the site of postcolonial futurity, 12 as reflection on his earlier life, 44, 69 debts of, 60 amount of, 67 attempts to flee country, 67–68 auctioning of seized crates of goods to pay, 68 problems created by, 67 range of creditors, 68 state’s holding of family responsible for, 68 designs drawn by, 49, 50 display at Exposition des produits de l’industrie française, 65–66 dispossession of, ties to larger dissolutions, 44 dwindling number of commissions during Revolution, 54 eclectic interests of, 60–61 and émigrés, unpaid bills left by, 54 and Empire revival of luxury items, 64–65, 180n111 and executions of royal family, 25
flight to Jamaica, 12, 44 preparations for, 68 seizure of crates of his possessions, 68, 69 trial in absentia, 68, 69 Gérard portrait of family of, 59–60, plate 6 and gold luxury items, danger of being converted into currency, 12 grand vermeil de l’empereur by, 65, 66 in Haiti limited information on, 68, 69 as poetic justice, 70 reasons for choice of, 69 inventory of household goods at wife’s death, 60–61 large workshop of, by 1807, 66–67 love of wife, and narratives of postrevolutionary material culture, 64 mark, new, during revolutionary period, 59, 59 mark deposited at royal mint, 46 Moitte as designer for, 49–51 neoclassical style of, popularity through Napoleonic era, 59 and paper currency, debate on, 12 parents and background of, 46 popularity with English buyers, 52 post-revolution continued sales from shop, 58 engraving work, 57, 58–59 experiments with metals, 54, 57, 58, 61 as head of refinery of Paris and Lyon mint, 58 Moitte’s distancing from, 59 plagiarism accusations against, 59 political change, 117–18 ransacking of churches by, 57–58 smithing innovations by, 66 sons’ renouncing of, 68, 70 success as goldsmith, 48 survival of reputation of, 70 tiara for Pius VII, 65 toilet service for Countess of Aranda, 52 tureen on footed stand, design for, 49, 50 turn from goldsmithing to metallurgy, 11–12 and Versailles auctions, as means of resolving debts, 19 work in father’s goldsmithing business, 48 See also “Beckford-Béhague” gold ewer (Auguste); heart reliquary of Madeleine-Julie Coustou (Auguste)
Index
203
Auguste, Jules-Robert in Géard’s portrait of Auguste family, 60 renouncement of father, 68 Auguste, Robert-Joseph auction purchases on credit, 30 designers used by, 49 as father of Henry August, 46 as goldsmith to Louis XV, 48 as goldsmith to Louis XVI, 46 August III (elector of Saxony), 139 Aumont, duc d’, auction of collection, 29–30 Au temps des merveilleuses (2005 exhibition), 7 authorship, new post-revolution understanding of, 11 Aux armes et aux arts! (Bordes and Michel), 2–3 Babeuf, Gracchus, 93, 159 Bagatelle, design and construction of, 74–76, 75 bals des victimes, 63, 156 Barge, Louise-Élisabeth, 46 Barraband, Jacques, 155–56, plate 27 Barras, Paul, 34 Batellier, Jean-César, 142, 143 Baudard de Saint-James, Claude, 74 Baulez, Christian, 72, 75, 76 Baxandall, Michael, 111, 112, 122 Beauvais tapestries, payment of military contractor with, 33 Beauvais tapestry factory, post-revolution continuation of royal commissions, 20–21 Becher, Johann Joachim, 166 Beckford, William and Auguste, risks of dealing with, 67 banishment from England, 52 and gothic literature, 64 origin of family wealth, 64 purchase and export of French luxury items, 43 purchase of Dihl et Guérhard porcelains, 159 purchases from Auguste, 43, 51–52, 58, 64, plate 9 Vathek, 64 “Beckford-Béhague” gold ewer (Auguste), 43–44, plate 5 and aesthetic anxieties about value, 43 as commission from Beckford, 43 design influences on, 67 design of, described, 44–45, 45 as not meant for use, 52 purity of gold used in, 43, 44 scholarship on, 43–44
204
Index
weight of, 44 Béhague, Martine-Marie-Pol de, comtesse de Béarn, 43 Bélanger, François-Joseph and Bagatelle, design of, 74 career in royal administration, 13 on Dugourc in Spain, 103 Dugourc’s marriage to sister of, 74 on Dugourc’s talent, 78 Dugourc’s work with, 74, 88 and goût étrusque, invention of, 72 imprisonment of, 96 influence on Dugourc, 13 Bellaigue, Geoffrey de, 138 Belle-Isle, maréchal de, 139 Beneman, Guillaume, 33–34 Bergengruen, Maximilian, 130 Beurdeley, Michel, 9, 18 Biennais, Martin-Guillaume career of, 54 designers used by, 50 as Napoleon’s favorite goldsmith, 66 and Napoleon’s imperial septre, 65 works for imperial court, 172 Birds (Barraband), 155–56, plate 27 Blanc, Charles, 60 Blancherie, Pahin de la, 114 Blaufarb, Rafe, 28 Blumenbach, Freidrich, 150 Boehmer and Bassenge, jewelers, 81–83 Boileau, Étienne, 46 Boilly, Louis-Léopold, 8, 152, plate 2 Bonaparte, Joseph, 103 Bonaparte, Lucien, 160 Bonaparte, Napoleon air of inauthenticity surrounding, 172 coronation, critics of, 172 divorce of Josephine, 65 Dugourc drawing of, 103, 105 installation of brother on Spanish throne, 103 marriage to Marie-Louise, 65 revival of French luxury industries, 136, 172 and revival of goldsmiths’ art, 64–65 and rise of literary tradition celebrating worn and ruined things, 172 rise to power, 160 tiara given to Pius VII, 65 Bordes, Philippe, 2–3
Bosio, François-Joseph, 24 Bouillat, Edmé-François, 142, plate 21 Boulle, André-Charles, furniture made by auctions of, 29 in Louvre, 39 selection for national Muséum, 31 Boulton, Matthew, 69 Bourbon Restoration and divided collective memory, 109 and images of royal family, 131–32 and monument to Louis XVI, 109 return of king and queen to royal tombs at Saint- Denis, 26, 27 and Royalists’ desire for vengeance, 27 Boy Building a House of Cards (Chardin), 100 Breguet, Abraham-Louis, 143 Brewer, George, 123 Brongniart, Alexandre as army pharmacist in Barèges, 147 arrest for suspected treason, 147 background of, 147 and career in sciences, 136, 161–62 choice of career, 147 Cuvier’s influence on, 137 on Dihl’s invention of colorfast enamels, 153 eclectic interests of, 136, 137 Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, 136 father of cemetery design by, 164 as designer for Sèvres, 161, 164 and Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic, failure to attend, 146 geological research by, 15, 136 geological work with Cuvier, and Sèvres management, similarities of, 168–69 as head of Sèvres porcelain manufactory, 15 remapping of Paris with Cuvier, enabling of, by language of terror, 150 and revolutionary politics of regeneration, effect on geological work of, 137 and Société philomathique, 148 as student at École des Mines, 148 as student at Sociétè d’Histoire naturelle, 146 support for Revolution, 147 ties to revolutionary scientific community, 15 travel during Revolution, 147
travel in England, 147 work with Cuvier, 148 See also Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris (Cuvier and Brongniart); Sèvres porcelain manufactory, in revolutionary period Brosses, Charles de, 43 Broussonet, Pierre-Auguste-Marie, 147 Bureau de la Marque, corruption at, 47–48 burial of the dead in revolutionary period, 162–64 Giraud’s proposal for vast crematorium/cemetery/ memorial, 165, 165–66 large number of, difficulty in finding space for, 162–64 mass graves for, 164 new cemeteries founded, 164 and new secular Elysian fields trope, 164 Cagliostro, Alessandro, 123 calendar, Republican, 143 Calonne, Charles-Alexandre de, 78 Carlier, Yves, 44 Carson, Anne, 63 carved medallion depicting Louis XVI (Parent), 126–28, plate 16 and Anglo-Dutch limewood sculptors, 111–12 changing shadows on, over time, 133 Christian symbols in, 110–11, 132–33 continual process of deferral in, 133 dedication to Franziska von Hohenheim, 109, 111, 126 described, 109, 111 emphasis of coffin, 127–28 enactment of time required for mourning, 133 interplay of text and image in, 133 Lavater poem on verso of, 109, 111, 126–27, 127 Lavater’s physiognomy theories and, 132 lightly-incised fleur-de-lis on, 132, 133 Louis XVI’s portrait in, as embodiment of loss, 133 and parallels between Louis XVI’s and Franziska von Hohenheim’s sorrows, 126 as personal object of mourning, 126 as private commemoration, 109 and recursion to older forms of mourning, 131 and resonances between Parent’s carving method and Lavater’s physiognomy theories, 131 sudden shifts in scale in, 131 systems of religious sentiment and secular commemoration clashing in, 133
Index
205
carved medallion depicting Louis XVI (continued) use of limewood association with German carving tradition, 111 characteristics of wood and, 111–12 as unusual choice, 111 casket with figure of Morpheus (Auguste), 64, plate 9 Castellas, Adélaïde-Marie-Anne, 41 Castelluccio, Stéphane, 78 Catherine the Great Dugourc’s design work for, 79 Parent’s efforts to sell works to, 114 Cellerier, Jacques, 53, 96 Cellini, Benvenuto, 46, 87 ceramics, in postrevolutionary period, adoption of republican symbols and emblems, 137, 138 Chanou, Sophie, 140, 141 Chapeaurouge, Jacques de, 33 Chardin, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon, 100 Charles I (king of England), execution of Kant on, 26 as precedent of execution of Louis XVI, 19, 23 Charles IV (king of Spain) Dugourc’s designs for, 103 purchase of Dihl et Guérhard porcelains, 159 silk panel designed by Dugourc for, 103, plate 14 Charles X (king of France) and monument to Louis XVI, 109 and Napoleon’s grand vermeil, 65 See also Artois, comte d’ Chartres, duc de (Philippe Égalité), 76 Chastel, André, 87 Chateaubriand, René de, 172 Chaussard, Pierre-Jean-Baptiste, 156 Chavane de Dalmassy, Joseph, 185n74 Christie, James, 29 Cietty, Pierre, 98 citizens, reeducation of, cards and games in, 71–72 Clark, T. J., 3 classical antiquity, French adoption as collective political language of revolution, 52–53 Clerc, Marianne, 31 Cléry, Jean-Baptiste, 24, 71 Cobb, Richard, 93 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 6 Collot d’Herbois, Jean-Marie, 98 colonialism specter of, and European anxiety, 64
206
Index
and voudou, 69–70 Comay, Rebecca, 11 Commission des monuments, selection of items from royal collection, 31 Committee of Public Safety, letterhead of, 142–43 Condé, prince de, flight from France, 122 Conspiracy of the Equals, 93, 159 Constant, Benjamin, 172 Coquery, Natacha, 8 Corday, Charlotte, 61 corporations and guilds, d’Allarde law abolishing (1791), 7, 54 Coste, Jean-Baptiste figures resting in a wooded landscape, 156, 158 and paintings for vases with landscapes, 156–57, plate 28 Saule Pleureur (with hidden silhouettes), 157–59, 158 counterrevolutionary thought, mix of religious piety and political conservatism in, 131 Cour des aides, closing of, 57 Cours d’études de paysages (Coste), 157–59 Coustou, Charles-Pierre, 67 Coustou, Madeleine-Julie death of, 60 Gérard painting of, 59–60, plate 6 heart reliquary of, made by husband, 61–64, plate 8 interment of, 62 role in husband’s business, 60 Critique of Judgment (Kant), 88, 121 Croizé, Louise-Françoise-Madeleine, 151 Crow, Thomas, 3 cultural politics of Revolution, scholars’ focus on origin of public museum, 39 culture of ancien régime, persistence after Revolution, 102 currency coin shortage in Republic, 55 debate on, Auguste and, 44, 54–55, 56–57 paper, with Louis XVI image, loss of value after Revolution, 11 post-revolution, as issue, 12, 57 See also assignats Custine, comte de, 152 Cuvier, Georges arrival in Paris, 148 Brongniart’s hope of scientific career and, 162 career in science, 148
Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, 136 and French military plundering, benefits from, 148–49 geological research by, 15, 136, 150 influence on Brongniart, 137 at Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, 148–49 presentation on skeleton of elephant vs. mammoth fossil, 149, 149–50 remapping of Paris with Brongniart, enabling of, by language of terror, 150 study of fossils, 150, 164 work with Brongniart, 148 See also Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris (Cuvier and Brongniart) Daguerre, Dominique, 78 Danton, Gabrielle, 64 Danton, Georges Mantel’s fictional account of, 92–93 mourning of first wife, 64 Darcet, Jean, 153 Dauphin, mysterious death at Temple (1795), and imposter Dauphins, 27 David, Jacques-Louis central role in Revolution, 3 Dugourc and, 77 and Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic, 146 and Fête de l’Être Suprême, 141–42 historians’ special focus on, 3 on luxury as anathema to goals for Louvre, 3 opening of, 3 painting of Joseph Bara, 151 vote to execute Louis XVI, 3 Davillier, Baron Jean Charles, 171 Dayan, Joan, 64, 69–70 dead birds, carvings of, in 1790s, 119, 120 dead bodies large number of, during revolution, 162–64 means of commemorating, as issue after dissolution of church, 163 and postrevolutionary political imaginary of Paris, 162 worthiness for commemoration, as issue after revolution, 163 See also burial of the dead
death, and dispersal of valued objects, 4 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, exclusion of women and enslaved Blacks from, 19 decorative arts, importance in understanding French Revolution, 15 Delacour, Charlotte-Victoire Guairet, 76 Demarne, Jean-Louis, 152 Demidoff, Count Nicolas, 66, 68 Démontreuil, Jean, 119, 120, 122 Dennis, Faith, 46 Denoor, Marguerite Suzanne, 31, 33 Depaulis, Thierry, 100–101 Deseine, Claude-André, 7, 64 designers, opportunities for, in prerevolutionary France, 74 design work, Freudian psychoanalysis as interpretive framework for, 74 Desmoulins, Camille, 4 Dessalines, Jean-Jacques, 69 Diamond Necklace Affair and criticisms of queen’s spending, 73 and jewelry cabinet of Marie-Antoinette, 81–84 as plot to damage queen’s reputation, 81–83 Dietz, Charles, 68 Dihl, Christophe Erasimus establishment of Dihl et Guérhard porcelain manufactory, 151 invention of colorfast enamel for hard-paste porcelain, 152–54, plate 25 Le Guay portrait of, on porcelain plaque, 154, plate 25 Dihl et Guérhard porcelain manufactory, 151–59 as affordable alternative to Sèvres, 151, 152 agate-effect porcelains, 161, 163 Birds (Barraband), 155–56, plate 27 colorfast enamels, superiority of, 155–56, plate 27, plate 28 competition for elite clientele, 159 founding of, 151 hiring of successful artists, 152 increased business after fall of monarchy, 152 invention of colorfast enamels for hard-paste porcelain, 152–54, plate 25 location of, 151 nervous, tense energy of porcelains by, 156 and new post-revolution aesthetic, 151 number of employees, 151
Index
207
Dihl et Guérhard porcelain manufactory (continued) pair of vases with storm landscapes, 156, 157, 159, plate 28 plate with shells on the shore (ca. 1789–97), 151, plate 24 political symbolism on works by, 156, 159 protection of duc d’Angoulême, 151 and scientific developments in decorative design, 151 Directory, popularity of neoclassical style in, 59 di Somma, Tommaso, marchese di Circello, 180n111 dispersal of collections in Revolution and access of new buyers to luxury items, 171 as disaster for France, 171 failure to erase past, 37, 39 and luxury objects as polemical signifiers of loss, 11 and new meanings of luxury objects, 172 scholarship on, 9 and survival of luxury items as puzzle, 4 and system of state violence, 7–8, 11 See also Versailles, auctioning of objects from dispossession of émigrés, to prevent return to France, 35 of enemies of state, 8, 35 of King, and identity crisis for political subjects, 10–11 and liquidation of objects’ meaning, 39 political, history of auctions in, 28 scholarship on, 10 of wealthy and elite exiles, 36 Diverse Maniere (Piranesi), 75 Dodin, Charles-Nicolas, 135 Domus Aurea, 87, 89 Drolling, Martin, 152 Drouet, Gilbert, plate 22 Dubin, Nina, 3 Dubuquoy-Lalouette, Madame, 22 du Cerceau, Jacques Androuet, 87 Dufour, Joseph, 98 Dugourc, Jean-Démosthène and Les animaux savants, illustrations for, 104–5 and arabesque decorations, 72–73 collective myths of the feminine (maternal economy) activated by, 73–74 design of, post-revolution, 73 design of, under monarchy, 72 historical malaise in, 89 resurgence at end of 18th century, 72 signature design techniques of, 75–76
208
Index
similar designs by others, 86 use of figures in, 75 Winnicott’s string therapy for traumatized children and, 89 background and education, 76 and Bagatelle, work on, 75 and Bélanger, work with, 74, 88 chandelier design by, 79–80, 80 complex and enigmatic life of, 12 decision to become artist, 76 as designer for Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, 72, 78 debt crisis and, 78 Pernon and, 80–81 and silk designs, 79, 80–81 suspicions surrounding, 73 design for decorative panel (1787 and 1808), 104–6, plate 15 designs, rich and complex personality of, 12–13 design work outside court, 78–79 disassociation from father, 76 drawing of the arrival of the funeral procession . . . with the remains of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, 26, 27 early commercial work, characteristics of, 77 embroidery design for a pocket and vest, 77, plate 11 and father’s debts, burden of, 76 The Garden Façade of Bagatelle, 75 and goût étrusque, 12, 72, 104 Hôtel Vaupalière wallpaper commission, 90–91, plate 12 imprisonment of close collaborators, 96 influence of Bélanger on, 13 and intellectual property rights, seizing of advantage provided by, 73, 96 lack of education in classical art, and compromise formation, 90 marriage to sister of Bélanger, 74 mother, death of, 76, 77 and compromise formation, 90 lasting effects from, 106 mother’s lifelong influence, 77 Napoleon Bonaparte at the Champ de Mai, 103, 105 post-Restoration works by, 106 post-revolution career of designs on paper, 12, 72–73, 96 letterheads designed by, 97, 98, 102 and psychic life of paperwork, 74
post-revolution political change in, 117–18 and Restoration, reshaping of identity following, 13 and Revolution, claims to have been unaffected by, 96 and Revolution, reshaping of identity following, 12 and rights to inventions, anxiety about, 77 scholarship on, 72 self-taught architectural knowledge, 88 in Spain, 102–6 architectural designs, 103 design for chalet at Aranjuez, 103, 104 designs for silks, 103 and French invasion, 103 greater range of designs, 103 migration to, 102–3 and representational anxieties, 106 return to Paris (1813), 106 as royal architect, 103 style of, appeal to elite, 79–80 tendency to overstate his role in projects, 76 training of, 77–78, 85 trip to Rome as young man, 76, 77, 89 variety of objects designed by, 12 works during Revolution, 96–97 work with Jacob, 111 See also Arabesques (Dugourc); jewelry cabinet (serre-bijoux) of Marie-Antoinette (Schwerdfeger and Dugourc); Manufacture républicain wallpaper company (Dugourc and Anisson-Dupéron); Nouvelles Cartes de la République Française (Dugourc and Jaume) Dugourc, Jean-François, 76 Earth, as basis of revolutionary restructuring of time, 143 Eberts, J. H., 32 Eberts brothers, 32 École royale gratuite de dessin, prohibition against depicting human form, 75 Égalité, Philippe (duc de Chartres), 76 Églantine, Philippe François Nazaire Fabre d’, 143 Élisabeth, Madame, needlepoint begun at Palais des Tuileries, 22, plate 4 Eméric-David, Toussaint-Bernard, 49 émigrés artisans’ bills left unpaid by, 54 banishment of, 122 confiscation of jewels from, 31
dispossession of, to prevent return to France, 35, 122 diversity of motives, paths, and receptions, 122 in England, purchase of objects from Versailles auctions, 32–33 refashioning of noble titles and names, 122 Empire elevation of decorative arts, 65 and Expositions des produits de l’industrie française, 65–66 and revival of luxury items, 64–65 See also Bonaparte, Napoleon enemies of the state, depriving of material possessions, 8, 35 Essais de papilloneries humaines (Saint-Aubin), 77, 85 Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris (Cuvier and Brongniart), 136, 166–68 on fossils underlying Paris, 166–67, 168 and map of geological terrain around Paris, 166–67, plate 29 as map of time, 167 as record of past destructions in context of French Revolution, 167–68 and maps as pictorial conquests, 166–67 and search for solid ground amid Revolution, 169 similarities to Brongniart’s work at Sèvres manufactory, 168–69 Etlin, Richard, 164 Expositions des produits de l’industrie française, 65–66 Falconet, Étienne-Maurice, 49 Family of the Goldsmith Henri Auguste Joined Together Around a Table (Gérard), 59–60, plate 6 family ties, broken, 12 fan mounted in ivory (1795), 173, plate 30 the feminine, collective myths of, activated by arabesque decorations, 73–74 Fesch, Cardinal Joseph, 161 The Festival of the Federation (Dugourc), 96–97, 97 Festival of the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic (1793) Brongniart’s failure to attend, 146 statues commemoration significant events of Revolution at, 146 Fête de la Fédération (1790) citizens’ work on construction for, 144, 144 Dugourc’s The Festival of the Federation image of, 96–97, 97
Index
209
Fête de la Fédération (continued) Louis XVI’s work at, as demonstration of his leveled status, 144–45, 145 Moitte’s design of arch for, 53, 53–54 Roman festivals as model for, 144 Fête de l’Être Suprême (Festival of the Supreme Being) described, 141–42 revolutionary period déjeuner (tea set) depicting, 142, plate 21 feudal system of ancien régime, and hierarchical system of ownership, 28 Feuillants (constitutional monarchists), expulsion of, 22 financial crises, scholars’ interest in, 42–43 financial crisis of late 1780s citizens’ donations to avert, 41–42, 42 and Dugourc, 78 and Louis XVI’s spending of dinner service, 136, 139 Republican government and, 55 and royal family donations of silver and gold to national mint, 41 support for American Revolution, 136, 139 Flahaut de la Billarderie, Charles-Claude, comte d’Angiviller. See Angiviller, Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billarderie, comte d’ Fogg, Robert, 135 Foliot, François-Toussaint, 4, plate 1 Fontaine, Pierre-François-Léonard, 79, 109, 156, 172 Fontainebleau, arabesque decorations at, 87 Forcart-Weiss, Rudolf, 122 Fouquet, Nicolas, embezzlement by, 28 The Four Continents (Le Barbier) America tapestry from, 21, plate 3 post-revolution continuation of royal commission for, 20–21, 176n14 Fourcroy, Antoine-François and Dihl’s invention of colorfast enamel for hard- paste porcelain, 153 recovery of Brongniart from jail, 147 France, and colonial memory, 69 fraternity, and “family romances” shaping artisinal identities, 12 Frederick (Duke of York), pair of candelabra by Auguste made for, 52, 52 Freeman, Andrew, 58 French Revolution as consequence of Protestant Reformation, 130 importance of decorative arts in understanding, 15
210
Index
and search for solid ground, 169 Freudian psychoanalysis, as interpretive framework for design work, 74 Freund, Amy, 3, 154 Fureix, Emmanuel, 24 Gaillard, Remi, 9, 19, 30, 177n58 Gamain, François, 20, 58, 113 games, post-revolution, focus on education of citizens, 72 Garat, Dominque-Joseph, 140 Garcia, Pilar Benito, 72 Garde-Meuble de la Couronne auctioning of old-fashioned or damaged royal property, 28–29 Bélanger at, 13 brocaded silks, last examples of, 91, 92 Dugourc as designer for, 78 efforts to cut expenses, 78 inventories of royal collection, 32 luxury goods stored by, 27–28 and Palais des Tuileries, improvements during King’s residence, 20, 21 responsibilities of, 78 revolutionaries’ use of furniture from, 31 and royal representation, 20 silks stored in, use in imperial palaces, 172 suspension of work at, 92 The Garden Façade of Bagatelle (Dugourc), 75 Gastinel-Coural, Chantal, 72 Gathering Manna in the Desert (Poussin), 28 Gault de Saint-Germain, Pierre-Marie, 9 Gély, Louise Sébastienne, 64 General Maximum Law of 1793, 8 geognosy, in 18th century, 148 geology in 18th century, 148 emergence as discipline with French military expansion, 148 George IV (king of England) purchase of Dihl et Guérhard porcelains, 159 purchase of dispossessed Sèvres porcelain, 135 Gérard, François career of, 59–60 commission to paint events of August 10, 59 Family of the Goldsmith Henri Auguste Joined Together Around a Table, 59–60, plate 6
German sensualism, feeling in, 130 Gibbons, Grinling, 112, 115 Giraud, Pierre. See Les tombeaux, ou Essai sur les sépultures (Giraud) Gobelins tapestry works revolutionaries’ criticisms of, 139–40 and use of luxury goods to consolidate authority, 6 Godineau, Dominique, 93 Godon, François-Louis, 103 Gois, Étienne-Pierre-Adrien, 114 gold destabilization of symbolic value after Revolution, 43 replacement of value by paper money, 58 Spanish invasion of Cuba and, 43 gold luxury objects marks (poinçons) on, significance of, 46–47 purity standards for, 47 goldsmiths art historians’ focus on cost of materials, 46 association with wealth, and risk of denunciation by revolutionaries, 54 concerns about potential fraud by, 46 fraudulent practitioners as problem for, 47–48 government oversight of, 46 loss of patronage with Revolution, 44 marks of abolishment by revolutionary government, 57 attempts to restore system, 57 loss of meaning after Revolution, 54 registering of, 46 significance of, 46–47 melting down of works in hard times as ever-present risk, 45–46, 48 as exercise of royal power, 48 and narratives of French Revolution, 45 post-revolution, freedom from regulation, 54 See also Auguste, Henry goldsmiths corporation power of, 46 process for becoming master, 46 Goncourt brothers, 171 Gondoin, Jacques, 4, plate 1 goût étrusque characteristics of, 12 claimed invention of, by Dugourc and Bélanger, 12, 72, 86 Dugourc’s use of, 104
scholarship on, 72 Gouthière, Pierre, 30, 78 Grand vermeil de l’empereur (Auguste), 65, 66 Gratet de Dolomieu, Déodat, 147 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 119 Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, 3 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, baron von, 35 grottesche, and arabesque, 87 Guérhard, Antoine, 151, 152 Guichard, Charlotte, 84 guillotine, 108 as exemplary instrument of Terror, 107 parallels to physiognomic portrait, 129 public’s fascination with, 107–9 scholarship on, 15 See also Louis XVI, guillotining of Guyton de Morveau, Louis-Bernard, 153 Habsburg dynasty, Napoleon’s marriage into, 65 Haiti Auguste as common name in, 69 and colonial memory, 69 and Empire style, 65 Henry Auguste in death in, 12, 44, 68, 69 limited information on, 68, 69 as poetic justice, 70 reasons for choice of, 69 political turmoil of early 19th century, 69 Halliday, Anthony, 3 Haly, Pierre, 61, 62, 179n96 Hauré, Jean, 78 heart reliquary of Madeleine-Julie Coustou (Auguste), 61–64, plate 8 burial under parish church of Saint-Léonard, 61 described, 61–64, plate 8 family relations engraved on, 62–63 as gothic aberration from Auguste’s work, 64 and gothic Thermidor, 63 lack of Christian sentiment on, 62 mass graves of Revolution as context for, 63–64 and mourning in postrevolutionary period, 63 and notable hearts of period, 61 rarity of, 61–62 viewed through Auguste’s Haiti residence, 69 Hébert, Jacques, 32 Hercy, 108
Index
211
history writing, similarity to lace making, 93 Hohenheim, Franziska von (duchess of Württemberg) background of, 126 and Lavater, 126 Parent’s carved Louis XVI medallion dedicated to, 109, 111, 126 title purchased for, by Duke of Württemberg, 126 title stripped from, by Duke’s family, 126 Hommage à la deuxième legislature (Moitte), 41, 42, 53, 54 hôtel Bullion, sale of confiscated luxury items at, 35 Hôtel Vaupalière seizure and sale by revolutionary government, 91, 99 wallpaper by Dugourc, 90–91, plate 12 Houdon, Jean-Antoine, 147 Hunt, Lynn, 11, 12 Hunter, William, 150 identity, possessions as part of, 6 Institut national des sciences et arts Cuvier presentation at, 149–50 and Dihl’s invention of colorfast enamel for hard- paste porcelain, 153 and public access to innovations, 152 intellectual property rights in postrevolutionary France, 7, 11 and courts’ role in judging value, 11 and design work, flourishing of, 73 and new rules on copying works of others, 59 Isabey, Jean-Baptiste, 152 Jacob, Georges carved furniture by, 111 Dugourc and, 78, 111 furniture by, sold in Versailles auctions, 32 and Napoleon’s throne, 65 Jacob-Desmalter, François-Honoré- Georges, 78 Jacobin faction, rise of, 22 Jacqué, Bernard, 21 Janety, Marc-Etienne, 54 Jaume, Urbain. See Nouvelles Cartes de la République Française (Dugourc and Jaume) Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot (Lefèvre), 60, 70, plate 7 Jesus, sacred heart of, as symbol of royalist sympathies, 61 jewelry cabinet (serre-bijoux) of Marie-Antoinette (Schwerdfeger and Dugourc), 81–84, 82 described, 81
212
Index
and Diamond Necklace Affair, 81–84 as Dugourc’s most prestigious design, 81 Dugourc’s wood model of, 81, 83 Dugourc’s work on, 83–84 jewels, confiscation and auctioning of, 31 Jolivet, Étienne death sentence for, 96 proposal for silk assignats, 94–95, 95 Joubert (publishing house), 85–86 Jozeau, Mathurin-Pierre, 76 Jullienne, Jean de, 48 Julliot, Claude-François, 30 Junquera, Juan José, 72 The Juvenile Lavater (Brewer), 123 Kabinet van mode en smaak (1794), 37–39, 109 Kafka, Ben, 74 Kant, Immanuel on arabesque decoration, 88 on murder of Louis XVI, 25–27 on wood carvings, 121 kaolin, and porcelain manufacture, 138, 162, 168 Kerneis, Anne-Marie, 119 kings of France royal inventories of treasures, 22 typical grand funerals of, symbolism of, 23–24 Kohle, Hubertus, 3 Koselleck, Reinhart, 171 Laborde, Jean-Joseph de, 74 La France à l’encan, 1789–1799 (Beurdeley), 9 Lagrenée, Jean-Jacques, 115 Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa, 3 Lanskoi, Alexander, 79 Laocoön, influence of, 67 Lavater, Johann Caspar as critic of Directory government in Switzerland, 131 Denkzeichen by, 127 design for monument to mother of Princess Juliane Schaumburg-Lippe, 128, 129 and Franziska von Hohenheim, 126 friendship with Parent, 123, 124–25 funerary projects with Parent, 126–28 influence on Parent, 130–31 and neo-Pietist faith in Swiss-German regions, 130 poem on verso of Parent’s medallion depicting Louis XVI, 109, 111, 126–27, 127
promotion of Parent to female patrons, 126 Règles physiognomiques dedication of manuscript copy to Parent, 124, 124–25 facial studies in, 125 Lavater, physiognomy theories of common interpretation as pseudoscience, 128 and facial expression at death, significance of, 129 famous men’s interest in, 124, 125 and focus of fixed face vs. pathognomy, 128–29 influence of, 123, 124 and Parent’s carved medallion depicting Louis XVI, 132 and Parent’s carving method, 131 philosophical principles underlying, 130 research on, 124 role of art in, 125 studies of famous men, 125 Lavoisier, Antoine Brongniart’s interest in work of, 147 and standard nomenclature for chemistry, 153 Law, John, 56 Law of the Grand Terror (Law of 22 Prairial), 142 Le Barbier, Jean-Jacques-François The Four Continents tapestry by, 20–21, 176n14, plate 3 tapestries designed by, 33 Lebas, Louis-Hippolyte, 50 Le Brun, Charles, 123, 128–29 Le Brun, Élisabeth Vigée, 31, 122 Le Brun, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre, 7, 31 Le Chapelier law of 1791, forbidding of unionization, 54 Lefèvre, Robert Jacques François, 60, 70, plate 7 Le Guay, Étienne-Charles, 152, 154, plate 25 Le Guay, Étienne-Henri, 38 Le Guay, Étienne-Henri, père, 135 Lemoyne, Jean-Baptiste, 49 Le Nain brothers, 100 le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, Louis-Michel, 146 Levaillant, François, 156 Lhuillier, François-Daniel, 75 Lignereux, Martin-Eloy, 78 limewood carving of, association with German carving tradition, 111 characteristics of, 111–12 See also carved medallion depicting Louis XVI (Parent)
Livre de caricatures (Saint-Aubin), 85 locksmiths, power during Revolution, 58 Le Loggie de Rafaele nel Vaticano (Volpato), 85 Lorthior, Pierre Joseph, 55, 55 Louis XIV and auctions for political dispossession, 28 funeral and interment of, 23–24 and government oversight of artisinal communities, 46 and silver furniture, melting-down of, 46, 48 silver melted to fund War of the League of Augsburg, 48 use of luxury goods to consolidate authority, 6 Louis XV and auctioning of old-fashioned or damaged royal property, 28–29 and Sèvres porcelain manufactory, 137 and use of luxury goods to consolidate authority, 6 Louis XVI and Armoire de Fer scandal, 58 attacks diminishing authority of, 22 and auction of Aumont’s collection, 30 burial in mass grave, 25, 63–64, 109 commemorations of, 109 donation of silver and gold toward national debt, 41 guillotining of, 1, 2, 22–23 as contrast to typical grand funerals of kings of France, 23–24 crowd’s celebration following, 25 and cutting loose of luxury industry in France, 1 as demonstration of equality of all citizens, 23 as disaster for France, 171 as effort to destroy institution of divine kingship, 23 execution of Charles I as precedent for, 19, 23 faience plate commemorating, 145, 145 final words, 23, 107 Kant on, 25–27 and lack of funeral, 24 National Convention vote for, 71 and nourishment of the Earth with his blood, 145 revolutionaries’ characterization as necessary sacrifice, 24 and Royalists’ desire for vengeance, 27 and Royalists’ mourning, 15 and Royalists’ private devotional objects, 15 and subsequent auctioning of his possessions, 17
Index
213
Louis XVI (continued) guillotining of (continued) and transformation of luxury objects into royal relics, 10, 27 witnesses’ descriptions of, 107–9 imprisonment, trial and sentencing of, 22, 71 ironwork and locks as hobby of, 20, 113 last will and testament, 22, 24, 71 Parent carving for, in honor of his visit to Valenciennes, 113–14, 193n16, plate 17 revolutionaries’ attempt to dehumanize, 24–25 spending on luxury items, criticisms of, 6 and trial of Cardinal de Rohan, 81–83 See also carved medallion depicting Louis XVI (Parent) Louis XVI dinner service (1983-93), plate 20 and annual display of porcelain, 137, 139 described, 135 halting of production after fall of monarchy, 136, 139 high cost of, 135–36 high cost, as reasonable in context, 139 Louis’s special interest in, 138–39 purchase by George IV of England, 135 themes of decorations, 138–39 time required to make, 135 Louvre Museum David on luxury as anathema to goals of, 3 founding, scholarship on, 3 initial organization by style, criticisms of, 7 selection of items from royal collection for, 30–31 and Sèvres porcelain, banning of, 7 Lucien, Jean-Baptiste, 42 Lucotte, J. R., 46, 47 luxury post-revolution, redefinition according to personal taste, 8–9, 16, 39 as term, 6 luxury industry in France cutting loose of, with guillotining of Louis XVI, 1 economic collapse after Revolution, 7 and kinship and family model of politics, 12 luxury objects brisk second-hand market in, during Terror, 8–9 citizens’ views of, as product of view of past, 9 and dialectical engagement with the past, 173 existence without patrons, 172 multiple meanings hidden in, 173
214
Index
Revolutionaries’ responses to as corrupting influence on citizens, 7 mix of desire and rejection in, 6 as objects of contempt and political violence, 4–6, 5 redesignation as national wealth, 4 as waste of resources, 6–7 transformation into polemical objects of contested past, 1–2, 37 luxury objects in ancien régime cultural position of, importance of understanding, 6 nostalgic revival by scholars, 171 outlasting of Revolution by, 39 as signifier of distinction among elite, 6 as souvenirs of past after Revolution, 39 as symbol of royal magnificence, 6 Lyon destruction after Siege, 96 Siege of, 95–96 silk industry in, and political violence, 95 Madame Sans Culotte (anon.), 93, 94 Mantel, Hilary, 92–93 Manufacture républicain wallpaper company (Dugourc and Anisson-Dupéron), 97–99 arabesque designs by Dugourc, 99 and Dugourc’s freedom to design, 99 Dugourc’s reuse of monarchy-era patterns, 99 Dugourc’s turn from, 99, 100, 182n89 journée of August 10th and, 99 and parallels of wallpaper and paper money, 99 manufacturers of luxury industry, and irreplaceable royal patronage, 33–34 Marat, Jean-Paul display of heart, 61 makeshift monument to, at desecrated royal tombs, 146 on Sèvres manufactory, cost of, 139 Maria Leszczynska (grand duchess of Russia), 77 Marie-Antoinette (queen of France) burial in mass grave, 25, 63–64 criticism for spending on luxury items, 73, 78 donations toward national debt relief, 41–42 execution of, 4 gambling by, 71 as half-human female monster, 90, 91 needlepoint begun at Palais des Tuileries, 22, plate 4
purchases from Paris luxury market, 78 revolutionaries’ attempt to dehumanize, 24–25 wager on completion of Bagatelle, 75 Marie-Antoinette Sacrifices the Heart of the Nobility on the Altar of the French Republic (Haly), 61, 62, 179n96 market in secondhand luxury goods after revolution as brisk, 8–9 fierce competition in, 11 mix of confiscated and looted items in, 35 stimulation by Versailles auctions, 34–35 transfer of aesthetic authority to, 19, 172 Massard, Jean Baptiste Félix, 53, 53–54 Massard, Jean Baptiste Louis, 53, 53–54 Matière à reflection pour les jongleurs couronnées: qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons (Villeneuve), 1, 2 Menus-Plaisirs Pâris at, 13 responsibility for royal funerals, 23 Mercier, Louis Sébastien, 35, 74 Mertrud, Jean-Claude, 148 Mesmer, Franz, 123 Metaphysics of Morals (Kant), 26–27 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cabris Room, 4, plate 1 Michel, Régis, 2–3 mineralogy, in 18th century, 148 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de and Armoire de Fer scandal, 58 Deseine bust of, 7 Mississippi Bubble, 56 Moitte, Jean-Guillaume background of, 49 Beckford’s admiration for work of, 52 as designer for Auguste, 49–51 design for Auguste’s “Beckford-Béhague” ewer, 44–45, 50, 51 design for ewer with Grecian mask (ca. 1790), 50, 51 design of arch for Fête de la Fédération (1790), 53, 53–54 design of pair of candelabra for Duke of York, 52, 52 designs, characteristics of, 49, 50, 51 designs for revolutionary monuments and festivals, 52–54 health problems of, 49, 50 Hommage à la deuxième legislature, 41, 42, 53, 54 Odiot’s purchase of designs by, 49, 70, 178n38 post-revolution, distancing from Auguste, 59
style of, 49, 50 money anxieties in Republic, 12 See also assignats monuments, vandalism of, 9 Morris, Gouverneur advice to Washington on American taste, 36, 152 covert sale of d’Angiviller’s silver, 36 and Dihl et Guérhard porcelain, 152 French furniture brought home by, 37 as lover of luxury, 36–37 purchases at Versailles auctions, 4 purchases for Washington, 152, 153 as royal sympathizer, 36 Mosson, Joseph Bonnier de la, 138 Moustier, comte de, 152 Moyen expeditif du peuple français pour démeubler un aristocrate: 13 novembre 1790 (anon.), 4–6, 5, 7 Moyens de faciliter l’échange des assignats proposés au Comité des monnoies (Auguste), 55 Murat, Laure, 109 Musée Carnavalet, Au temps des merveilleuses (2005 exhibition), 7 museum collections and ideological belonging, 4 as shaped by agonistic politics of past and present, 4 Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, Cuvier at, 148–49 National Assembly, issuing of assignats, 42 National Convention appointment of committee to oversee Versailles auctions, 30 decree authorizing auctions, 28, 30 outlawing of royal and feudal signs on playing cards, 71–72 100 nature as source of natural regeneration and Earth nourished with blood of Louis XVI, 145 and festivals of nature, 146 and legitimization of Terror through analogies with nature, 144 new calendar and, 143 Necker, Jacques and paper currency introduction, 55 stockings with design expressing support for, 94, 95 neoclassical style encompassing of personal and perverse in, 64 funereal motifs in, 64
Index
215
neoclassical style (continued) popularity through Napoleonic era, 59 wood sculpture in, provincial nobility’s interest in, 114 neo-Pietist faith in Swiss-German regions, Lavater and, 130 Niderviller faience and porcelain manufactory, 152 Nitot, Marie-Étienne, 65 Nodier, Charles, 142 Nouvelles Cartes de la République Française (Dugourc and Jaume), 12, 99–102, plate 10 described, 99, 101–2 Equality of Diamonds card, 101–2, plate 13 fleur-de-lis paper stock used for some decks, 102 introduction of, 71 manufacture of, 99–100 patenting of, 73, 77, 99, 101 Dugourc’s memory of father’s lawsuits and, 101 and persistence of ancien régime culture, 101 as piquet deck, 100 prospectus describing figures on, 101 replacements for kings and queens in, 71–72, 101–2 semiotic mesh of, 101 variations across sets, 100–101 Odiot, Jean-Baptiste-Claude and Empire revival of luxury items, 65 as goldsmith, 49 Lefèvre portrait of, 60, 70, plate 7 purchase of Moitte designs, 49, 70, 178n38 “Orfèvre Grossier” (Lucotte), 46, 47 Orléans, duc d’. See Philippe [I], duc d’Orléans ornamental design in Revolution, and anxiety of influence, 73 Paillet, Alexandre-Joseph, and auction of Aumont’s collection, 30 painting collection of Louis XVI, transfer to Louvre, 30 Pajou, Augustin, 49 palaces, furnishings of, and royal representation, 20 Palais des Tuileries King’s secret compartment in, 58 poor condition of, 20 removal of royal family to, 20 royal family at furnishings brought from Versailles, 21, 22 King’s quarters, 20
216
Index
and luxury, personal rather than representative meaning of, 21–22 needlepoint work by Marie-Antoinette and Madame Élisabeth, 22, plate 4 refurbishment during, 20, 21 use of wallpaper rather than more luxurious wall coverings, 21 and royal representation, 20 storming of (August 10, 1792), 22, 91 Palais-Royal, Dugourc’s childhood at, 76 Pantheon, secularization of, 109 paper in Revolution determination of people’s lives by, 73, 74 minimal difference between official and informal paperwork, 99 paperwork, psychic life of, 74 Paracelsus, and physiognomy, 130 Parent, Aubert-Henri-Joseph allegorical nature of work, before and after revolution, 118, 120–21 allegorical relief panels (1789, 1791), 118, 119 Allégorie de l’amour de Louis XVI pour ses sujets, 113–14, 193n16, plate 17 and Angiviller, funding from, 114, 115 as architect, 13 background and career, 113–14 carved relief with allegory of the constitution (1791), 118–19, 119, 120–21 carving method of, and Lavater’s physiognomy theories, 131 and Catherine the Great, efforts to sell works to, 114 compositional style of, 116 dead birds in work of, 118, 119, 121 defects of style, as less evident in carvings, 117 design for monument to mother of Princess Juliane Schaumburg-Lippe, 128, 129 design of garden at Württembergerhof, 122 drawing of vase on classical pedestal, 115–16, plate 18 early anatomical studies, poor quality of, 115–16, 116 Esquisse pour un projet de monument d’après l’idée de monsieur le ministre Lavater, 129 exile in Switzerland and Germany, 109–10 appointment as architect-in-chief of canton of Solothurn, 122 archaeological excavation in Augst, 122 and changed subject matter of work, 119 commissions, 122
continued carving in wood, 123 departure with first wave of immigrants, 122 and freedom from academies’ influence, 122 and Lavater, friendship with, 123, 124–25 successful career as architect, 128 floral still-life relief (1784), 121–22, plate 19 funerary projects with Lavater, 126–28 funerary vases, images of (Cahier de Vases), 117, 117 and grieving for Louis XVI, 13–15 and king’s image as symbol of loss, 14–15 lack of formal training, 115, 117 Lavater’s influence on, 130–31 and Lavater’s physiognomy, influence on sculptural work, 125 Lavater’s promotion of, to female patrons, 126 limewood carvings of, and German Pietism, 130–31 marking of place and time of works, 122 move to Paris, 114 post-revolution transformation of practice, 109–10, 118, 121 prints of furnishings, 116–17 and Revolution, departure for France, 13 royalist affinities of, 117–18 and Salon de la Correspondance, works displayed at, 114, 125 second trip to Rome, 116 strong identification with monarchical regime, 13 as student at Royal Academy of painting and sculpture departure from, to visit Italy, 115 inadequate attention to studies, 114, 115 study of nude seen from behind (1783), 115, 116 visit to Italy as enough to establish credentials as archaeologist, 123 failure to find patron, 115 as flight from Royal Academy education, 115 and wood as medium, 121 See also carved medallion depicting Louis XVI (Parent) Paris in Directory period atmosphere of experimentation in, 150–51 political uncertainty and unrest in, 159 and precarity of luxury item production, 159 renewed desire for durability of cultural objects, 154
real estate boom, 1763-1798, 74 Pâris, Pierre-Adrien and auction of Aumont’s collection, 30 career in Royal administration, 13 planned monument to Louis XVI, 13, 109, 110 plan of a former dovecote transformed into a residence, 13, 14, 103 and Revolution, self-imposed exile following, 13, 109 Paris Commune (1871), luxury goods as communal in, 9 Paris Salon of 1798, 59 patrons as arbiters of taste, ending of, with Revolution, 19, 172 Paul, Grand Duke, 79 Pauquet, Jean Louis Charles, 42 Percier, Charles, 50, 79, 156, 161, 172 Percival, Melissa, 128 Pernon, Camille Dugourc and, 80–81, plate 14 Saint-Aubin and, 77 silk commissions during Revolution, 95 Pétion, Alexandre, 54 Pfeiffer, François-Antoine, plate 22 Philippe [I], duc d’Orléans, 76 physiognomic portrait, parallels to guillotine, 129 physiognomy and consolation for mourners, 128 Pietism and, 130 religious traditions underlying, 130 See also Lavater, Johann Caspar physionotrace device, 129 Picard, Joseph Gaspard, 92 Pigalle, Jean-Baptiste, 49 Pillement, Jean, 32 Pinel, Philippe on execution of Louis XVI, 108–9 as founder of French psychiatry, 109 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 75 Pius VII, tiara made for, 65 Place de la Révolution, removal of statue of Louis XV, 11 Plan of a former dovecote transformed into a residence (Pâris), 13, 14, 103 playing cards National Convention’s outlawing of royal and feudal signs on, 71–72, 100
Index
217
playing cards (continued) post-revolution, local use in lieu of money, 100, 100 republican, and new freedom of unregulated artists, 73 republican, introduction of, 71–72 as subject for artists before Revolution, 100 taxes on, in monarchy, 102 See also Nouvelles Cartes de la République Française (Dugourc and Jaume) Plinval de Guillebon, Régine de, 153 The Politics of Appearances (Wrigley), 3 Pompadour, Madame de Saint-Aubin and, 77 and Sèvres porcelain manufactory, 137–38 porcelains as embodiment of revolutionary changes in discourse on the Earth, 137 importance as diplomatic gifts, 139, 159 in postrevolutionary period, as medium of national interest, 152 tensions between regeneration and extinction, 15 See also Sèvres porcelain portraiture, and picturing of modern self, 154 Poussin, Nicolas, 28 Préaud, Tamara, 136 precious metals glut of, from Spain’s New World colonies, 48 purity standards, abolishment by revolutionary government, 57 Premier frise de l’arc de triomphe elevé au, Champ de Mars (Massard and Massard), 53, 53–54 Président d’un comité révolutionnaire, après la levée d’un scelé (anon.), 35 print ephemera, post-revolution, focus on education of citizens, 72 prison, Robert’s painting of plates in, 96 Protestant Reformation, French Revolution as consequence of, 130 Quatremère de Quincy, Antoine Chrysostôme on arabesque decorations, 87, 89, 91 and Pantheon, secularization of, 109 Quéverdo, François-Marie-Isidore, 85 Raphael, and Vatican Loggia, 89 Recueil d’arabesques, contenant les loges du Vatican . . . (Joubert), 85–86
218
Index
Régnier, Antoine, 140 Reichardt, Rolf, 3 reliquaries, typical uses of, 62 See also heart reliquary of Madeleine-Julie Coustou (Auguste) Rémond, François, 78 Rémy, Pierre, 30 Renouvier, Jules, 72 Restout, Jean-Bernard, 92 revolutionary culture, as part of modern cultural inheritance, 171 revolutionary politics of regeneration, ephemeral materials of, 1–2 Révolutions de France et de Brabant, 4–6, 5 Richardson, Emily, 140 Riemenschneider, Tilman, 112, 112 Riesener, Jean-Henri drop-front secretary made by, 33, 34 purchases at Versailles auctions, 31–32, 33, 177n77 royal furniture made by, 21 Rigaud, André, training as goldsmith, 54 Riqueti, Honoré Gabriel, comte de Mirabeau and Armoire de Fer scandal, 58 Deseine bust of, 7 Robert, Hubert, 3, 96 Robespierre, Maximilien Boilly portrait of, 8, plate 2 and death of Louis XVI, 71 and Fête de l’Être Suprême, 141–42 guillotining of, 142 and luxury items of food and dress, 8, plate 2 on political effects of Louis XVI’s death, 145–46 suicide attempt before arrest, 34 Robespierre guillotinant le boureau après avoir fait guillot. r tous les Français (Hercy), 108 Rohan, Cardinal de, 81–83 Le roi, piochant au Champ de Mars (anon.), 145 Roland, Jean-Marie, 58 Rome, ancient, auctions in, 28–29 Royal Academy of painting and sculpture, Parent as student at, 114, 115 royal collection Commission des monuments’ selection of items from, 31 dispersal of, 1 melting of metal objects for use in currency, 31 revolutionaries’ trading of items from, 31
royal agencies responsible for inventories of, 32 See also dispersal of collections in Revolution; Garde-Meuble de la Couronne royal family attempted flight and capture at Varennes, 22, 120–21, 139 donation of silver and gold toward national debt, 41 imprisoned in Temple, 22, 24, 27, 71 removal from Versailles to Palais des Tuileries, 20 See also Palais des Tuileries Royalists characteristic beliefs of, 131 depictions of dead royal family in art, as phantoms or silhouettes, 15, 25, 25, 27, 109, 131–32, 173, plate 30 distinctive aesthetic of, 131 and execution of Louis XVI, desire for revenge for, 27 mourning of Louis XVI, 15 private devotional objects for mourning, 15 and royal collections as fetishized relics, 10, 27 and White Terror, 159 royal manufactories, post-revolution continuation of royal commissions, 20–21, 176n14 royal power, decay before Revolution, and emptiness at heart of symbolic order, 11 royal tombs at Saint-Denis burial of Louis XIV, 146 and funeral procession for Louis XVI and queen, 26, 27 lack of grand Bourbon funeral monument at, 24 revolutionaries’ disinterment of bodies at, 146, 163 Rudwick, Martin, 148, 167 Saint-Aubert, Antoine-François, 113 Saint-Aubin, Augustin de, 55, 55 Saint-Aubin, Charles-Germain de career of, 77 training of Dugourc, 77–78, 85 Saint-Aubin, Gabriel de, 29 Saint-Gobain royal glass works, and use of luxury goods to consolidate authority, 6 Saint-Hilaire, Etienne Geoffroy, 148 Saint-Just, Louis Antoine de, 71 Salmon, Xavier, 60 Salon de la Correspondance, Parent’s works displayed at, 114, 125 Sanson, Charles-Henri, 22–23, 107 Saule, Béatrix, 48
Saule pleureur (anon.), 25, 25 Saunier, Charles, 60, 68 Sauvage, Piat-Joseph, 154 Savonnerie carpet manufactory revolutionaries’ criticisms of, 140 and use of luxury goods to consolidate authority, 6 Savournin, Joseph, 91–92 Schaumburg-Lippe, Princess Juliane, Parent and Lavater’s design for monument to mother of, 128, 129 Schechter, Ronald, 150 scholarship on arts in French Revolution, 2–3 on dispersal of collections in Revolution, 9 on dispossession, 10 on goût étrusque, 72 on guillotine, 15 limited work on fate of luxury industry and works, 2, 4, 7 on Sèvres porcelain manufactory in revolutionary period, 137 Schwerdfeger, Ferdinand furniture by, sold in Versailles auctions, 32 See also jewelry cabinet (serre-bijoux) of Marie- Antoinette (Schwerdfeger and Dugourc) Scott, Katie, 11, 73 Scurr, Ruth, 8 seated bishop (Riemenschneider), 112, 112 September Massacres assassination of Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, 92 and banishment of émigrés, 122 Dugourc and, 96 and large number of bodies to be buried, 162–63 and official end of monarchy, 92 and radicalization of government, 22 Sèvres porcelain annual sale at Versailles of, 137 banning from Louvre Museum, 7 characteristic designs of, 138 dispossessed, sale in England, 135 items sold at Versailles auctions, 37–39, 38 King’s request for, at Palais des Tuileries, 22 Le Brun’s selection for Louvre, 31 See also Louis XVI dinner service (1983-93) Sèvres porcelain manufactory colors available to, 154–55, plate 26 superiority of Dihl’s colorfast enamels, 155–56, plate 27, plate 28
Index
219
Sèvres porcelain manufactory (continued) competition for elite clientele, 159 Louis XV’s purchase of, 137–38 and luxury goods as symbol of distinction, 6 Napoleon’s decision to support, 160 revolutionaries’ criticisms of, 139–40 soft-paste porcelains as best known, 138 specialization of workers at, 138 Sèvres porcelain manufactory, in revolutionary period Brongniart’s as director appointment as, 15, 160 long tenure as, 136 Lucien Bonaparte’s preference for chemist and, 160 and modernization of factory, 136 clean slate policy as echo of new Consulate government, 160–61 competition from other manufacturers, 152 and debts left by émigrés, 140 déjeuner (tea set) depicting republican themes, 140–42, plate 21 designs designs based on classical antiquity, 161, 163 faux stone designs, 161, 162, 163 new styles sought by, 161 use of outside designers, 161 different items produced, 37, 38 and digging for raw materials, 150, 162 early financial problems, 160, 161 Napoleon’s rise to power and, 160 near-extinction of, 136 and new aesthetic of work, 136 obstacles faced by, 160 order to destroy all molds and models representing royalty and denounced persons, 140 plate with cameo portrait of Moschion, 161, 163 production for export market, 184n21 and recovery from near extinction, 136 reduced production, 140 Régnier’s time as head of, 140 republican-themed decorations adopted by, 137, 140–43, 141, plate 21, plate 22 revolutionary government takeover of, 140 revolutionary ideas of regeneration and, 136 scholarship on, 137 selloff of old stock, 136, 160 services and table displays for imperial court, 172
220
Index
and soft-paste porcelain, ending production of, 136, 160 and state support under Napoleon, 136 success of, 162 sundial (1794–95), 142–43, plate 22 and transformation of factory into research and learning center, 15, 136 worker unrest and absenteeism, 140 Shaw, Matthew, 143 Shovlin, John, 6, 78 Siegfried, Susan, 3 silk assignats, Jolivet’s proposal for, 94–95, 95 silk designs by Dugourc, 79, 80–81 silk fabric with Dianas (ca. 1792), 91–92, 92 as among last commissions of Garde-Meuble, 91–92 as completed but unused, 92 design of, 91–92, 92 Dugourc’s work on design for, 92 silk industry, economic collapse after Revolution, 7 silk industry in Lyon Napoleon’s revival of, 172 and political violence, 95 silk stockings with “Necker” pattern, 94, 95 silver luxury objects marks (poinçons) on, significance of, 46–47 purity standards for, 47 taxes on, 47 typical types of, 48 Simonides of Keos, 63 Sleeping Leopard (Stubbs), 154, 155 Smith, Adam, 6 Société philomathique, 148 soft-paste porcelain characteristics vs. hard-paste, 138 kaolin and, 138 as Sèvres’s best-known product, 138 Sèvres’s ending production of, 136, 160 Sprang, Rebecca, 55, 56 squiggle game therapy, 89, 90 Stammers, Tom, 9, 18, 19, 37 string play, in Winnicott’s therapy for traumatized children, 89 Stubbs, George, 154, 155 Sturm and Drang movement, Lavater and, 130 survival of luxury items cultural position of luxury in ancien régime and, 6 as puzzle, 4
Swebach-Desfontaines, François Louis, Histoire naturelle, 148, plate 23 Swebach-Desfontaines, Jacques-François, 152 Swiss Confederation, French defeat and seizure of, 122, 131 Switzerland counterrevolutionary thought in, as mix of religious piety and political conservatism, 131 Directory government in, Lavater as critic of, 131 as émigrés destination, 122 Tackett, Timothy, 7 Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles-Maurice de, 159 Taws, Richard, 3, 9, 43, 72 te Rijdt, R. J. te, 105–6 Terror brisk market in second-hand luxury goods during, 8–9 guillotine as exemplary instrument of, 107 invention of tricoteuse (knitters) of revo to disavow, 93–94 legitimization of, through analogies with nature, 144 theft of luxury items by city officials, 35, 35 and resale at auctions, 35 Thermidorian Reaction, 93, 126, 159 Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, Marc-Antoine arrest of, 91 assassination in prison, 92, 96 as head of Garde-Meuble, 78 time, revolutionary transformation of, 143 Les tombeaux, ou Essai sur les sépultures (Giraud), 164–66 comparison of funeral practices across cultures, 164 on glass pillars made from cremated remains, 165–66 on medallions made from cremated remains, 164 proposal for vast crematorium/cemetery/memorial, 165, 165–66 Travaux du Champ de Mars pour la Confédération du 14 juillet 1790 (anon.), 144, 144 travel outside one’s district, passport required for, 146 Treuttel and Würtz (booksellers), 32 tricoteuse (knitters) of Revolution, 93–94 turquerie, 87 unionization, Le Chapelier law forbidding (1791), 54 universal equality, as goal of Revolution, 19
Valois Saint Rémy, Jeanne de (comtesse de la Motte), 81–83 value of objects after Revolution courts’ role in judging, 11 as matter of personal taste, 8–9, 16, 39 misvaluing of objects in Versailles auctions, 32 radical fluctuation of, 31 relation to view of past, 9 transfer of aesthetic authority to market, 19, 172 unclear standards for, 10 Vandé, P.-J.-B., plate 21 van Spaendonck, Gérard, 120 Vathek (Beckford), 64 Vatican Loggia, and arabesque decoration, 85, 89 Vergennes, comte de, 21 Verlet, Pierre, 18–19 Vernet, Joseph, 156 Versailles auctions (1793–94) advertisement for, 17, 18 artisans’ purchase of their work at, 33 assignats as currency of, 17, 33 atmosphere at, 17 auctioning of objects from, and dispersal as state violence, 7–8 breakup of sets of items, 38 bureaucrats’ valuation of objects in, 30–31 committee overseeing, 30 cultural effect of, as under-studied, 39 cut-rate deals at, 34 elimination of traces of monarchy as goal of, 17–19, 28 and funds needed for military campaigns, 10, 28, 30, 33 furniture exported following, 32–33 as generative source of collective memories, 19 inventory process prior to categories for sorting of items, 30 separation of items to sell or keep, 30–31 at lodging of Princesse de Lamballe, 17 lots, mixed items in, 32 market-driven chaos of, 32 misvaluation of objects in, 32 Morris purchase at, 4 and nostalgia for lost luxury, 37–39 number of lots, 17 objects sold power of king’s body displaced onto, 19
Index
221
Versailles auctions (continued) objects sold (continued) as stubborn material reminders of king, 19–20 types of, 17 unstable meaning of, 39 officials conducting, 32 participants in, 32 and private property, conversion of feudal assets to, 28 proceeds from, 17 records of, 31–32 as redistributive justice, 19 royal family’s removal from, 20 and secondhand goods market, stimulation of, 34–35 sessions, number of lots sold in, 32 shaping of collective memory of Louis XVI by, 19 as spectacle of loss, 19, 33 as tragic cultural loss, 18 unsold objects sale overseas, 33 use to pay state debts in lieu of cash, 33 Viljoen, Madeleine, 67 virtue, masculine notion in Revolution, and collective myths of the feminine (maternal economy), 73–74 Vivant-Denon, Dominique, 64–65, 169 Volpato, Giovanni, 85 voudou, and colonialism, 69–70
222
Index
Wahnich, Sophie, 25 Walczak, Gerrit, 10, 13, 122 Wall, Cynthia, 29 wallpaper designers, after Revolution, 98 See also Manufacture républicain wallpaper company (Dugourc and Anisson-Dupéron) Walzer, Michael, 23 Washington, George and Morris’s advice on taste, 36, 152 Morris’s purchase of porcelain for, 152, 153 Wedgwood popularity in Paris during Revolution, 154 Stubbs’ Sleeping Leopard on, 154, 155 White Terror of royalists, 159 Wille, Johann Georg, 36 William, Nicholas, 67 Winckelmann, Johann J., 76, 77 Winnicott, D. W., therapy for traumatized children, 89, 90 Wrigley, Richard, 3 Württemberg, Carl Eugene, Duke of, 126 Württemberg, Ludwig Eugene, Duke of, 126 York, Frederick, Duke of, pair of candelabra by Auguste made for, 52, 52