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CHAPTER XIX
THE PERIODS OF THE THREE LOUIS
The only way to learn how to distinguish the three Louis is to study
these periods in collections of furniture and objects of art, or,
where this is impossible, to go through books showing interiors of
those periods. In this way one learns to visualise the salient
features of any period and gradually to acquire a feeling for them,
that subtle sense which is not dependent wholly upon outline,
decoration, nor colour, but upon the combined result.
French writers who specialise along the lines of interior decoration
often refer to the three types as follows:
Period of Louis XIV—heavily, stolidly masculine;
Period of Louis XV—coquettishly feminine;
Period of Louis XVI—lightly, alertly masculine.
One soon sees why, for Louis XIV furniture does suggest masculinity
by its weight and size. It is squarely made, straight (classic) in
line, equally balanced, heavily ponderous and magnificent. Over its
surface, masses of decoration immobile as stone carving, are evenly
dispersed, and contribute a grandiose air to all this furniture.
There was impressive gallantry to the Louis XIV style, a ceremonious
masculine gallantry, while Louis XV furniture—the period dominated by
women when "poetry and sculpture sang of love" and life revolved about
the boudoir—shows a type entirely intime, sinuously, lightly,
gracefully, coquettishly feminine, bending and courtesying, with no
fixed outline, no equal balance of proportions. Louis XV was the
period when outline and decoration were merged in one and the shell
which figured in Louis XIV merely as an ornament, gave its form (in a
curved outline) and its name "rococo" (Italian for shell) to the
style.
As a reaction from this we get the Louis XVI period, again masculine
in its straight rigidity of line, its perfectly poised proportions,
the directness of its appeal to the eye, a "reflection of the more
serious mental attitude of the nation." Louis XVI had an aristocratic
sobriety and was masculine in a light, alert, mental way, if one can
so express it, which stimulates the imagination, in direct contrast to
the material and literal type of Louis XIV which, as we have said, was
masculine in its ponderous magnificence, and unyielding
over-ornamentation.
So much for outline. Now for the decoration of the three periods.
Remember that the Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods took their ideas for
decoration from the Greeks, via Italy, and the extreme Orient. A
national touch was added by means of their Sèvres porcelain medallions
set into furniture, and the finely chiselled bronzes known as ormoulu,
a superior alloy of metals of a rich gold colour. The subjects for
these chiselled bronzes were taken from Greek and Roman mythology;
gods, goddesses, and cupids the insignia of which were torches,
quivers, arrows, and tridents. There were, also, wreaths, garlands,
festoons and draperies, as well as rosettes, ribbons, bow-knots,
medallion heads, and the shell and acanthus leaf. One finds these in
various combinations or as individual motives on the furniture of
the Louis.
PLATE XIX
Shows the red-tiled entrance hall of a duplex apartment in New
York.
On the walls are two Italian mirrors (Louis XVI), a side table
(console) of the same epoch, and two Italian carved chairs.
Entrance Hall in New York Duplex Apartment. Italian
Furniture
The backgrounds for these mounts were the woods finely inlaid with
ivory shell and brass in the style of the Italian Renaissance.
Oriental lacquer and painted furniture, at that time heavily gilded.
The legs of chairs, sofas and tables of the Louis XIV period were
cabrioles (curved outward)—a development of the animal legs of carved
wood, bronze or gold, used by the ancient Assyrians, Egyptians and
Greeks as supports for tables and chairs. Square grooved legs also
appeared in this type.
The same grooves are found on round tapering legs of Louis XVI's time.
In fact that type of leg is far more typical of the Louis XVI period
than the cabriole or square legs grooved, but one sees all three
styles.
Other hallmarks of the Louis XVI period are the straight outlines,
perfectly balanced proportions, the rosettes, ribbon and bow-knot with
torch and arrows in chiselled bronze.
That all "painting and sculpture sang of love" is as true of Louis XVI
as of Louis XV. In both reigns the colouring was that of
spring-tender greens, pale blossoms, the grey of mists, sky-blues,
and yellows of sunshine.
During Louis XV's time soft cushions fitted into the sinuous lines of
the furniture, and as some Frenchman has put it, "a vague, discreet
perfume pervaded the whole period, in contrast to the heavier odour of
the First Empire."
The walls and ceilings of the three Louis were richly decorated in
accordance with a scheme, surpassing in magnificence any other period.
An intricate system of mouldings (to master which, students at the
École des Beaux Arts, Paris, must devote years) encrusted sidewalls
and ceilings, forming panels and medallions, over-doors and
chimney-pieces, into which were let paintings by the great masters of
the time, whose subjects reflected the moods and interests of each
period. The Louis XV and XVI paintings are tender and vague as to
subject and the colours veiled in a greyish tone, full of sentiment.
That was the great period of tapestry weaving—Beauvais, Arras and
Gobelin, and these filled panels or hung before doors.
It may be said that the period of Louis XVI profited by antiquity,
but continued French traditions; it was a renaissance of line and
decoration kept alive, while the First Empire was classic form
inanimate, because an abrupt innovation rather than an influence and a
development. One may go farther and quote the French claim that the
colour scheme of Louis XVI was intensely suggestive and personal,
while the Empire colouring was literal and impersonal.
Under Louis XVI furniture was all but lost in a crowd of other
articles, tapestry, draperies of velvet, flowered silks, little
objects of art in porcelain, more or less useless, silver and ormoulu,
exquisitely decorated with a précieuse intricacy of chiselled designs.
The Louis XVI period was rigid in its aristocratic sobriety, for
although torch and arrows figured, as did love-birds, in
decoration—(souvenirs of the painter Boucher), everything was set and
decorous, even the arrow was often the warrior's not cupid's; in the
same way the torch was that of the ancients, and when a medallion
showed a pastoral subject, its frame of straight lines linked it to
the period. Even if Cupid appeared, he was decorously framed or
pedestaled.
To be sure, Marie Antoinette and the ladies of her court played at
farming in the Park of the Petite Trainon, at Versailles; but they
wore silk gowns and powdered wigs. To be rustic was the fad of the day
(there was a cult for gardening in England); but shepherdesses were
confined to tapestries, and, while the aristocracy held the stage, it
played the game of life in gloves.
There was about the interior decoration of Louis XVI, as about the
lives of aristocratic society of that time, a "penetrating perfume of
love and gallantry," to which all admirers of the beautiful must ever
return for refreshment and standards of beauty and grace.
Speaking generally of the three Louis one can say that on a background
of a great variety of wonderful inlaid woods, ivory, shell,
mother-of-pearl and brass, or woods painted and gilded, following the
Italian Renaissance, or lacquered in the manner of the Orient, were
ormoulu wrought and finely chiselled, showing Greek mythological
subjects; gods, goddesses and their insignia, with garlands,
wreaths, festoons, draperies, ribbons, bow-knots, rosettes and
medallions of cameo, Sèvres porcelain, or Wedgwood paste. Among the
lost arts of that time are inlaying as done by Boule and the finish
known as Vernis Martin.
PLATE XX
This large studio is a marked example of comfort and interest
where the laws of appropriateness, practicableness, proportion
and balance are so observed as to communicate at once a sense of
restfulness.
Here the comfortable antiques and beautifully proportioned modern
furniture make an ideal combination of living-room and painter's
studio.
Combination of Studio and Living Room in a New York
Duplex Apartment
Tapestries and mural paintings were framed by a marvellous system of
mouldings which covered ceilings and sidewalls.
The colour scheme was such as would naturally be dictated by the
general mood of artificiality in an age when dreams were lived and the
ruling classes obsessed by a passion for amusements, invented to
divert the mind from actualities. This colour scheme was beautifully
light in tone and harmoniously gay, whether in tapestries, draperies
and upholstery of velvets, or flowered silks, frescoes or painted
furniture. It had the appearance of being intended to act as a
soporific upon society, whose aim it was to ignore those jarring
contrasts which lay beneath the surface of every age.
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