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CHAPTER XVIII
FRENCH FURNITURE
The classic periods in French furniture were those known as Francis I,
Henry II and the three Louis,—XIV, XV, and XVI. One can get an idea
of all French periods in furnishing by visiting the collection in
Paris belonging to the government, "Mobilier National," in the new
wing of the Louvre.
It is always necessary to consult political history in order to
understand artistic invasions. Turn to it now and you will find that
Charles VIII of France held Naples for two years (1495-6), and when he
went home took with him Italian artists to decorate his palaces. Read
on and find that later Henry II married Catherine de Medici and loved
Diane de Poitiers, and that, fortunately for France, both his queen
and his mistress were patronesses of the arts. So France bloomed in
the sunshine of royal favour and Greek influence, as few countries
ever had. Fontainebleau (begun by Francis I) was the first of a chain
of French royal palaces, all monuments without and within, to a
picturesque system of monarchy,—Kings who could do no wrong, wafting
sceptres over powerless subjects, whose toil produced Art in the form
of architecture, cabinetmaking, tapestry weaving, mural decoration,
unrivalled porcelain, exquisitely wrought silver and gold plate,
silks, lovely as flower gardens (showing the "pomegranate" and "vase"
patterns) and velvets like the skies! And for what? Did these things
represent the wise planning of wise monarchs for dependent subjects?
We know better, for it is only in modern times that simple living and
small incomes have achieved surroundings of artistic beauty and
comfort.
The marvels of interior decoration during the classic French periods
were created for kings and their queens, mistresses and favoured
courtiers. Diane de Poitiers wished—perhaps only dreamed—and an
epoch-making art project was born. Madame du Barry admired and made
her own the since famous du Barry rose colour, and the Sèvres
porcelain factories reproduced it for her. But how to produce this
particular illusive shade of deep, purplish-pink became a forgotten
art, when the seductive person of the king's mistress was no more.
If you would learn all there is to know concerning the sixteenth
century furnishings in France read Edmund Bonneffé's "Sixteenth
Century Furniture."
It was the Henry II interior decoration and architecture which first
showed the Renaissance of pure line and classic proportion, followed
by the never-failing reaction from the simple line to the undulating
over-ornate when decoration repeated the elaboration of the most
luxurious, licentious periods of the past.
One has but to walk through the royal palaces of France to see French
history beguilingly illustrated, in a series of volumes open to all,
the pages of which are vibrant with the names and personalities of men
and women who will always live in history as products of an age of
great culture and art.
PLATE XVIII
A delightful bit of a room. The furniture, in line, shows a
Directoire influence. The striped French satin sofa and one chair
is blue, yellow and faun, the Brussels tapestry in faded blues,
fauns and greys. Over a charmingly painted table is a Louis XV
gilt applique, the screen is dark in tone and has painted panels.
The rug, done in cross-stitch, black ground and design colours,
was discovered in a forgotten corner of a shop, its condition so
dingy from the dust of ages that only an expert would have
recognised its possibilities.
Corner of a Drawing Room, Furniture Showing Directoire
influence
The Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods in furniture are all related. Rare
brocades, flowered and in stripes, bronze mounts as garlands,
bow-knots and rosettes, on intricate inlaying, mark their common
relationship. The story of these periods is that gradually decoration
becomes over-elaborated and in the end dominates the Greek outline.
The three Louis mark a succession of great periods. Louis XIV, though
beautiful at its best, is of the three the most ornate and is
characterised in its worst stage by the extremely bowed (cabriole)
legs of the furniture, ludicrously suggestive of certain debauched
courtiers who surrounded the Grande Monarch.
Louis XV legs show a curve, also, but no longer the stoggy, squat
cabriole of the over-fed gallant. Instead we are entranced by an
ethereal grace and lightness of movement in every line and decoration.
Here cabriole means but a courtly knee swiftly bending to salute some
beauty's hand. So subtly waving is the curving outline of this
furniture that one scarcely knows where it begins or ends, and it is
the same with the decorations—exquisitely delicate waving traceries
of vines and flora, gold on gold, inlay, or paint in delicate tones.
All this gives to the Louis XV period supremacy over Louis XVI, whose
round, grooved, tapering straight legs, one tires of more quickly,
although fine gold and lovely paint make this type winning and
beloved.
From Louis XVI we pass to the Directoire, when, following the
Revolution, the voice of the populace decried all ostentation and
everything savouring of the superfluous. The Great Napoleon in his
first period affected simplicity and there were no longer bronze
mounts, in rosettes, garlands and bow-knots, elaborate inlaying, nor
painted furniture with lovely flowering surfaces; in the most severe
examples not even fluted legs! Instead, simple but delicately
proportioned furniture with slender, squarely cut, chastely tapering
legs, arms and backs, was the fashion. In fact, the Directoire type is
one of ideal proportions, graceful outlines with a flowing movement
and the decoration when present, kept well within bounds, entirely
subservient to the main structural material. One feels an almost
Quaker-like quality about the Directoire, whether of natural wood or
plain painted surface.
With Napoleon's assumption of regal power and habits, we get the
Empire (he had been to Rome and Egypt), pseudo-classic in outline and
richly ornamented with mounts in ormoulu characteristic of the Louis.
The Empire period in furniture was dethroned by the succeeding régime.
When we see old French chairs with leather seats and backs, sometimes
embossed, in the Portuguese style, with small regular design, put on
with heavy nails and twisted or straight stretchers (pieces of wood
extending between legs of chairs), we know that they belong to the
time of Henry IV or Louis XIII. Some of the large chairs show the
shell design in their broad, elaborate stretchers.
The beautiful small side tables of the Louis and First Empire called
consoles, were made for the display of their marvellously wrought
pieces of silver, hammered and chiselled by hand,—"museum pieces,"
indeed, and lucky is the collector who chances upon any specimen
adrift.
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