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 favor 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
scepters 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 favored 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 color, and the Sevres 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 Bonneffe'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.
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
characterized 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 stodgy, squat
cabriole of the overfed 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.
Corner of a
Drawing Room, Furniture Showing Directoire influenceA delightful bit
of a room. The furniture, in line, shows a Directoire influence. The
striped French satin on sofa and one chair is blue, yellow and faun,
the Brussels tapestry in faded blues, fauns and grays. Over a
charmingly painted table is a Louis XV gilt appliqué, the screen is
dark in tone and has painted panels.
The
rug, done in cross-stitch, black ground and design in colors,
was discovered in a forgotten corner of a shop, its condition so
dingy from the dust of ages that only an expert would have
recognized its possibilities.
From Louis XVI we pass to the Directoire, when, following the
Revolution, the voice of the populace decried all ostentation and
everything savoring 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
regime.
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 marvelously wrought
pieces of silver, hammered and chiseled by hand, "museum pieces,"
indeed, and lucky is the collector who chances upon any specimen
adrift.
More TIPS and
HINTS
