Antique French Furniture. Periods and Values. (3)
During the last years of the reign of Louis XIV and the first years of the reign of his great-grandson Louis XV, France was governed by a regent, Philip of Orleans. The furniture made in this period (from about 1710 to 1735) was Baroque in character, but somewhat different from Louis XIV furniture; this division of the Baroque is called the Regency style. The principal cabinetmaker of the Regency period was Charles Cressent (1685-1768). In Regency furniture the tendency towards informality was further developed: it was a style of transition between the Louis XIV style and the Louis XV style that was to follow. The slightly curved outlines of the later Louis XIV furniture were replaced by freer, more graceful curves—the S-shaped legs were not so stiffly upright. But the strict symmetry of the Louis XIV style was retained. Martial motifs were no longer used. Sometimes little monkeys were introduced, suggested perhaps by the paintings of Gillot and Watteau. Not only were the outlines more curved, but the surfaces as well became bombe, or slightly bulging. The typical Regency commode has a slightly bulging front.
It was at this time that the cabinet-makers learned the technique of veneering curved surfaces. Mahogany and rosewood drove out ebony, though gilt was kept for the carved furniture. These woods, imported from the tropics, were found excellent for veneering. Much of the carved and gilded furniture was made, as it had been to some extent under Louis XIV, in beech. This is a wood very suitable for such treatment. It is hard and close-grained enough for delicate carving, and tough enough for a strong joint; and since its grain is uninteresting nothing is lost by gilding it. Moreover it is easily obtainable in Europe, and consequently cheap. For the construction of chairs there are few better woods than beech. It is not often used for carving where strength is not required—for picture frames, for example, a softer wood such as lime is used.
The style known as Louis XV was fashionable from about 1735 till 1750. Louis XV went on reigning till 1774, but there was a complete change of style at about 1750. In Louis XV furniture the symmetry characteristic of the Louis XIV style at last disappears. A general balance was kept in the design of carved decorations, but the parts were not strictly symmetrical. The motifs of the carving included shells, garlands of flowers, musical instruments and gay figures from Greek mythology. Furniture was still partly gilded, but white paint was used with gilt for a lighter effect. Ormolu mounts were placed wherever possible: on the ends of table legs as doe’s feet, on the corners of table-tops and round the edges of commodes. In the search for gaiety of style lacquering was adopted; cabinets were lacquered in the Chinese manner, but there was no general `Chinese style’ as there was at about the same time in England.
The furniture of this period shows the unnatural curves into which ingenious cabinet-makers and joiners can shape wood, a fairly straight-grained material. Everything that could be curved was curved—not only the legs of tables and chairs, but drawer-fronts, the sides and fronts of cupboards, the edges of table-tops. The style was nicknamed Rocaille, or Rococo, from a type of fancy pebble-work fashionable in garden decoration at the time. In the end, the curves became so exaggerated that inventiveness could go no further, and designers began to seek for a new style.
The authority for the change of style did not come from the king, who was a person of weak character, but from Mme de Pompadour, who had great influence at the Court. In 1748 the ruins of buried Pompeii were dug up, and in the same year Mme de Pompadour sent a mission to Italy to study ‘the true beauty of ancient art’. The mission consisted of her brother, the Marquis of Marigny, the architect Soufflot and the engraver Cochin; these envoys were expected to find ideas for a new furniture style.
Louis XVI Carved Details
Acanthus leaf (cf. Renaissance) and Louis XIV acanthus leaves)
Rose of laurel leaves
Egg and dart moulding
CLASSICAL REVIVAL (1750-1815)
The new style which resulted from the researches of this mission came later to be known as the style of Louis XVI, although it began some years before his accession. All the Louis XV curves were now abolished, and chair legs and table legs became straight, and were usually turned and fluted. Gilt was used in smaller quantities, and much of the furniture was painted in pale colours. The decorative detail—the profiles of Carved roses
Arm-chair
with
fluted leg
Ribbon decorating a moulding
also used as decoration, for the chief cabinet-maker of the time, Jean Henri Riesener (1734-1806) worked for Marie Antoinette, and she was very fond of roses. The early Louis XVI furniture, as compared with the grossly elaborate furniture of the end of the Louis XV period, was graceful and light in appearance; yet it was soberly made and gave an effect of dignity and strength.
In the time of Louis XIV the people of the Court had thought of themselves as conquering heroes; and in the time of Louis XV as dallying nymphs and shepherds. They now played the parts of Greek gods, and looked down upon ordinary human affairs with haughty indifference. They indulged themselves in simple tastes and manners, and pretended to be preoccupied with virtue. Superficially they had purer customs than their predecessors; and their furniture was superficially simple. In spite of their affectations, they made their rooms very comfortable indeed. The furniture, smaller than that of any preceding style, was more home-like and gentle.
Towards the end of the reign of Louis XVI more Greco-Roman remains were dug up. Classicism now dominated furniture-making to such an extent that all the natural French graces were suppressed. Ancient designs were exactly copied rather than used as ideas on which to base a native style.
Although the French Revolution was accompanied by many social changes in French life, it had little effect on furniture style: furniture continued to be made in the unnatural late Louis XVI style, except that for a short time revolutionary emblems (clasped hands, workmen’s tools) were used in the decoration. The new rulers, who called themselves friends of `the people’, were as arrogant in their airs as the Court had been, and took over all the trappings of monarchical pomp. There were a few affectations of lower-class simplicity, but there was not sufficient interest in general welfare for the daily habits of life to be much affected. There was no modernization of furniture: it remained ‘antique’. The furniture style of the last years of the reign of Louis XVI and of the First Republic is called Directoire—after the Directorate by which France was governed for the four years preceding the Napoleonic period. Directoire style can be regarded as a version of Louis XVI style.
Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign produced a new kind of antiquity to imitate. The expedition was accompanied by archaeologists, who made drawings of everything they could find. There was immediately an Egyptian fashion in furniture. The Empire style, which lasted from about 1800 till 1820, was perhaps even more pompous than the Louis XIV style. Most of the furniture was of dark red mahogany, decorated with ormolu mounts. Designers sought an Egyptian effect in everything—stern and impressive simplicity. Gilded sphinxes held up the arms of chairs : Egyptian motifs were symbols of Empire. With the imperial manner went the martial manner. France was an armed camp, and the Parisians played at being world conquerors. Stools were made in the form of drums, beds in the form of tents, and ormolu spearheads were stuck on to mahogany panels. So much energy was spent in making furniture express national glories that comfort was neglected. Empire furniture was more uncomfortable to use than any furniture made since the Renaissance, when comfort began to be an important consideration.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
With the fall of Napoleon and the end of the Empire, France relaxed from the efforts and responsibilities of greatness. There was a strong back-to-the-good-old-times movement, but some difficulty in deciding which good old times were best. In the eighty years from 1820 till 1900, France revived all her old styles one by one. There was a Gothic revival, a Renaissance revival, a Louis XV revival, a Louis XVI revival, and then an Empire revival—all in quick succession. Towards the end of the century nearly all French houses contained pieces of imitation period furniture from all the periods. Most of the imitations were rather bad copies of old pieces; many of them were machine-made, and delicacy of detail was therefore lost. Much of the furniture was not even copied from models, but designed ‘in the spirit of the style’ by designers who were too busy to have a very accurate knowledge of any one style. There was no uniformity of fashion; a designer might be working on Renaissance one day and Louis XVI the next.
At this time the production of fake antiques was a flourishing business. The fakes were very well made, often exactly copied from museum pieces—experts are sometimes deceived by nine-Empire Carved Details
Rose from the cradle of the
King of Rome
Arm-chair
Arm-chair
Bed
teenth-century fakes. One enterprising manufacturer pretended
to have discovered a hitherto unknown Louis XV cabinet-maker
and supported the story with faked documents giving the details
of his life. When people became interested in the discovery, the
manufacturer had pieces of Louis XV furniture made in his workshops and offered them for sale one by one as genuine examples of the work of this imaginary cabinet-maker.
Towards the end of the century, French pride reasserted itself. Designers at last grew disgusted with copying and decided to create a new style, one that would take nothing from the past. Nature was to provide the inspiration. The teachings of William Morris were partly responsible for this break with tradition: he attacked the bad taste of machine-production and made designs, for furniture and house furnishings, suitable to hand-production. The French designers, however, were more eccentric than Morris and his English followers, but equally sincere in their resolution to develop a natural beauty of design. They studied the forms and pattern of nature, making careful drawings of roots and twigs to guide them in their work. The furniture they designed is known as Art Nouveau, or ‘Style 1900′. In the furniture made from their designs natural wood was used, without paint or gilt, and it was all hand-made. Forms undreamed of even in the period of Louis XV were imposed on wood; not being furniture-makers themselves, the designers took little thought for the appropriateness of their designs to construction in wood. The style flourished from 1900 to 1905, and then went completely out of fashion. Although this furniture was too eccentric looking for domestic use, it represents the first attempt to abolish the nineteenth-century custom of copying, and, more important, the first realization in France of the bad effects of machine production on style. The Art Nouveau designers tried to solve the machine problem by ignoring machines and designing furniture that could only be made by hand. A better solution still remains to be found.
We have followed, briefly, the history of French furniture styles from the twelfth to the twentieth century. We have studied the way in which the various styles have developed one from another, and we have seen how the impact of new materials and technical advances has influenced furniture-makers in their creation of new styles. But such influences are common to furniture-makers in all countries—they do not explain why particular styles have been evolved in France different from the styles of other countries. The French quality of the styles is due, not to the furniture-makers, but to the people for whom the furniture was made. To complete our picture of the succession of French styles, it is necessary to show why each style in turn became inadequate from the point of view of the users of furniture, and what each new style offered them to satisfy their changing needs.
The first furniture was made in the Romanesque style, which was derived from the remnants of Roman architecture. It was the only possible style at the beginning; in seeking a respectable appearance for their furniture, the first carpenters naturally chose the conventional forms popular at the time.
This style could not long satisfy a people that was gradually coming to be conscious of itself as a distinct nation. A style based on what was to them a dead past, a past during which their country was occupied by foreign conquerors, was not one in which they could take pride. They therefore found a new, French, style : the Gothic style. The principles of Gothic architecture were first worked out in France; the Gothic style is truly French.
The Gothic style became identified with the Church. The desire for freedom from Church authority expressed itself in the Renaissance. Renaissance furniture, in superseding the Gothic, corresponded with a change in domestic life to freer, livelier habits.
Renaissance furniture, though much more elaborate than Gothic furniture, was not gorgeous enough for the Court of Louis XIV. In his attempts to make France the centre of the world, and himself the most conspicuous world figure, he insisted that everything around him should be dazzlingly magnificent. Baroque furniture was designed to flatter the vanity of Louis and his Court.
But the enthusiasm for Baroque furniture declined when people grew weary of the strain of keeping up a constant show of grandeur. In the two later Baroque periods, Regency and Rococo, there was a general relaxation from grandeur. Rococo was not merely informal, but vulgar; there was no discipline of design—the decorations were piled on in a deliberately untidy way.
Rococo became so chaotic in design that it had to be abandoned. The French are fundamentally a very sane people; and in the styles of the Classical Revival they reaffirmed their sanity. Louis XVI and Directoire furniture expressed restraint and self-possession. It avoided the ridiculous errors of taste of Rococo furniture, and had a delicacy that was altogether lacking in the furniture of those periods in which France was striving for national glory.
But Classical Revival was greatly modified during the Empire; all its gentleness was suppressed. Empire furniture was pompous, like Baroque furniture, and designed to dramatize impressive public and martial achievements. There was a new sternness—the pride of a nation of campaigners could not be expressed in Baroque magnificence.
The strong public emphasis of Empire furniture made it impossible for ordinary private use. A domestic version of the Empire style followed. Furniture became heavier, its lines rounder. The period of public glories was over and people turned to domestic pleasures. But private happiness throughout the whole nineteenth century meant chiefly physical comfort, and the furniture showed it. The public dignity characteristic of the Empire style was lost; and the mixed styles that succeeded it did not have private dignity, only a look of prosperity.
Art Nouveau furniture was an attempt to escape from the deadening hold of the traditional styles. People were feeling that in the new century all the stale customs of the past must at last be got rid of, and completely new ways found of doing things—ways so right that they would never need to be changed. The Art Nouveau designers hoped to create an original and perfect style, safe from corruption by outside influences. The style was supposed to be so natural that, like nature itself, it would not degenerate, no matter what changes took place in life. But these designers only succeeded in isolating furniture from the normal activities of life. The style was a failure—because any solution of furniture problems must relate furniture to the world in which it is being used.
Traditional French furniture was closely related to Court life, which was, however, itself isolated from the daily affairs of the world. Much French furniture is beautiful, and the standard of craftsmanship has always been high, but it is like stage furniture. Its chief purpose was to provide a dramatic setting for the Court. French Provincial furniture, although much better than the Court furniture, was too homely in character to be accepted by the French as a standard of good style.