The Evolution of Taste

Think 18th-century decorative arts are a unified style? Think again. In those mad-for-modern days, looks changed every decade. The newly revamped decorative arts galleries at the Louvre offer a rare chance to experience those rapidly shifting tastes and lifestyles.

 

Marie Antoinette was still alive (though not for long) in the summer of 1793 when a museum was founded at the Palais du Louvre to exhibit the treasures seized from France’s former ruling class. This royal legacy has made the museum’s 18th-century decorative arts collection one of the greatest in the world. But the public has not seen it in nearly a decade, not since the galleries closed for renovations in 2005. Now they are finally open again: 35 spectacular rooms spread over 23,000 square feet in the north wing of the Cour Carrée.

Much more than a fresh coat of paint, the work encompassed everything from the electrical system to brand-new walls. Jacques Garcia, the renowned interior decorator who helped design the renovation, says the former space felt “like an antique shop.” Not only did the infrastructure need to be brought up to code, the entire layout required a serious overhaul. The final budget came to €26 million, paid for by funds from the Louvre’s budget and an international mosaic of sponsors (read AFL sidebar, here). Several contractors—including the decorator—donated their time and talents for free.

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The collection actually starts prior to the 18th century, in the last years of Louis XIV’s reign, and goes up to the Revolution, with more than 2,000 works in all. It includes tapestries, furniture, decorative bronzes, porcelain, jewelry, scientific instruments, gold and silverware. There are masterpieces from every period, from a Rococo silver tureen sculpted with dogs attacking a stag to Madame du Barry’s commode embellished with panels of Sèvres porcelain (Jannic Durand, director of the department of decorative arts, compares it to “an oversized piece of jewelry”). All the greatest craftsmen of the era have pride of place here: Cressent, Carlin, Lebrun, Oudry…. And of course André Charles Boulle, considered the most gifted cabinetmaker in history.

Garcia may be half Spanish, but when he sees this collection he feels profoundly French. “From 1650 to 1800, we dominated the world. And not with just one style. Every 10 years we changed styles, tore everything down and started over again. But we stayed the best, nonstop, for 150 years. It’s extraordinary.”

Before work could begin, the Louvre had to determine the best way to exhibit the collection—or as Durand explains, “how to do something new using the elements we already had.” They could either place the items in context, in atmospheric “period rooms” (a technique dating from the 19th century), or they could put them in glass cases, allowing visitors to get close-up views. At first the museum opted for the cases but soon regretted this decision. Subsequently it brought in Garcia, who felt they should do a combination of both, a suite of period rooms punctuated by zones where glass cases display the most valuable treasures. “Presenting art objects today without putting them into context is like a King Tut exhibition,” he says. “I have nothing against it, but you can’t see how he lived.”

The visit is now chronological, a fast-forward walk through history with a succession of 14 period rooms that show how French style evolved from colorful Rococo to creamy Neoclassical. “The idea is to trace the evolution of taste through the objects, and also to show the function of these rooms,” the decorator says. “They evoke a way of living. People did not live the same way under Louis XV as under Louis XVI.” (Garcia knows more than most about how French aristocrats used to live. The man responsible for the interiors of Paris’s Hôtel Costes and New York’s NoMad also happens to own his own 17th-century castle in Normandy, the Château du Champs de Bataille.)

The first galleries feature period rooms from grand Parisian residences, while the latter part of the exhibit, from the 1770s onward, focuses on royal collections. The Louvre built each room from the bottom up, using what the museum already owned or could borrow from Versailles, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the like. They mixed historical pieces with modern replicas of architectural details to make each room resemble the original as closely as possible. Some rooms are approximations capturing the spirit of the time while others are practically the real thing, with authentic décor in its original configuration.

The starting point was often the boiseries, or decorative wall paneling. Many had already been exhibited in this wing, though in random fashion. Now specific rooms are built around the boiseries, with walls sized to their dimensions (traditionally, museums have done it the other way around). The Louvre also had some original corniches, or intricately sculpted crown molding. When they didn’t, they fabricated new ones from existing molds or archival photographs, proof of the high level of artisanal talent that still exists in France.

“Researching and planning the composition of the rooms took more time than the actual construction,” Garcia says. Sometimes curators had only fragments to work with, or pieces of furniture—what they term “archaeological vestiges.” Other times they possessed historical documents with detailed descriptions of interiors, or photos taken of 

 hôtels particuliers prior to their modification or destruction

 The first room you enter dates from the early 1700s and comes from one of the original townhouses on Place Vendôme. Built in 1699 by Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect to the king, the square became a mecca for rich financiers who constructed splendid hôtels particuliers. This room was in the home of Claude Le Bas de Montargis, an extremely wealthy man who served as trésorier de l’extraordinaire des guerres under Louis XIV. He also happened to be Mansart’s son-in-law.

Rich blue silk covers the walls, which are hung with 17th-century tapestries in tones of blue and silver. One of the original elements here is a trumeau, a carved wood piece above the fireplace that had been covered by a thick layer of brown paint. When the Louvre’s artisans removed it, they saw remnants of faux-marble painting, which they used as a template to apply a marble effect elsewhere on the walls.

Past a room decorated with pastoral scenes by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, there is a delightful period room that has never before been seen by the public. It is a nearly exact re-creation of a small salon from the Hôtel de Villemaré, which stood at 9 Place Vendôme, steps from the Hôtel Le Bas de Montargis. When the house changed hands in 1898, its décor was distributed among a number of museums and archives, including the Louvre, where it was stored in boxes, along with photographs. During the restoration of the boiseries, artisans discovered traces of a stunning cyan blue paint and used it as a model for the current shade on the walls. Set off with white and gold, the room is similar in color to the Sèvres porcelain that would have decorated it.

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Farther on, a grand salon also looks precisely as it did in 1750, when it was part of the Marquis de Sourches’s Château d’Abondant, west of Paris. The original light-green wood paneling by woodcarver François-Simon Houlié exemplifies the shift away from Rococo to a more sober style. Even the furnishings here are authentic, designed to fit the boiseries. The back of the settee, for example, is curved to match the frame of the mirror behind it. “I don’t think there are many museums that have the original boiseries of a room and the furniture too,” Durand says.

Towards the end of the 18th century, we see a clear return to Antiquity with a remarkable trompe-l’œil cupola painted by Antoine-François Callet for the Palais Bourbon. Paris’s last remaining painted ceiling from the Louis XVI period, it portrays the goddess Venus and her entourage. A section in the middle once moved up and down, revealing live musicians who played above guests’ heads.

These objects evoke a way of living. People did not live the same way under Louis XV as under Louis XVI.”

During WWII, the domed ceiling fell into the hands of Hermann Göring, then was returned to France and sat in storage, divided into 13 separate boxes, until now. Garcia says, “When the curators told me about it I was obsessed—I knew we must have it.” Because the boxes hadn’t been opened since the war, no one knew whether or not all the pieces were there. They were—and the paint was in excellent condition, too. The team undertook the difficult task of building a round room like a Roman temple to hold up the ceiling. “It feels like it has always belonged here,” Garcia notes. “But believe me, it was not easy to do.”

Nearby, the chambre de parade (ceremonial bedchamber) where the Duc de Chevreuse once slept is a quintessential example of the style at the end of Louis XV’s reign. The Hôtel de Luynes (aka Hôtel de Chevreuse) was built on rue Saint-Dominique in the 1660s. A century later, the duke decided to bring his private quarters up to fashion and hired architect Pierre Louis Moreau to create a Neoclassical bedroom with white and gold boiseries and Ionic pilasters.

Despite the Hôtel de Chevreuse’s reputation as a particularly beautiful house, it was destroyed in 1900, when several Parisian streets were gutted to make room for the wide boulevards of the Haussmann era. The stunning boiseries were saved and used on the walls of a salon in an 8th arrondissement home built for Pierre Lebaudy, a sugar magnate. Because the salon was larger than the duke’s bedroom, it required a combination of original boiseries and copies.

Lebaudy’s wife died in 1962 and bequeathed the salon to the Louvre, which also exhibited it as a salon. During the recent renovations, the fakes were removed and the real pieces restored to their configuration as a bedchamber. The room is now almost exactly as it was when first built, a perfect square with an alcove.

Another period room is a Turkish boudoir in memory of the Compte d’Artois, King Louis XV’s grandson. With its gilded Arabian Nights décor, the boudoir reflects the 18th-century craze for the Orient; draped fabric on the armchairs was meant to conjure up images of sultans’ tents. The original boiseries from the count’s home had been in storage at Versailles.

As the visit wends its way inexorably towards the Revolution, glass cases show treasures that belonged to Louis XVI and a period room for his wife. Here, the contemporary fabric maker Pierre Frey re-created stunning silk wall panels using an original sample salvaged from Marie Antoinette’s quarters at the Château de Saint-Cloud. “I dreamed of having Marie Antoinette’s boiseries,” Garcia says. “We almost did, but couldn’t reach an agreement with Versailles.” All of the furniture, however, did belong to the unfortunate queen, including a magnificent rolltop desk crafted by Jean-Henri Riesener. Just outside the room is a display of her elaborate nécessaire de voyage, or travel case, which contained every travel accessory the queen might need, from silver combs to a porcelain teapot.

When Marie Antoinette was plotting her escape from France, she sent the travel case ahead, despite the risk of drawing attention to her plans. Evidently, she did find it to be absolutely nécessaire. As Garcia points out, “These things were not just decorative, they were objects that people lived with and used every day.”