He also presents “conversation chairs,” which are exactly the voyeuse. (See pages [32] and 278.)
THE EMPIRE PERIOD
THE EMPIRE PERIOD
We have already seen in the Louis XVI. period indications of the approaching Empire style; and noted that Lalonde leads directly into the models of Percier and Fontaine. There was, however, a short transitional period covering the years 1795 to 1799, when, after the Reign of Terror, the Directoire endeavoured to restore order in France. It was but natural that a society that held in high reverence the memories of the ancient republics of Greece and Rome should develop the “antique taste” under the guidance of “philosophic artists.”
As early as 1790, a writer exclaims: “We have changed everything; liberty, now consolidated in France, has restored the pure taste of the antique, which must not be confounded with the old Gothic taste. Hide yourselves, Boulle marquetry, knots of ribbon and rosettes of gilt bronze or moulu, bright and shining! Hide yourselves, hide yourselves, marvels of Bernard! Now is the hour when objects must be made to harmonize with circumstances!” “The boudoir,—the very sanctuary of coquetry—became a political cabinet,” says de Goncourt, who goes on to inform us that the charming pictures of Boucher, Fragonard, Lawrence, and Lagrenées had to give place to caricatures and revolting prints of the hour, while pictures of the destroyed Bastille supplanted graceful mythological subjects.
“France,” he continues, “wished to dwell in the scenery of a tragedy, with a Spartan body, in Etruscan chairs made of mahogany whose backs were in the form of shovels, or two trumpets and a thyrsus bound together. After these chairs she reclined in antique arm-chairs whose framework was coloured bronze. She heard the hours strike from that civic clock representing the federative altar of the Champ de Mars with columns of marble and gilded bronze, and attributes of liberty. She slept in ‘patriotic beds.’ In the place of the bunches of feathers, caps were now placed on top of the fasces of lances that formed the bed-posts; beds represented the triumphal arch erected in the Champ de Mars[[26]] on the day of the Confederation. She also slept in the ‘lit à la Fédération,’ of four columns in the form of fasces grooved and painted in greyish white varnished, with the stems of the fasces gilded, as well as the axes and iron supports of the canopy.”
Caffieri no longer designed the lustres and sconce-arms of or moulu; the candelabra were now of porcelain, and represented Apollo and Daphne. These figures were flesh-coloured. The body of Daphne was half covered with the bark of the laurel, her head with green leaves, and her two hands turning into branches supported two gilded sconces.
