PLATE LXIV
The geometrical panels of the new drawing-rooms were coloured that deep brown, mingled with several other colours, which received the name genre étrusque. Listen to these discords: “On the ceiling is a reddish-brown rosette in the form of a parasol; a sky-blue frieze is sprinkled with white cornucopiæ. On the sides of the mirror, sky-blue pilasters are bordered with violet and white grape-leaves for ornament. Large and small light brown panels with violet borders are ornamented with little green parasols, and cameos with blue background with white figures and brown and red ornaments. And in that loud chocolate colour where some reds and greens try to recall to your mind the forsaken hues of the past are mingled three shades of rose, amaranth, blue, lilac, grey, emerald-green, moss-green, aventurine, citron, straw and sulphur. That gentle scale that sang so sweetly on the furniture and walls of by-gone days! that gentle scale that miserable taste has forsaken for the tri-colour, and for wall-paper printed with the distinctive signs of equality and liberty, from Dugoure’s Republican Manufactory, place du Carrousel at the so-called Hôtel de Longueville. Then the taste of the Revolution runs after the factory of the rue Saint Nicaise, place de la Réunion, to find some pictures with the civic inscription ready for each citizen to place above his door bearing these words: ‘Unity, Indivisibility of the Républic, Liberty, Fraternity or Death.’”[[27]]
The Parisian hôtels that were remodeled and newly furnished for the newly rich could not suggest the slightest reminiscence of the aristocratic life that they had witnessed. The artists, therefore, were forced to go to Greece and Rome for their models and motives. After Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the sphinx is frequent as a decoration, although it had long been familiar. The chairs, Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 5 on Plate [LXVIII.], are from a periodical of the Directoire period 1793 and 1796; also the couch No. 2, Plate [LXV.] These show that the so-called Empire style was in process of formation before Napoleon attained power.
The most important cabinet-maker of the period was Jacob Desmalter. He was the son of Georges Jacob, who, during the reign of Louis XVI., was famous for his furniture of gilded wood. His two sons worked together in the rue Meslée; and, in 1793, got the order to make the furniture for the Convention. This brought them into relation with Percier, who had been commissioned to furnish the designs. About 1804, the younger Jacob disappears from business and the elder added the name Desmalter to his own, and soon removed his workshop to the rue des Vinagriers. Desmalter’s fame became wide-spread: he made furniture for the courts of Spain and Russia, and many pieces found their way also to England.
The famous workers in metal were Thomire, J. B. C. Odiot and Biennais.
The Recueil de Décorations Intérieures, composed by C. Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine (Paris, 1812), is the recognized authority on the Empire style. The authors speak of the influence engraving has had in extending an acquaintance with styles, and say they will make use of it to exhibit “those of our works in the nature of furniture, which, by the importance of the places they were destined for, or the rank of those who ordered them, may be regarded as appropriate to attest the correct way of seeing things, composing them and ornamenting them at the present period. This style does not belong to us; it is entirely the property of the ancients and as our only merit is to have understood how to conform our inventions to it, our true aim in giving these to the public is to do all that is within our power to prevent innovations to corrupt and destroy the principles which others will doubtless use better than we.
“The decoration and furnishing of houses are to houses what clothes are to people: everything of this nature becomes old, and in a very few years seems to be superannuated and ridiculous. The industrial arts, which concur with architecture in the embellishment of buildings, receive the same impulse from the spirit of fashion, and no kind of beauty or worth possessed by these articles of taste can assure them any longer existence than the interval of time necessary to find a new taste to replace them. To do everything according to reason in such a way that the reason may be perceived and justifies the means used,—this is the first principle of architecture. However, the first principle of fashion is to do everything without reason and never to do otherwise. The form and needs of the body give no reason for the forms of clothes; because people do not dress to cover themselves, but to adorn themselves. Furniture does not make a virtue of necessity with regard to the forms. We pass from the straight line to the tortuous, from the simple to the composite and vice versâ. This is only too well exemplified in the history of modern architecture and its vicissitudes.”
The true inspiration of this period was David, the painter; and it has been aptly said that Desmalter did little but “translate into furniture the Greco-Roman dreams of the painter of the Sabines.” Prudhon was another artist of influence. The most famous decorative artists and designers were Percier and Fontaine.
The general characteristics of the Empire style are stiffness, severity and coldness. The forms are cubic and rectangular, without projections or carvings. Round tables on tripod legs, sofas and beds with heavily-scrolled ends, secretaries and desks with secret arrangements of drawers, etc., and a great use of metal ornamentation are among the prominent details of this style. The decorative motives are rosettes, allegorical figures, mahogany columns of cylindrical shafts, without flutings and surmounted by the Doric capital (and often with a bronze gilt bracket), fasces, sphinxes, wreaths of laurel, and the swan used upon the arms of chairs and sofas, the sides of beds and for the feet of tripods. No. 1 on Plate [LXV.] is an interesting example of the use of the swan. The sphinx was also used for decorating the arm of a chair, as shown on Plate [LXV.], No. 3, and on the double chair on Plate [LXVIII.] Its use as a table leg is exhibited on Plate [LXV.], and as a support for candles on Plate [LXVII.] Clocks and candelabra are decorated with heroes from ancient history in preference to divinities and allegorical figures. A little clock supported by an eagle appears on Plate [LXV.] This is one of Percier and Fontaine’s designs.
