The Queen Anne period is interesting on account of the favour in which it has been held of late years, particularly by a class that knows nothing at all about it. Queen Anne furniture, Queen Anne silver, Queen Anne cottages have been in great demand, in England particularly. When, however, the student asks the Queen Anne devotee for a list of objects that may fitly be included in an interior of that style, he usually meets with a bewildering jumble. Charles II. oak-framed cane chairs jostle others with cabriole legs and jar-shaped splats made of mahogany; marquetry escritoires, spindle-legged walnut tables, Frisian clocks, brass fenders, steel fire-irons and four-posted bedsteads are all brought together to produce the proper contemporary flavour. The result is certainly unsatisfactory for the searcher after truth.
Looking only at the manifest transitional features of the beginning and end of this short period, some scoffers have even gone so far as to deny that there is any Queen Anne style at all, but this is an extreme and unjustifiable view. The Queen Anne period, short as it was, possessed special characteristics.
First let us recall the dates. The easy-going lady who succeeded Dutch William occupied the throne for only twelve years, dying in 1714,—one year before Louis XIV. At this date, therefore, we are on the threshold of the Regency, the characteristics of which in decorative art are already established. For the beginnings of the Queen Anne style, moreover, we must revert to a date prior to her actual succession. This date is 1690, when the Glorious Revolution placed the Prince of Orange on the throne of England. William used England as a weapon of defence of the Netherlands against the aggression of Louis XIV., and on her accession Anne carried on his policy. England, therefore, from 1690 to the fall of Marlborough in 1711, might almost be regarded as a Dutch province. Considering the close dynastic, political, mercantile and religious ties between the two countries, it would be strange if Dutch taste did not predominate in England. It was a Dutch taste, however, tempered with French art. The French forced the highest development of the Louis XIV. style on England and the Low Countries by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In consequence of that edict, many thousands of the best workmen in the French arts and crafts were forced to go into exile, taking refuge in England, Germany and Holland. There they were welcomed by their co-religionists, and their labours had a great and immediate influence on the native styles. The artist who exerted the greatest influence in forming the Queen Anne style was Daniel Marot, who left France in 1686 and went to Holland. There he found immediate employment in the service of the Stadtholder, and when the latter became King of England in 1690, he appointed Marot his chief architect and master of works. Till his death in about 1718, Marot designed the interior decorations and furniture for many mansions and palaces in England and Holland. The names of many joiners, carvers and goldsmiths (who at that day designed many minor pieces of furniture) are to be found in the lists of Huguenot refugees in London. In that city, French artists and designers found ready employment. Among others we find J. B. Monnoyer (Baptiste), who died in London in 1699. Samuel Gribelin also found much encouragement in England. He had published three books of ornamental design before 1700. Thus, what the French call “le style refugié,” crossed the Channel.
Traffic with the Far East, however, was probably a more important factor in the formation of the Queen Anne style than any other influence. The Oriental taste had reached Amsterdam and London before Paris felt it. Throughout the Seventeenth Century, the English and Dutch East Indiamen poured porcelain, lacquer, and other products of Oriental art into their respective capitals, and even the bitter trade rivalry between the two did not arouse the French from their indifference till the arrival of the Siamese embassy in 1690. Long before this, however, Mazarin had tried to bring Oriental goods into favour. The daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, La Grande Mademoiselle, notes in her diary (1658), that the Cardinal “took the two queens (Anne of Austria and Henrietta, wife of Charles I. of England), the princess (Henrietta’s daughter) and myself, into a gallery that was full of all imaginable kinds of stone-work, jewelry, and all the beautiful things that came from China, crystal chandeliers, mirrors, tables, cabinets of all kinds, silver plate, etc.” All these Oriental wares were given away by the magnificent Cardinal in a lottery in which every guest drew a prize.
Twenty-five years later, the same adventurous lady who wrote the above had a quarrel with her unrecognized husband, the Comte de Lauzan. To patch up peace, he sent her from England a cargo of Chinese wares.
Before the port L’Orient gained its name by its trade with that quarter of the world, Paris received its Chinese and Indian goods chiefly through London. Consignments from the distant Jesuit missions to their headquarters were largely instrumental in bringing Eastern art to the notice of the public. There is an entry in Evelyn’s Diary (March 22, 1664):
PLATE XVIII
“One Tomson, a Jesuite shewed me such a collection of rarities, sent from ye Jesuites of Japan and China to their order at Paris, as a present to be received in their repository, but brought to London by the East India ships for them, as in my life I had not seen. The chiefe things were rhinoceros’s horns; glorious vests wrought and embroidered on cloth-of-gold, but with such lively colours, that for splendour and vividness we have nothing in Europe that approaches it ... fanns like those our ladies use, but much larger, and with long handles curiously carved and filled with Chinese characters; a sort of paper very broad, thin and fine like abortive parchment, and exquisitely polished, of an amber yellow, exceedingly glorious and pretty to looke on; several other sorts of paper, some written, other printed; prints of landskips, their idols, saints, pagods, of most ugly serpentine monstrous and hideous shapes, to which they paid devotion; pictures of men and countries rarely printed on a sort of gum’d calico transparent as glasse; flowers, trees, beasts, birds, etc., excellently wrought in a sort of sleve silk very naturall.”
In England, porcelain had been a comparatively rare luxury confined to the tables and closets of rich collectors until about 1630. Cromwell laid a heavy duty on it. China-shops under the Restoration became one of the favourite lounging-places of fops and curiosity hunters, and the appointments made there caused them to fall into bad repute. Later, emporiums of Oriental wares were known as India houses. Queen Mary while only the Princess of Orange in Holland, had developed quite a craze for porcelain and Indian goods of all kinds. When she became Queen of England, Sir Christopher Wren designed cabinets and shelves for her china in Hampton Court Palace.