PART OF A SALON.
Decorated and Furnished in the Louis XVI. Style.
Gradually, under the new régime, architecture became more simple. Broken scrolls were replaced by straight lines, curves and arches were introduced when justified, and columns and pilasters reappeared in the ornamental façade of public buildings. Interior decoration necessarily followed suit: instead of the curled endive scrolls enclosing the irregular panel, and the superabundant foliage in ornament, we find rectangular panels formed by simpler mouldings, with broken corners, having a patera or rosette in each, and between the upright panels there is a pilaster of refined Renaissance design. In the oval medallions supported by cupids, is found a domestic scene by Fragonard or Chardin; and portraits of innocent children by Greuze replaced the courting shepherds and mythological goddesses of Boucher and Lancret. Sculpture, too, became more refined and decorous in its representations.
As with architecture, decoration, painting and sculpture, so also with furniture. The designs became more simple, but were relieved from severity by the amount of ornament, which, except in some cases where it was over-elaborate, was properly subordinate to the design and did not control it.
Mr. Hungerford Pollen attributes this revival of classic taste to the discoveries of ancient treasures in Herculaneum and Pompeii, but, as these occurred in the former city so long before the time we are discussing as the year 1711, and in the latter as 1750, they can scarcely be the immediate cause; the reason most probably is that a return to simpler and purer lines came as a relief and reaction from the over-ornamentation of the previous period. There are not wanting, however, in some of the decorated ornaments of the time distinct signs of the influence of these discoveries. Drawings and reproductions from frescoes, found in these old Italian cities, were in the possession of the draughtsmen and designers of the time; and an instance in point of their adaptation is to be seen in the small boudoir of the Marquise de Serilly, one of the maids of honour to Marie Antoinette. The decorative woodwork of this boudoir is fitted up in the Kensington Museum.
A notable feature in the ornament of woodwork and in metal mountings of this time, is a fluted pilaster with quills or husks filling the flutings some distance from the base, or starting from both base and top and leaving an interval of the fluting plain and without ornament. An example of this will be seen in the next woodcut of a cabinet in the Jones Collection, which has also the familiar "Louis Seize" riband, surmounting the two oval Sêvres china plaques. When the flutings are in oak, in rich mahogany, or painted white, these husks are gilt, and the effect is chaste and pleasing. Variation was introduced into the gilding of frames by mixing silver with some portion of the gold, so as to produce two tints, red gold and green gold: the latter would be used for wreaths and accessories, while the former, or ordinary gilding, was applied to the general surface. The legs of tables were generally fluted, as noted above, tapering towards the feet, and were relieved from a stilted appearance by being connected by a stretcher.
MARQUETERIE CABINET.