The Art of Interior Decoration Part 8

CHAPTER XVIII

FRENCH FURNITURE

The cla.s.sic periods in French furniture were those known as Francis I, Henry II and the three Louis,--XIV, XV, and XVI. One can get an idea of all French periods in furnishing by visiting the collection in Paris belonging to the government, "Mobilier National," in the new wing of the Louvre.

It is always necessary to consult political history in order to understand artistic invasions. Turn to it now and you will find that Charles VIII of France held Naples for two years (1495-6), and when he went home took with him Italian artists to decorate his palaces. Read on and find that later Henry II married Catherine de Medici and loved Diane de Poitiers, and that, fortunately for France, both his queen and his mistress were patronesses of the arts. So France bloomed in the sunshine of royal favour and Greek influence, as few countries ever had. Fontainebleau (begun by Francis I) was the first of a chain of French royal palaces, all monuments without and within, to a picturesque system of monarchy,--Kings who could do no wrong, wafting sceptres over powerless subjects, whose toil produced Art in the form of architecture, cabinetmaking, tapestry weaving, mural decoration, unrivalled porcelain, exquisitely wrought silver and gold plate, silks, lovely as flower gardens (showing the "pomegranate" and "vase"

patterns) and velvets like the skies! And for what? Did these things represent the wise planning of wise monarchs for dependent subjects?

We know better, for it is only in modern times that simple living and small incomes have achieved surroundings of artistic beauty and comfort.

The marvels of interior decoration during the cla.s.sic French periods were created for kings and their queens, mistresses and favoured courtiers. Diane de Poitiers wished--perhaps only dreamed--and an epoch-making art project was born. Madame du Barry admired and made her own the since famous du Barry rose colour, and the Sevres porcelain factories reproduced it for her. But how to produce this particular illusive shade of deep, purplish-pink became a forgotten art, when the seductive person of the king's mistress was no more.

If you would learn all there is to know concerning the sixteenth century furnishings in France read Edmund Bonneffe's "Sixteenth Century Furniture."

It was the Henry II interior decoration and architecture which first showed the Renaissance of pure line and cla.s.sic proportion, followed by the never-failing reaction from the simple line to the undulating over-ornate when decoration repeated the elaboration of the most luxurious, licentious periods of the past.

One has but to walk through the royal palaces of France to see French history beguilingly ill.u.s.trated, in a series of volumes open to all, the pages of which are vibrant with the names and personalities of men and women who will always live in history as products of an age of great culture and art.

PLATE XVIII

A delightful bit of a room. The furniture, in line, shows a Directoire influence. The striped French satin sofa and one chair is blue, yellow and faun, the Brussels tapestry in faded blues, fauns and greys. Over a charmingly painted table is a Louis XV gilt applique, the screen is dark in tone and has painted panels.

The rug, done in cross-st.i.tch, black ground and design colours, was discovered in a forgotten corner of a shop, its condition so dingy from the dust of ages that only an expert would have recognised its possibilities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Corner of a Drawing Room, Furniture Showing Directoire influence_]

The Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods in furniture are all related. Rare brocades, flowered and in stripes, bronze mounts as garlands, bow-knots and rosettes, on intricate inlaying, mark their common relationship. The story of these periods is that gradually decoration becomes over-elaborated and in the end dominates the Greek outline.

The three Louis mark a succession of great periods. Louis XIV, though beautiful at its best, is of the three the most ornate and is characterised in its worst stage by the extremely bowed (cabriole) legs of the furniture, ludicrously suggestive of certain debauched courtiers who surrounded the _Grande Monarch_.

Louis XV legs show a curve, also, but no longer the stoggy, squat cabriole of the over-fed gallant. Instead we are entranced by an ethereal grace and lightness of movement in every line and decoration.

Here cabriole means but a courtly knee swiftly bending to salute some beauty's hand. So subtly waving is the curving outline of this furniture that one scarcely knows where it begins or ends, and it is the same with the decorations--exquisitely delicate waving traceries of vines and flora, gold on gold, inlay, or paint in delicate tones.

All this gives to the Louis XV period supremacy over Louis XVI, whose round, grooved, tapering straight legs, one tires of more quickly, although fine gold and lovely paint make this type winning and beloved.

From Louis XVI we pa.s.s to the Directoire, when, following the Revolution, the voice of the populace decried all ostentation and everything savouring of the superfluous. The Great Napoleon in his first period affected simplicity and there were no longer bronze mounts, in rosettes, garlands and bow-knots, elaborate inlaying, nor painted furniture with lovely flowering surfaces; in the most severe examples not even fluted legs! Instead, simple but delicately proportioned furniture with slender, squarely cut, chastely tapering legs, arms and backs, was the fashion. In fact, the Directoire type is one of ideal proportions, graceful outlines with a flowing movement and the decoration when present, kept well within bounds, entirely subservient to the main structural material. One feels an almost Quaker-like quality about the Directoire, whether of natural wood or plain painted surface.

With Napoleon's a.s.sumption of regal power and habits, we get the Empire (he had been to Rome and Egypt), pseudo-cla.s.sic in outline and richly ornamented with mounts in ormoulu characteristic of the Louis.

The Empire period in furniture was dethroned by the succeeding regime.

When we see old French chairs with leather seats and backs, sometimes embossed, in the Portuguese style, with small regular design, put on with heavy nails and twisted or straight stretchers (pieces of wood extending between legs of chairs), we know that they belong to the time of Henry IV or Louis XIII. Some of the large chairs show the sh.e.l.l design in their broad, elaborate stretchers.

The beautiful small side tables of the Louis and First Empire called consoles, were made for the display of their marvellously wrought pieces of silver, hammered and chiselled by hand,--"museum pieces,"

indeed, and lucky is the collector who chances upon any specimen adrift.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PERIODS OF THE THREE LOUIS

The only way to learn how to distinguish the three _Louis_ is to study these periods in collections of furniture and objects of art, or, where this is impossible, to go through books showing interiors of those periods. In this way one learns to visualise the salient features of any period and gradually to acquire a _feeling_ for them, that subtle sense which is not dependent wholly upon outline, decoration, nor colour, but upon the combined result.

French writers who specialise along the lines of interior decoration often refer to the three types as follows:

Period of Louis XIV--heavily, stolidly masculine;

Period of Louis XV--coquettishly feminine;

Period of Louis XVI--lightly, alertly masculine.

One soon sees why, for Louis XIV furniture does suggest masculinity by its weight and size. It is squarely made, straight (cla.s.sic) in line, equally balanced, heavily ponderous and magnificent. Over its surface, ma.s.ses of decoration immobile as stone carving, are evenly dispersed, and contribute a grandiose air to all this furniture.

There was impressive gallantry to the Louis XIV style, a ceremonious masculine gallantry, while Louis XV furniture--the period dominated by women when "poetry and sculpture sang of love" and life revolved about the boudoir--shows a type entirely _intime_, sinuously, lightly, gracefully, coquettishly feminine, bending and courtesying, with no fixed outline, no equal balance of proportions. Louis XV was the period when outline and decoration were merged in one and the _sh.e.l.l_ which figured in Louis XIV merely as an ornament, gave its form (in a curved outline) and its name "rococo" (Italian for sh.e.l.l) to the style.

As a reaction from this we get the Louis XVI period, again masculine in its straight rigidity of line, its perfectly poised proportions, the directness of its appeal to the eye, a "reflection of the more serious mental att.i.tude of the nation." Louis XVI had an aristocratic sobriety and was masculine in a light, alert, mental way, if one can so express it, which stimulates the imagination, in direct contrast to the material and literal type of Louis XIV which, as we have said, was masculine in its ponderous magnificence, and unyielding over-ornamentation.

So much for _outline_. Now for the _decoration_ of the three periods.

Remember that the Louis XIV, XV and XVI periods took their ideas for decoration from the Greeks, via Italy, and the extreme Orient. A national touch was added by means of their Sevres porcelain medallions set into furniture, and the finely chiselled bronzes known as ormoulu, a superior alloy of metals of a rich gold colour. The subjects for these chiselled bronzes were taken from Greek and Roman mythology; G.o.ds, G.o.ddesses, and cupids the insignia of which were torches, quivers, arrows, and tridents. There were, also, wreaths, garlands, festoons and draperies, as well as rosettes, ribbons, bow-knots, medallion heads, and the sh.e.l.l and acanthus leaf. One finds these in various combinations or as individual motives on the furniture of the Louis.

PLATE XIX

Shows the red-tiled entrance hall of a duplex apartment in New York.

On the walls are two Italian mirrors (Louis XVI), a side table (console) of the same epoch, and two Italian carved chairs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Entrance Hall in New York Duplex Apartment. Italian Furniture_]

The backgrounds for these mounts were the woods finely inlaid with ivory sh.e.l.l and bra.s.s in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

Oriental lacquer and painted furniture, at that time heavily gilded.

The legs of chairs, sofas and tables of the Louis XIV period were cabrioles (curved outward)--a development of the animal legs of carved wood, bronze or gold, used by the ancient a.s.syrians, Egyptians and Greeks as supports for tables and chairs. Square grooved legs also appeared in this type.

The same grooves are found on round tapering legs of Louis XVI's time.

In fact that type of leg is far more typical of the Louis XVI period than the cabriole or square legs grooved, but one sees all three styles.

Other hallmarks of the Louis XVI period are the straight outlines, perfectly balanced proportions, the rosettes, ribbon and bow-knot with torch and arrows in chiselled bronze.

That all "painting and sculpture sang of love" is as true of Louis XVI as of Louis XV. In both reigns the colouring was that of spring-tender greens, pale blossoms, the grey of mists, sky-blues, and yellows of sunshine.