A LARGE AND DECORATIVE PAIR OF LOUIS XVI STYLE PAINTED ARABESQUE PANELS After Those Created For The Cabinet Turc, By Rousseau Frères For The Comte d' Artois At Versailles
A LARGE AND VERY DECORATIVE PAIR OF LOUIS XVI STYLE PAINTED ARABESQUE PANELS, AFTER THOSE CREATED FOR THE CABINET TURC BY ROUSSEAU FRÈRES FOR THE COMTE D' ARTOIS AT VERSAILLES FRENCH, CIRCA 1910 Oil on canvas in later giltwood frames.
Two of the surviving panels, one identical to one of the present examples, are in thecollection of the
Height : 188 cm 74 inches
Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Width : 142 cm 56 inches
The panels are finely painted with a floral arabesque These enchanting panels, finely painted with foliate arabesque and cameos of Turkish sultans in their seraglios or at study, are based on a series of boiserie panels created for the 2nd Cabinet Turk of Louis XVI's brother the Comte d’Artois, by Jean-Simeon Rousseau.
on a pale Naples Yellow field, centred by a cameo medallion with a simulated giltwood frame containing a grisaille relief of a Pasha or Sultan with his acolytes, against a blue marble background. Each medallion is supported by a pair of exotic and sensual naiads, one pair with entwined tails the other with a vase issuing
The original panels, the upper section of doors, formed part of a larger decorative scheme designed by Francois-Joseph Bélanger alongside his brother-in-law Jean-Démosthène in 1781.
flowers. The medallions surmounted by charming figures in Turkish garb with jewelled turbans and dimije trousers, one playing a guitar the other waving foliate fronds.
LE CABINET TURC THE COMTE D’ ARTOIS' TURKISH LIBRARY
The original panels were commissioned by the Comte d’Artois, the future King Charles X of France, for his cabinet turc at Versailles. Along with his close friend and sister-in-law Queen Marie-Antoinette, he developed a great passion for interiors a la turque, possibly influenced by the 1776 play Mustapha and Zeangir in Paris, or the diplomatic visit of the second Turkish ambassador to the French court from 1742.
This trend for turquerie swept the French court and nobility as a means of demonstrating not only wealth and status, but also intellectual curiosity and worldliness. The Comte d’Artois commissioned several cabinet turcs during his life: one for his Parisian residence The Temple in 1776 and another in 1783, and the present one at Versailles in 1781-82.
Marie-Antoinette, following his lead, installed a boudoir turc at the Chateau de Fontainebleau in 1777, and then another in Versailles in the following decade. These rooms came to represent one’s elite place in society, a powerful symbol to any guest invited.
The reconstruction of the Comte d'Artois' 2nd Cabinet Turc, recreated as part of an exhibition at the Louvre. The original rooms were dismantled in the wake of the French Revolution.
DRAWING, DESIGN FOR THE WALL DECORATION FOR MARIE-ANTOINETTE'S APARTMENT AT FONTAINEBLEAU PALACE, CA. 1780
ROUSSEAU FRERES Jean-Simeon Rousseau de la Rottiere and his older
Jules-Antoine retired in 1777, leaving his sons to stamp their own inventive mark on the decoration of the palace.
brother Jules-Hugues Rousseau were the third generation of a family of celebrated decorative
The brothers were appointed in 1774 as ‘dessinateur
painters and sculptors.
et premier sculpteur des Bâtiments, Chambre et Cabinet du comte d'Artois’, in 1779 'sculpteur des
Since the reign of Louis XIV, the Rousseau family
Bâtiments de la Reine’ and in 1780 ‘peintre et
were intimately linked to the decoration and
décorateur de la Reine’. Renowned for their
furnishing of Versailles. Alexandre Rousseau, known
sophisticated and playful approach, they produced
as Corbeil, undertook the carved decoration of the
many preparatory drawings which survive, whose
royal chapel. His son Jules-Antoine (1710-1782), after
diversity illustrates the range and scope of their
being elected a member of the Academy of Saint-Luc
designs, from their celebrated arabesques to more
in 1753, carved the trophies in the Council chamber in
substantial architectural elements.
1755. From 1767, his two sons Jules-Hugues and
Significantly, working almost entirely within the
Jean-Siméon collaborated with him on several
confines of direct royal patronage, they created
important projects, including Louis XV’s bathroom in
several rooms at both Versailles and Château de
1770, and for the library of the king in 1774.
Fontainebleau, that came to epitomise the regal taste for highly decorative interiors and playful exoticism.
MADAME DE POMPADOUR, BY CHARLES ANDRE VAN LOO (1747) The imaginative designs, combining a restrained
An important example of this desire to engage with
eroticism with a romanticised iconography, represent
the culture of the Near East and the dissemination of
not only the exceptional skill of the Rousseau frères,
turquerie can be seen in a portrait of Madame de
but also, inform us of the profound fascination with
Pompadour, portrayed as a Turkish lady, by Charles
the Ottoman Court during the late eighteenth century.
Andre van Loo (1747). This portrait shows her dressed in Turkish costume drinking coffee in an
Often inspired by fantastical stories like Antoine
imagined Turkish surrounding - it turns both the
Galland's A Thousand and One Nights, Turkish style
woman, and the country it is inspired by, into an
decorations often featured whimsical turbaned figures
exotic fantasy, bestowing her with a sense of grandeur
of sultans, arabesques, crescents, pearls and jewels
and worldliness, that only one of the most elite women
and floral garlands. Their form and function however
at court could afford.
remained essentially French and often mixed with the predominant French styles of the day. Popularised by the royal family and wealthy aristocrats, this vogue for turqueries extended to all areas of fine and decorative arts from the decoration of porcelain and tapestries to portraiture.
The Turkish influence continued into the nineteenth century, mostly in painting and porcelain made in Paris, in the form of clocks surmounted with turbaned Janissaries or figures depicted in Turkish costume. The style enjoyed a heyday during the Romantic period in France 1830-1865 and was at it's height during the 1860's defined by the numerous depictions of Odalisque. Â
The surviving panels in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York came to the museum through the 1906 John Pierpont Morgan gift, and were formerly in the collection of his friend the influential Parisian decorateur Georges Hoentschel, who had acquired the panels from the Comte d’Artois himself.
Hoentschel worked his way up to become the head of the renowned Maison Leys, known as ‘the foremost interior decoration firm of turn-of-the-century Paris’. This, along with good business acumen, an expert knowledge of eighteenth-century French furniture, and a network of immensely skilled craftsmen, allowed Hoentschel to gain an extensive collection of aristocratic families, royalty, and industrialists at home and abroad as his clientele. A passionate collector and curator; he assisted with the staging of the Decorative Arts pavilions at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and at the World Exhibition in Missouri in 1904.
In 1906, Morgan bought around 2,000 pieces of Hoentschel’s collection previously on display at the boulevard Flandrin headquarters of Maison Leys, known as Hoentschel’s ‘private museum’. Morgan transported this vast collection to New York where it resulted in the creation of the first decorative arts department in America in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The galleries were curated in Hoentschel’s manner and were a phenomenal success, influencing designers and decorators across the country- coming to see the new collection and its unique curation, taking inspiration from the works and creating replicas for clients much in the same way that Hoentschel himself did for his wealthy patrons.
Door panel from the Cabinet Turc of Comte d'Artois at Versailles, Jean -Siméon Rousseau de la Rottière (1747–1820) Metropolitan Museum New, York, 07.225.458a - Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1906.
Interior of a building on the boulevard Flandrin, Paris, in a photograph of c. 1906, showing the display of Hoentschel’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century model collection. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library. Interior of the then-new wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a photograph of 1910, showing the installation of the Hoentschel collection. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
CONSOLE TABLE WITH SUPPORTING FIGURES OF NUBIANS (ONE OF A PAIR), C.1780, THE FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK
The passion for French historicist interiors, especially
The fascination for le goût turc, as an extension of
those of the Louis XV and Louis XVI style dominated
Royal and aristocratic French taste, became central to
the houses of the new wealthy industrialists in
a significant number of grand decorative schemes at
America during this period.
the beginning of the 20th century and it is almost certain that the present panels were created in France
Known as the Gilded Age, it was epitomised by
as important decorative elements, for one of these
architectural and interior decoration of lavish scale
gilded mansions.
and expense. Le goût turk was an essential element of this cultural assimilation and as late as 1914, Henry Clay Frick purchased from the estate of the British collector Sir Richard Wallace, a pair of console tables in the Turkish style on the advice of the legendary society decorator Elsie de Wolfe.
French, Circa 1910.
LITERATURE Cooney Frelinghuysen, Alice. Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, V. 73, no. 3, November 2016.
De Nolhac, Pierre. Histoire du Château de Versailles: Versailles au XVIIIe siècle. Paris : Emile-Paul Frères, 1918. pp120
Durand, Janic. Décors, mobilier et objets d’art du musée du Louvre : de Louis XIV a Marie-Antoinette. Paris : Sogomy editions d’art, 2014. pp112-114
‘Summer Presentation at The Frick Explores Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette’, last accessed 09/04/2018. http://artdaily.com/news/48079/Summer-Presentation-at-The-Frick-Explores-Turkish-Taste-at-the-Court-of-MarieAntoinette#.Wst92n_auM9
‘You Might Call Him the Decorator of the Met’, last accessed 09/04/2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/arts/design/salvaging-the-past-on-hoentschel-at-bard-graduate-center.html
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