Rodama: a blog of 18th-century & Revolutionary France: Lafayette

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Monday, 30 November 2015

Houdon's Lafayette

One of the lasting ways in which America has shown its love for Lafayette is by leaving us his image in marble, created by one of the greatest portrait sculptors of all time, Houdon.

As early as December 1781 the Assembly of Virginia had voted to commission a bust of Lafayette in Paris to be presented to him personally. Lafayette was sent a copy of the resolution and no doubt the idea appealed instantly to the vanity of the man. However, the project lay forgotten until September 1783 when Lafayette himself felt obliged to mention it in a letter to Washington.

Washington duly sprang into action. On 5th April 1784, Governor Harrison, with the approval of the Council, instructed Thomas Barclay, the American Consul at Nantes, to oversee to the commission. However the Assembly went back on its plan to present the statue to Lafayette personally, deciding instead to give it to the city of Paris, to be displayed "in some public place"; a second bust was commissioned for the Capitol at Richmond as the companion to a the projected statue of Washington.

Jefferson determined that Houdon should sculpt both the Washington and the Lafayette; Barclay was of the same opinion: "it is better that the same person compleat both the Busts; the more so as he is at the top of his profession". The cost of each was to be 3000 livres. Houdon took a life mask of Lafayette and made his preliminary model - now at Cornell - before sailing for Philadelphia in 1785 for his sittings with Washington. The first marble bust was completed in early 1786 and was installed, with much ceremony, in the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. The second, in Richmond, was completed shortly afterwards. The Paris statue was damaged by order of the Commune on 10 August, as were busts of Louis XVI, Necker and Bailly; it is usually presumed to be the Lafayette salvaged by Houdon and mentioned in his posthumous studio sale: "Marble, voted in 1791 by the Commune of Paris, suffered in 1792 a mutilation which was repaired" - sold for 50 francs.

The Gaoler of Olmütz

ANASTASIE DE LA FAYETTE (1777-1863 TURIN)
Gaoler of the prison at Olmütz, dated Maubourg, 1831.
Black crayon and chalk, 19,8 x 14,2 cm
http://fw.to/0YVI84K

This little picture was among the items sold by Christie's in 2010 and returned to its former home at La Grange. Between 1795 and 1798 Lafayette's wife and his two daughters Anastasie and Virginie were allowed to share his captivity in the fortress of Olmütz in Austria. A label on the back confirms that the picture was drawn "from life" by Anastasie de Lafayette, later comtesse de Latour Maubourg.

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lafayette/collection/exhibit/frrev_famprison.htm

Memories of Lafayette: collections in America

How Lafayette loved his American friends, and how they have loved him in return! Here are some notes and links for the major American Lafayette collections. Without exception they are beautifully curated, most with extensive online descriptions and facsimiles. Lafayette himself, lover of symbolic gesture and collector of memorabilia, would have appreciated it all....

Memories of Lafayette: the Château de Chavaniac-Lafayette

In contrast to La Grange, the Château de Chavaniac in the Auvergne, Lafayette's birthplace museum, has been open to the public for many years. Although Lafayette never lived there for any length of time as an adult, he visited periodically - in 1770, 1783 and 1786; then in 1789 and on his return to France in 1800, before taking up residence definitively at La Grange. The medieval manor house had been completely rebuilt in 1701 following a fire and was enlarged in the first half of the 18th century. In 1791 Lafayette himself had the building modernised by the architect Ambroise Laurent Vaudoyer assisted by the painter Albert Ancica. The work concentrated on the grand salon "des philosophes", which was conceived as a shrine to the Enlightenment, and the boudoir of Madame Lafayette, both situated on the first floor. In a spirit of naive optimism, Lafayette had a stone from the Bastille, adorned with a Phrygian cap of liberty, replace the Lafayette coat-of-arms over the main door.

Memories of Lafayette: the Château of La Grange-Bléneau

Château de La Grange-Bléneau

La Grange-Bléneau is the foremost site in France with Lafayette associations.

The 14th century manor in the municipality of Courpalay, in the department of Seine-et-Marne belonged in the 18th century to the d'Aguesseau family. Lafayette's wife Adrienne de Noailles reclaimed the property from the estate of her mother Henriette d'Aguesseau towards the end of the Revolution and gave it to Lafayette, who lived there from 1802 until his death in 1834. Lafayette added a park by Hubert Robert. The château was lived in, virtually untouched, throughout the 19th century by the family of Lafayette's grandson Jules de Lasteyrie. In 1935 it was purchased by the comte René de Chambrun (1906-2002),himself a direct descendant of Lafayette's daughter Virginie Lafayette de Lasteyrie. Chambrun was a successful international lawyer and longtime president of the crystal and glass firm Baccarat. His mother was Ohio-born Shakespeare scholar Clara Longworth. Chambrun, however, had more politically suspect connections. In 1935 he married Josée Marie Laval (1911-1992) daughter of Pierre Laval, and it was Laval who provided the money to purchase the château. In the post-War period Chambrun defended his father-in-law vigorously and was himself was tried for treason but acquitted. (Chambrun's nephew Nicolas Longworth had the dubious distinction of being both Pétain's godson and Theodore Roosevelt's son-in-law.)

Lafayette’s Bedroom in Château de La Grange. Colour Lithograph
by Joseph Langlumé [between 1830 and 1840]
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lafayette/exhibition/english/hero

In 1956 Chambrun and his wife found huge cache of Lafayette's long-lost letters, documents and books in fourteen walled-up attic rooms at La Grange:

Lafayette's five-million dollar medal

On 11th December 2007 Sotheby's in New York sold a Society of the Cincinnati medal which had belonged to Washington and later to Lafayette for 5 millions dollars ($5,305,000 - I counted the noughts carefully!). The numismatist Greg Reynolds declared himself "flabbergasted" at the anticipated sale price - an American medal or "order" had never before made as much as $500 000 at auction.

The Society of the Cincinnati was created in April 1783 by American officers who had fought in the War of Independence; in May an invitation was extended to French officers who had participated; the French ordre de Cincinnatus had Louis XVI among its members. By early 1785 there were two thousand members. (As a hereditary order, in 2005 it still had "some 3,700 members", descendants of commissioned officers of the Continental Army or Navy and their French counterparts who had served in the Revolutionary War.),Washington was president of the Society until his death in 1799.

The Hermione arrives at Yorktown

The Frigate L'Hermione sails the seas in the cause of freedom once more!

Arriving at Yorktown on Friday 5th June http://www.yorkcounty.gov/hermioneyorktown/Home.aspx

In 1780 the frigate L'Hermione ferried Lafayette to Boston with a declaration of French support for the American insurgents.

Thanks to injections of modern US cash, a beautiful replica of the ship has been created in the historic dockyard of the Arsenal de Rochefort. Launched into the Charente on 6th July 2012, in April of this year she embarked on her maiden voyage, retracing Lafayette's original route. This weekend she arrived at her first port of call in Yorkdown, and will make her way up the Eastern seaboard stopping at Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore.