Silhouettes

The art of the silhouette, tracing shadow profiles or figures to create simple black cut-out portraits, enjoyed a vogue in mid-18th century France and later, even more so, in the Anglo-Saxon world - in the days before photography it offered a quick and cheap alternative to formal portraiture. The early history of the genre is not well documented but the term "Silhouette" itself has a clear and undisputed origin; it derives from the name of the French minister Étienne de Silhouette (1709-67). By 1765 it was current enough for Jean-Jacques Rousseau to report that he has been asked by an admirer for "mon profil à la Silhouette" (letter of 7th April 1765)

Silhouette was French Controller General of Finance for little over eight months between 4th March and 20th November 1759.  He came to post in the middle of the Seven Years war and was immediately forced into drastic measures to raise funds, including the widespread imposition of duty on luxury items, from tobacco through to carriages, lackeys, wallpapers, silks and gold and silver plate.The well-to-do also feared for their pensions. Despite the fact that he was widely regarded a progressive figure, his actions inevitably provoked protest.  A barrage of  satirical pamphlets, chansons and caricatures poked fun at his supposed austerities. Amusingly pared-down garments and objects were produced; from plain print dresses to breeches without pockets and snuffboxes of rough wood. It was at this point that his name became definitely attached to portraits à la Silhouette.

The earliest account I have been able to find is from Lettres sur la France (1766) - ascribed to "Sir Robert Talbot" but probably in reality by Jean-Henri Maubert de Gouvest.  Here is the relevant passage from the 1771 English version: 


p.71-2: In England a clamour would have been raised against the Minister; and a commotion would have laid him under the necessity of signing his place.  Agreeably to our temper, which is less serious than yours, we diverted ourselves at the expense of the reformer.  Some songs and pasquinades delivered him up to the raillery of the people of the Capital and of the Provinces.  Fashion seized his name, and inserted it in the new bills of the shops near the Palace (ie. in the arcades of the Palais royal).  Everything appeared à la Silhouette.  The several artisans aggravated the charge through emulation.  The very name became ridiculous.  There are few instances of a reputation so suddenly lost.

Note:  The caps à la Silhouette were the wings of a bat in brass-wire, meanly covered with a simple gauze.  The coats had not plaits, the breeches no pockets.  The snuff-boxes were of wood unpolished, the watches with half a case of gold or silver.  The pictures à la Silhouette were faces drawn in profile on black paper, from the shadow of a candle on a sheet of white paper nailed to the wall. [This last fashion (like many others) was from hence probably introduced into England a few years ago.]
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KINAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q&f=false

Here is another reference,  translated from Mercier's Tableau de Paris of 1781:
Henceforth, everything appeared "à la Silhouette" and his name quickly became the object of ridicule. Dresses were made using deliberately dull and simple print material ("Les modes porterent à dessein une empreinte de sécheresse & de mesquinerie"), coats had no pleats, breeches no pockets; snuff-boxes were made of plain wood; portraits were profiles made out of black paper by the light of a candle on sheets of white paper. ("les portraits furent des visages tirés de profil sur du papier noir, d'après l'ombre de la chandelle, sur une feuille de papier blanc") Thus  did the nation avenge itself.  (vol. 1 1781) p.231
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=J0kGAAAAQAAJ&&pg=231#v=onepage&q&f=false

Compare also Barthélemy François Joseph Mouffle D'Angerville Vie privée de Louis XV  (vol. 3 1781) p.221-2 on portraits and culottes à la Silhouette:  The outlines of the former traced from a shadow and the lack of a fob (gousset) in the latter  provided the epigram:  they indicated the point to which the Controller General had reduced individuals and their purses.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4IxAAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT205#v=onepage&q&f=false

In the 19th century the idea became current that Silhouette himself had invented or popularised the new art form. Guy-Jean Néel has squirreled out a temptingly circumstantial account from the Journal Officiel de l'Empire Français for August 1869 which claims not only that the former Controller-General enjoyed making silhouette portraits, but that the walls of several rooms in his chateau at Bry-sur-Marne were covered with them.  Sadly the chateau was completely destroyed by fire in 1871, so if Silhouette ever made or collected the pictures, no trace remains.

References

Philip Dodd,  The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium. (2009). Chpt 12, p.192-207:"The shadowy life of Étienne de Silhouette",  
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=imWjMUqNjUQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA192#v=onepage&q&f=false

Guy-Jean Néel, "Silhouette et Silo" in  Mélanges offerts à Maurice Molho (ENS Editions, 1987) p.221-4
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-cI8uZTFXW0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA221#v=onepage&q&f=false

Interview with Georges Vigarello, author of La Silhouette du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Naissance d’un défi (Paris, Seuil  2012),  Le Monde 14.12.2012
http://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2012/12/14/silhouette-est-issu-d-un-nom-propre_1805427_3260.html  

Emma Rutherford, Silhouette: the art of the shadow (Rizzoli 2009).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silhouette-The-Shadow-Emma-Rutherford/dp/0847830772

Emma Rutherford explains how the term "silhouette" was introduced to England in the work of Johan Caspar Lavater and Henry Fuseli. It was popularised in the early 19th century in England in the work of  Auguste Edouart.                                       

The Parnassus of Titon du Tillet

Poilly Nicolas De, Le Jeune, Parnasse français
Versailles, châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
http://www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/92-000286-02-2C6NU0HXG2H7.html

 Imagine instead of the Arc de Triomphe a overcrowded sixty-foot mountain on the place d'Etoile!

The Parnasse français of Titon du Tillet belongs to the very beginning of the 18th century; and seems on the cusp between the 17th century world of masque and monument and the wilder sculptural imagination of a later era. The sculpture was to represent a "French Parnassus" glorifying the golden age of Louis XIV and populated with the writers and musicians of the grand siècle.  It was a grandiose and obsessive project which consumed dreams and the energies of its originator for much of his adult life.

The man

Évrard Titon du Tillet was the fourth son of Louis XIV's colossally wealthy director general of royal armaments,  Maximilien Titon,  builder of the "folie Titon" rue Montreuil, later to be reincarnated as the Réveillon mansion and wallpaper factory. Évrard was born on 16th January 1677 and baptised in the Jesuit Église Saint-Paul nearby in the rue Saint-Antoine. At fifteen he acquired a commission in the infantry and shortly afterwards became a captain in the dragoons; this military career - for which he was probably ill suited - was abruptly cut short when his company was disbanded after the Peace of Riswick.  Titon du Tillet then set upon making his mark at Court.  In 1696 at the age of twenty, he acquired for the considerable sum of 31,400 livres the office of maître d'hôtel  to Marie-Adelaide of Savoy, duchess of Burgundy and future Queen of France.  There was every expectation that this was the road to preferment, but  Évrard's hopes were again dashed, this time by the smallpox which in 1712 carried away both the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy leaving only their infant son, the future Louis XV, to inherit the throne.  

At this point Titon du Tillet seems to have given up any idea of public life. He left Versailles, bought the sinecure of commissaire provincial des guerres (for the sum of 100,000 livres) and gave himself over to the leisured cultivation of the arts.  He settled permanently at Titonville, where he had inherited part of the property and in due course bought out the share owned by his grand-nephew.

Titon du Tillot was, by all accounts, a gentle, well-liked and highly cultivated man, who spoke several languages fluently and played the bass viol "passably". He travelled extensively in France, Italy and Switzerland.  He commissioned paintings, sculptures and prints and amassed a large library, acquired in due course by the unfortunate Réveillon. He also set up a small private theatre in the grounds of Titonville.  Ever dogged by bad luck, he lost a substantial part of his fortune to John Law and "le fatal systeme du Papier de 1719". He remained unmarried and died in the rue de Montreuil on 26th December 1762 at the grand age of eighty-six. He was buried close by in the chapel of the Religieuses Hospitalières de Saint-Mandé.

The project

Titon du Tillot seems to have first conceived the idea of the Parnassus as long ago as the 1700s;  it began life as a courtier's project to glorify the Sun King in the conventional  fashion of the age.  A penchant for monumental sculpture ran in the family. In 1701 his father presented Louis XIV with an equestrian statue in the newly-invented cast steel (acier fondu) which was favoured with a place in the petits appartements at Versailles.  His elder brother,Louis-Maximilien Titon, a royal and civil procurateur, had already helped to erect royal statues in Paris, in the Place des Victoires and the Place Vendôme, as well as outside the  Hôtel de Ville. Titon began by drawing up a list of figures to include: he reports his preliminary discussions with the poets Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux and Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. 

The sculptor Louis Garnier was commissioned to produce a maquette in 1712, which he duely  completed in 1718, though it took a further three years for the figures to be assembled. Nicolas de Largillière advised on the portraiture. This bronze, seven-and-a-half feet high, is the only surviving three-dimensional representation of the Parnassus.  A rocky mountain decorated with laurel, myrtle and palms is surmounted by a rearing Pegasus. Louis XIV, personified as Apollo, sits at the summit, receiving  the homage of Mesdames de la Suze, de Scudéry, and Deshoulières as the Three Muses.  Further down are Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, Chapelle, Segrais, Racan, with Lully, lone representative of the musical arts.

Judith Colton has written a book giving details of artistic and iconographic precedents, although it would seem from the reviews that there is no direct evidence for influence by particular pieces. On the whole, Louis Garnier's sculpture is considered a pedestrian piece of late Baroque, not far different in inspiration from the fountains at Versailles. On this scale it is striking; at sixty feet it would be truly monstrous!  

Titon du Tillet was a man with a mission. Stripped of serious money by the Mississippi Bubble, he was obliged to canvas for backers. He commissioned medallions, printed prospectuses and exhibited Garnier's maquette in a " Sallon du Parnasse" at Titonville (It was admitted into the Royal Collection only in 1766 some time after his death).  A painting was commissioned from Nicolas de Poilly and presented to Louis XV. The project was aired in the pages of the Mercure de France, the Journal des Savants and the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux.  By the time of his death Titon was affiliated to twenty eight European academies and fourteen in provincial France.

His determination seemed to have been rekindled by the appearance of Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV in late 1739; he admired Voltaire but their correspondence reveals that they did not see eye to eye on the merits of the monument, nor on the prospective incumbents, particularly Voltaire's great enemy Jean-Baptiste Rousseau.  They were finally reconciled sufficiently for Titon to commission a statuette of Voltaire from Pajou. In 1757 Titon commissioned a final engraving by Alexandre Maissonneuve, which shows the projected monument in his imagined setting with a reflective pool and vista of trees.

Alexandre Maissonneuve, engraving of 1757
http://www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/95-025204-2C6NU0NW7U47.html

The Book.

As part of his campaign Titon published a Description du Parnasse français nowadays considered an important source for the biographies of lesser known writers and musicians of the seventeenth century. The first and largest installment appeared in 1732, prefaced with an engraving by Jean Audran after Pouilly's painting; there were further additions in  1743, 1755 and 1760.

From Tom Nealon, Hilobrow post of 01/08/2010
http://hilobrow.com/2010/01/08/the-parnassus-of-titon-du-tillet/

He also published an "Essay on the Honours and Monuments accorded to Illustrious Savants through the Ages" (1734), a wide-ranging study of historical antecedents, which gives an insight into his mode of thought.  In a notable passage Titon imagines a revived Olympic games ("Jeux Lodoïciens") in Paris which, he claims could be held without cost to the state.  His vision is closer to the extravagances of Imperial Rome than to the modern Olympiad, with  massive amphitheatres in the Faubourgs, naval combats on the Seine and chariot races along the  Champs-Élysée.  Alas, like his Parnassus, it was not to be!

References

Évrard Titon du Tillet  Parnasse françois, dedié au roi (1732)
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_HR-K_9jQbUUC_2

_________, Essais sur les honneurs et sur les monumens accordés aux illustres sçavans, pedant la suite des siécle (1734)
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RVDBrNo36O0C

"Famille Titon" and "La Folie Titon" on Portraits de familles (genealogical website)
http://www.norrac.com/crbst_31.html
http://www.norrac.com/crbst_417.html

"Titon du Tillet (1677-1762)"  Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique des VIIIe et XVIIe arrondissements de Paris, nouv. série, no.2, 1922
https://archive.org/details/titondutillet16700bouv

Review by Anita Brookner of 'The Parnasse françois':  Titon du Tillet and the origins of the monument to genius by Judith Colton.  The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 122, 1980.  [On JStor]

Vivant Denon's reliquary - and Voltaire's tooth

This curious object is the famous "reliquary" of Vivant Denon, now on display in the Musée Bertrand in Châteauroux.  It is a real medieval - or at least late 15th to early 16th century - reliquary in guilded copper, acquired by Denon and filled by him with secular relics.  The contents are splendid and all of them genuine, a roll call of 19th-century historical and literary icons - and testimony to the depredations of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.

1. Bone fragments from El Cid (1043-1099) and Dona Jimena (1054-1115)  from their tomb in Burgos.

2. Bone fragments of Abelard (1079-1142) and Heloïse (1101-1164)  from their tomb at the Paraclete.

3. Hair from Agnès Sorel (circa 1420-1450), at Loches, et  from Inês de Castro (1320-1355),Alcobaça

4. Hairs from the moustache of Henri IV (1553-1610), King of France, and fragment from the shroud of Turenne (1611-1675), from Saint-Denis
5. Bone chips from Molière (1622-1673) and La Fontaine (1621-1695).
6. Half-tooth from  Voltaire (1694-1778); lock of hair from General Desaix (1768-1800).

The reliquary is first documented, with a detailed inventory of its contents, in the catalogue of the sale of Denon's collection which took place after his death 1826.  It was acquired  initially by the Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier for just over 5,000 francs; but in 1865 - in a sale which coincided with the funeral of the duc de Morney - it was bought by Comte Arthur Desaix, grand-nephew of the hero of Marengo. for a mere 300 francs and stayed in his possession for many years.  I haven't been able to ascertain at what point it arrived in its present home at the Musée Bertrand. 

Relics from French history

Alexandre Lenoir
by  Delafontaine, 179

With a little conjecture, it is possible to ascertain the provenance of all the "relics".  In France, Denon's quest  was facilitated by his subordinate and rival Alexandre Lenoir, who was himself an avid collector and no doubt found it politic to offer suitable trophies to his superior. The contents of the reliquary tie in easily with Lenoir's presence; he was prominently involved the official opening of the royal tombs at Saint-Denis in October 1793, and his Jardin d'Elysée was subsequently entrusted with the mummified remains of Turenne and, in 1799, with the bones of Molièlre and La Fontaine,  exhumed from the cemetery of St. Joseph (though the actual identify of the bodies is doubtful!) He was also in a position to obtain a hair or two from Agnès Sorel, another victim of Revolutionary vandalism, when the urn containing her remains was rescued from cemetery at Loches in 1801 and restored to her repaired tomb.

Above all, it was Lenoir who was responsible for the most illustrious of Denon's relics, the fragments of bone from Abelard and Heloise. In February 1800 he obtained permission to bring to Paris, with a view eventual reburial, the damaged mausoleum from the Oratory of the Paraclete and Abelard's cenotaph of Abelard from Saint-Marcel.  The bones themselves, which had been reinterred in the church of Saint-Laurent in Nogent-sur-Seine in 1792, were exhumed and remained long years in a unsealed wooden box, where they could be easily pilfered, being finally reburied in Père Lachaise only in 1817.

Tomb of Heloise & Abelard, by Alexander Lenoir, c.1785

Relics from Portugal and Spain

In the Iberian peninsular, Denon's relics were very much the spoils of war. The remains of Inês de Castro - murdered lover of Peter 1st of Portugal and subject of many 18th-century plays and operas -  were almost certainly taken from the Benedictine monastery at Alcobaça in Portugal when it was sacked after Junot's occupation of Lisbon in November 1807.

Vivant Denon replaces in their tomb the bones of El Cid and Dona Jimena
Painting by Alphonse Roehn after a watercolour sketch by Benjamin Zix
(portrayed behind Denon).  Oil, 1809.  Louvre.

Similarly the tomb of El Cid and his wife Dona Jimena at the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña near Burgos was desecrated by a batallion of dragoons under Marshal Ney in 1808.  General Thiébault, the French military governor, later determined to repair French vandalism and had a new mausoleum built, to which the bones were tranferred in April 1809. In the meantime he kept them secure under his bed and refused all relic-hunters with the sole exception, he himself admitted, of Denon, who was passing through Burgos at the time. ( Thiébault, Mémoires iv. p.295-6; but see the post by Daniel Sanchez  - it would appear some bones had already been taken in late 1808.)  Thiébault's tomb was dismantled in 1826. Denon had himself sketched by his companion, the Strassbourg artist Benjamin Zix, "restoring" the remains - it would appear to their original tomb in the monastery - a scene which owed more to emergent Romantic sensibilities than to any historical reality.


Napoleonic relics

Vivant Denon's final category of relics are more personal and of his own time. General Desaix, killed at Marengo in 1800, was a personal friend; Denon was charged by Napoleon not only with his funeral, but with journeying to the sacristy of the convent San-Angelo in Milan to identify the corpse.  (He also possessed, bizarrely, a thumb from a much reviled nude statue of Desaix which was erected on the place des Victoires  in 1810 and later demolished). The side panels of the reliquary display mementos of Napoleon himself; a signature, the bloody fragment of shirt, a leaf from his favourite willow tree on St. Helena, and finally a few strands of hair and some whiskers.

The hairs and beard have recently been subjected to DNA analysis.  I don't understand a word of the results, but apparently the electron microscope revealed not only genetic material, but traces of shaving soap and iron residue from  Napoleon's razor!  


And finally.....a half a tooth of Voltaire's

Which of course, is the whole excuse for the post!  When sold off after death, this precious relic was catalogued separated - but happily soon restored to its rightful place in the reliquary.  Its precise provenance is unknown - presumably it was recovered at the time of Voltaire's exhumation from the  abbaye de Sellières in 1791.  Maybe the geneticists should get to work on it - personally I'd prefer a clone of Voltaire to a new Napoleon!.

References

Clémentine Portier-Kaltenbach, Histoire d'os et autres illustres abattis, Pluriel 2010, p.113-117

"Le Reliquaire de l'aimable Monsieur Denon", Castalie: Petite Bibliothèque de Curiosités.
http://www.castalie.fr/article-16833905.html

Ulric Richard-Desaix
La Relique de Molière du cabinet du baron Vivant Denon : Portrait du baron Vivant Denon (1880) 
https://archive.org/details/lareliquedemol00rich

Entries on the Tombes et sepultures website
http://www.tombes-sepultures.com/index.html

www.pierre-abelard.com: "Vivant Denon et son reliquaire" 
 http://www.pierre-abelard.com/vivant_denon.htm
"Les sépultures successives d'Heloise et d'Abelard",  
 http://www.pierre-abelard.com/sepultures.htm

"Profanateurs et témoins lors de la violation des tombeaux royaux en 1793"
Saint-Denis, cimetière des Rois [forum]
http://saintdenis-tombeaux.forumculture.net/t72-profanateurs-et-temoins-a-la-violation-des-tombeaux-royaux-en-1793

Daniel Sanchez,"The history of the Cid; after he died"  Move to Spain: travels [blog] http://www.m2stravels.com/blog/2013/09/11/the-history-of-the-cid-after-died/

Napoleon's DNA:
Blaine Bettinger, "Napoleon Bonaparte’s Y-DNA Haplogroup Belonged to E1b1b1c1* (E-M34)" post dated 14 Feb.2012. The Genetic genealogist. Ancient DNA archives.
http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com/category/ancient-dna/

The reliquary in situ at the Musée Bertrand

The cultural significance of "relics" in the 19th century :

Alexander Nagel,"The afterlife of the reliquary" in  the catalogue for the Treasures of Heaven exhibition, Cleveland Museum of Art, Walters Art Museum Baltimore & British Museum, Oct.2010-Oct.2011, p.211-220.
https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/people/faculty/nagel_PDFs/Afterlife_of_Reliquary.pdf

Felicity Bodenstein, "The emotional museum: thoughts on the "secular relics"of nineteenth-century history museums in Paris and their posterity" Conserveries mémorielles: revue interdisciplinaire de jeunes chercheurs 
 http://cm.revues.org/834#text

Choiseul - the Chanteloup snuffbox

Snuffbox: 8cm x 5.7cm x 4.5cm
Van Blarenberghe, gouache on vellum mounted beneath crystal glass.
The box itself is probably the work of the Parisian goldsmith, 
Pierre-Francois Delafons. 

This second gold snuffbox belonging to Choiseul is now in the Metropolitan Museum's Wrightsman Collection. The six miniature views, again by Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe,  depict Choiseul's grand château at Chanteloup near Amboise in Touraine. Since almost nothing now remains of the estate, they are an important record of his extensive embellishments to the house, gardens and park.

Choiseul employed his architecture Le Camus de Mézières to add long colonnades on either side of the main house linking it to twin pavilions. The gardens were remodelled on several occasions in a mixture of formal and "English" or "Chinese" style.


The park was also greatly expanded.  Soon after purchasing the property in 1761 Choiseul acquired the Forest of Amboise by exchange of lands with the king and opened up the series of extensive radiating rides shown on the base of the box (see right, middle picture). 

This vista of the park with its semi-circular water feature, fed by pipe and canal from twelve kilometres distant, gives some sense of the enormous scale of Choiseul's estate, which it was said to take twenty minutes to cross.




Sadly Choiseul's debts too were on a regal scale. Following his bankruptcy and death, Chanteloup was sold first to the duc de Penthièvre and, in the Napoleonic era, to Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who used the park as a sugar-beat factory.  Finally the property fell into the hands of speculators and was entirely demolished.


References

The snuffbox: Description from the Metropolitan Museum
http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/206422#

F.J.B. Watson, "Snuff Box," in The Wrightsman collection, vol. 3, ed. F.J.B. Watson and Carl Christian Dauterman (New York, 1970), pp. 133-139.  Available online at:
  http://www.metmuseum.org/research/metpublications/The_Wrightsman_Collection_Vols_3_and_4_Furniture_Snuffboxes_Silver_Bookbindings_Porcelain


On Chanteloup: 

Claude Viel, "Choiseul et Chaptal à Chanteloup" p.249.  http://academie-de-touraine.com/Tome_20_files/choiseul.pdf

Les jardins du duc de Choiseul à Chanteloup

Colloque l'Esprit des jardins : entre tradition et création, 5-6 sept. 2008, Conseil Général d'Indre-et-Loire  http://archives.cg37.fr/UploadFile/
GED/Colloque%20jardins/1244728172.pdf

The duc de Choiseul's snuffbox

Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe (painter)
Louis Roucel d.1787 (goldsmith)
Choiseul Snuffbox,1770
8cm  x 6cm x 2.4cm

This is one of two famous gold snuffboxes set with miniature paintings by Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe which once belonged to the duc de Choiseul. This box, from the collection of Baron Elie de Rothschild, was commissioned by Choiseul at the height of his power in 1770 and depicts the interior of his Parisian mansion (inherited by his wife from the wealthy financier Pierre Crozat). 

 Choiseul was a great collector of Dutch and Flemish, as well as contemporary French, genre paintings. Pierre-Francois Basan, one of the most eminent experts of the time, catalogued  his collection in 1771. Sadly many of Choiseul's paintings had to be "sacrificed" in April 1772 following the minister's fall from grace and the remainder were disposed of in December 1786 shortly after his death. So detailed are the miniatures, that it is still possible to identify many of the individual paintings from their tiny depictions.

Today little remains to be seen today of the Hôtel Choiseul which was sold just prior to Choiseul's death and later subdivided into apartments (91,93.95 rue de Richelieu).

Choiseul's bedchamber in winter furnishings (lid of box ). 
This is clearly the room depicted in Adélaïde Labille-Guiard s portrait. 
 

Study (side)

Octagon Room (side) 

Reception Room ( inside the lid)

The career of Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe exemplifies the quiet subversion of the world of academic painting which took place in the later eighteenth century. A member of the Lille painters guild, he seemed outside the boundaries of establishment art, specialising as he did in miniatures and battle scenes in gouache.  He gained unlikely success after 1761 when a commission from Peter the Great created a fashion for his tiny interiors and domestic genre subjects; in 1767 Choiseul secured for him an official position as "painter of battles" and he counted among his patrons the likes of Catherine the Great, Madame de Pompadour and Cardinal de Rohan.  A box, now lost, depicted Louis XVI being shown around the Louvre by the comte d'Angiviller at a time when it was planned to put parts of the royal collection on public display.

This is another miniature by Van Blarenberghe, again set a snuffbox, which shows Choiseul's bedchamber, this time in its "meuble d'été" of light flowered silk. Choiseul's "bedroom" was clearly an informal reception room rather than just a place to sleep. [Louvre, 8.4cm x 6.4cm ca.1770].

References

"The Collection of the duc de Choiseul" in Art of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre painting (2003) p.86-87. [Preview available on Google Books]

 

Notice for the Louvre snuffbox

https://web.archive.org/web/20160123034429/http://www.photo.rmn.fr/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&IID=2C6NU0B2AKM1

Notice of an exhibition on Van Blarenberghe and his son at the Louvre in 2006

https://web.archive.org/web/20160128044334/https://www.louvre.fr/sites/default/files/medias/medias_fichiers/fichiers/pdf/louvre-communique-presse-van-blarenberghe.pdf