Archive | January, 2010

The beautiful Mrs Sheridan

30 Jan

Elizabeth Ann Linley (7 September 1754 – 28 June 1792), the beautiful wife of the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Elizabeth came from a musical family and was known as the Maid of Bath thanks to her prodigious talents, primarily for singing.

She was painted several times by Thomas Gainsborough, who was no doubt enamoured by her grey eyed, almost melancholy beauty. I particularly love his painting of her seating outside, gazing mistily out towards the onlooker.

The lovely Elizabeth may have had a demure beauty but scandal dogged her heels nonetheless, especially when at the age of seventeen, on 18th March 1772 she eloped to France with a twenty year old Sheridan. The young couple were separated until they were finally allowed to marry a month later, with the begrudging permission of their father, both of whom had had distinctly different matches in mind for their rebellious offspring.

The lovely Mrs Sheridan was always sickly and was cherished by her charming, somewhat rakish husband, although he found it impossible to remain faithful. The couple also had the misfortune to suffer several miscarriages, which were a great source of grief to them both.

Poor Elizabeth lived a sad life: universally admired for her gentle, sweet ways, beautiful face and extensive talents and yet feeling miserable and unappreciated because of the faithlessness of the man that she adored and had risked scandal and social ostracism for.

In the end, the inevitable happened and Elizabeth had her own affair, with the gallant and handsome Irish Revolutionary Lord Edward FitzGerald, son of the Duke and Duchess of Leinster (the Duchess was Lady Emily Lennox, one of the famous Lennox sisters who took eighteenth century London by storm in the 1750s) and later husband of the beautiful Pamela Egalité, enigmatic ward of Philippe, Duc d’Orléans and his mistress, Felicité de Genlis. It is said that Lord Edward fell in love with Pamela thanks to her resemblance to his adored Elizabeth.

Elizabeth became pregnant and was delivered of a daughter, the child of Lord Edward. The difficult pregnancy and labour were to rob her of her final vestiges of health and she was to succumb shortly afterwards to the tuberculosis that had plagued her since her marriage. It is to the credit of Sheridan that, in full knowledge of the pregnancy’s circumstances, he cared for his wife tenderly and showered her with love and attention in her final months, refusing to reproach her in any way and in fact, seeming only to blame himself.

Elizabeth Linley Sheridan, adored by all who knew her, died in Bristol on the 28th June 1792 and was buried in Wells Cathedral.

I’ve been a bit quiet lately, sorry! I’ve been under a lot of stress and haven’t been too well but hope to be on the mend very soon. I have also been putting the finishing touches to a very secret project that some of you may well be interested in! All will be revealed very soon!

A very grand lady

25 Jan

Angélique Victoire de Durfort, Comtesse de Chastellux (2nd December 1752-14th November 1816)  depicted in a wonderful sculpture by Louis Simon Boizot. This piece currently lives in the Louvre.

Angélique was daughter of Aymeric Joseph de Durfort, Duc de Civrac, and his wife Anne-Marie de La Faurie de Monbadan, and was sister to the Marquise de Donnissan and Jean-Laurent de Durfort-Civrac, Duc de Lorge. Thanks to the high standing that her parents enjoyed at court, both the Dauphin and his sister Madame Victoire were her godparents and she would later become a lady in waiting to her godmother at Versailles and her country estate, Bellevue.

In 1773 she was married to Henri Georges César, Comte de Chastellux and bore him three children: César Laurent, marquis de Chastellux who was born in 1780, Louise Pauline de Chastellux in 1781, who married Joseph Élisabeth Roger, Comte Damas d’Antigny, and finally Gabrielle Joséphine Simone de Chastellux in 1783, who married Jean Baptiste Auguste Madeline de Percin, marquis de la Valette Montgaillard.

Madame la Comtesse became lady in waiting to Madame Victoire in 1786 but promptly threatened to leave in a bit of a strop when she learned that she wasn’t going to be made a Duchesse. Luckily the entreaties of Victoire and her sister Adélaïde changed her mind and she remained at court.

Don’t you love her haughty look? I wonder what she and Marie Antoinette thought of each other? I think that I can imagine!

Blues and greens

24 Jan

My last post went off at a bit of a tangent and was actually supposed to involve some pictures evoking Madame  de Pompadour’s exquisite taste, particularly when it came to interior decoration, Sèvres pieces and sculpture! Oops.

They’ve recently reconstructed how they think her rooms at Versailles may have looked while she lived in them. How beautiful is this bedroom? It’s clear from looking at her belongings and portraits that Madame de Pompadour was fond of what I always call ‘mermaid colours’: the rich and varying blue and green hues of the sea and sky.

It’s reminiscent of her best known portrait by Boucher, which was painted in 1756 and depicts the Marquise in her rooms at Versailles, surrounded by a plethora of objects that are intended to show off how she was not only a highly finished piece of nature but also an intellectual at the same time:

Like Marie Antoinette and the Empress Joséphine, Madame de Pompadour loved to surround herself with beautiful flowers at all times and her rooms must have been crammed full of fragrant blooms grown just for her in the hot houses of Versailles. She went further though and united her twin loves of flowers and fine china, as in this gorgeous jardinière from Sèvres:

She had a garden of realistic looking china flowers at her château at Bellevue, cunningly fashioned so that they smelt of a heady floral oil. The effect must have been absolutely divine but was also divinely expensive.

Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour were both great patrons of Sèvres and regularly hosted sales of their pieces in the royal apartments at Versailles. They were also fond of presenting dinner services or smaller, more intimate knick knacks as gifts to friends, visiting ambassadors or foreign royalty. This pair of pot pourri vases was created by Sèvres in 1762 and are painted in the lovely shade of blue green that Madame de Pompadour particularly favoured.

The couple also seem to have had a particular fondness for clocks and this is a particularly lovely example, again from Sèvres in around 1762.

The Chinoiserie style was big news in eighteenth century Europe and Madame de Pompadour was as keen as anyone to acquire pieces inspired by the art of China.

Madame de Pompadour loved art and artists but seems to have a particular fondness for sculpture, commissioning several significant pieces during her tenure as royal mistress. She particularly loved ‘Cupid fashioning a bow out of the club of Hercules’ by Edme Bouchardon:

This lovely piece, ‘L’Amour Menacant’ by Falconet was also a favourite:

It’s not surprising really that she had herself scuplted several times over. This lovely piece is by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle and was created in 1751, just as Madame de Pompadour was at the very peak of her power.

The making of a royal mistress…

24 Jan

Few women in history have been as accomplished or as powerful as Madame de Pompadour, born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson on the 29th December 1721. Her origins sound uninspiring – a loose moralled but charming mother and a general lack of certainty about the identity of her real father, who may or may not have been her mother’s husband, François Poisson, but was more likely to have been a rich financier or banker.

Madame Poisson may not have been chaste but she was clearly a shrewd woman nonetheless – which is probably why so many successful business men were drawn to her. She realised very quickly that her pretty, clever little daughter had potential and, with the assistance of her gentlemen friends acquired for her an excellent education, which not only nurtured her formidable intelligence but also fostered talents in art, singing, music and drama.

In 1741, one of Madame Poisson’s protectors arranged for her charming daughter, who was nicknamed Reinette in tribute to her manifold graces and attractions, to marry his nephew, Charles-Guillaume Le Normant d’Étoilles – overcoming any scruples that the young man might have had by providing Jeanne-Antoinette with a splendid dowry and buying the couple a pretty little country estate at Étoilles, which lay alongside the King’s hunting forest at Sénart.

Everything started very well for the Le Normant d’Étoilles couple. As a married woman, Jeanne-Antoinette was now free to create her own salon, drawing around herself all the most intellectual and talented people in Paris – she had a decided taste for writers and philosophers and even Voltaire, with his vinegary nature became a close friend. Her personal life was happy and contented as well – her husband loved her and she produced two children – a boy who died while still a baby and a daughter, Alexandrine who was as lovely as her mother.

However, Jeanne-Antoinette, with her wide ranging intellect and the coquettish ways of her mother was not destined to remain content for long. It is said that as a little girl she had been taken by her mother to see a fortune teller, who had prophesied that she would one day reign over a king and from that moment on she had had but one ambition: to be loved by the King of France.

Luckily for Jeanne-Antoinette, the current King was Louis XV – a handsome, rather diffident man with dark eyes, a rueful smile and charming manners. Even more luckily, he had the infamous Bourbon libido and had already been entangled with a series of aristoratic mistresses – most notoriously four of the Nesle sisters.

As an aside, you have to feel sorry for Hortense-Felicité de Mailly, Marquise de Flavacourt, who was the only one of the five Nesle sisters to become Louis’ mistress. How mortifying that must have been at Versailles!

Jeanne-Antoinette had already done everything she could to put herself in front of the King and had been honoured with the occasional nod and smile and gift of game from his shoots, however when his latest Nesle mistress, the pretty, plump and avaricious Marie Anne de Mailly, Duchesse de Chateauroux suddenly died on the 8th December 1744, she seized her opportunity, aided and abetted by her friends and family (including her husband who appears to have wearily resigned himself to the inevitable).

No doubt strings were pulled to get the pretty but undeniably middle class Madame Le Normand d’Étoilles an invitation to the prestigious masked ball that was to be held at Versailles on the 25th of February 1745, one of the great parties that were thrown at court to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin Louis, the King’s only son to the redheaded Infanta Maria-Teresa of Spain.

Jeanne-Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess for the ball and we can imagine how her heart thudded as she pushed her way around the crammed, candlelit Hall of Mirrors, looking at the masks worn by the enormous chattering crowd and wondering when her moment was to come. She had been told that the King and his closest friends had decided to attend in the rather novel disguise of a group of clipped Yew trees and so she must have peered closely at each topiaried bush as it danced past, wondering which one was the King until finally one came to a halt in front of her and removed his mask, revealing the monarch’s laughing dark eyes.

By March she had left her old life behind and was installed as the King’s official mistress at Versailles. She was officially separated from her husband by May and in June, her lover had procured for her the title of Marquise de Pompadour, the name by which she was to be known for the rest of her life.

Dressing table

24 Jan

I would adore a dressing table like this one. Funnily enough, they don’t sell furniture like this at Ikea, which is a shame. I remember that Grange, one of the more upmarket furniture shops had a ‘French Revolution’ collection in 1989, which was just wonderful. I particularly recall a very beautiful bed and a copy of Lafayette’s desk.

You can just imagine one of the luscious Directoire beauties sitting at this dressing table can’t you? Perhaps Rose de Beauharnais herself or perhaps Thérésia Tallien or Fortunée Hamelin, twisting up their long dark hair, screwing up their rouged mouths and wondering if shaving the nape of their necks in tribute to the victims of the guillotine was possibly going a bit too far?

The romance of certain old clothes…

23 Jan

A few years ago, I made the trip out of Paris to visit Malmaison, the beautiful former home of the Empress Joséphine. It was an amazing, magical day because the château is simply exquisite and still full of the Empress’ personal belongings and much of her art collection. I adored wandering through the rooms, admiring Joséphine’s wonderful taste and then pottering around the famous gardens, where her rose trees can still be seen, filling the Summer air with their heady fragrance.

Afterwards I walked into the town itself and paid a visit to the beautiful tombs of Joséphine and her daughter, the Reine Hortense. Joséphine is immortalised for posterity in a marble rendition of her pose from David’s epic Coronation painting, kneeling with her hands gracefully clasped and her beautiful eyes turned downwards.

One of the things that struck me the most about the château was the fact that so many of her clothes remained intact and were out on display. I loved seeing her muslin skirts arranged in the linen closet and was in awe of the wondrous court dresses with their heavy gold and silver embroidery.

I thought I would share some of this with you now:

Beautiful gold embroidery on a tuile and white satin court mantle, which was attached to the back of Joséphine’s court gowns on official occasions. The embroidery depicts flowers and feathers, a favourite motto of her predecessor Marie Antoinette as well.

A white embroidered muslin gown, the sort of thing that Joséphine would have worn every day while relaxing in her rose garden or playing with her lively grandchildren. Napoléon took a keen interest in Joséphine’s clothes and would often request that she wore a particular dress for him. He particularly loved it when she wore white.

A white silk court dress worn by Joséphine. The design is simple, with the ostentation reserved for the gorgeous silver embroidery, which in this case is in the form of palm leaves. A dress like this would have been worn to a state supper, a ball or an official visit to the theatre or opera.

A gauze court dress, with heavy silver embroidery. I saw this dress displayed at Somerset House recently as part of an exhibition about Joséphine’s art work in the Hermitage collection.

A detail of the beautiful silver embroidery on the court dress. The design is of carnations, flowers and palm leaves.

A white silk court dress with matching mantle. Joséphine would have worn a dress like this to greet a visiting ambassador or at an important court occasion. Dresses would be worn more than once but Napoléon hated to see women wearing the same clothes all the time and was known to pull ladies of the court up for not appearing in something new for a while.

A pair of silk shoes. Joséphine would get through thousands of these every year as they were usually used once then discarded as they were too flimsy and frail to survive  the constant round of court balls and entertainments more than once.

Another silk court dress with matching mantle, embroidered with gold thread and crystals. The decoration depicts lotus flowers.

A white silk court dress embroidered with a pattern of gold laurel crowns.

A detail of the dress above, it’s teamed with an embroidered muslin shawl.

A red velvet state mantle, embroidered with silver rose garlands and stars. Joséphine wore a very similar (albeit much longer) mantle to her coronation.

A puce silk and velvet court mantle, embroidered with golden bluebells.

Maroon leather shoes, lined with pale blue silk and embroidered with silver thread.

A pair of beautiful fur lined boots, which always remind me of the original Cinderella tale where her shoes were made of fur instead of glass.

An embroidered linen underskirt, edged with muslin and Valenciennes lace.

Empress Joséphine’s linen closet. I love this intimate view of her linen on display; it’s evocative in a way that portraits, jewels and state dresses could never be. You can almost smell the residue of sandalwood, lavender water and rose oil can’t you?

A fan and shawl belonging to Joséphine, displayed with a ring presented to her by Napoléon in 1796, the year that they were married after a whirlwind (and rather one sided courtship). The inscription inside the ring says ‘amour sincère‘.

Joséphine’s Coronation ring – an immense ruby set in gold.

A toilette mirror with a reconstruction of Joséphine’s pearl parure.

A tortoiseshell hair comb, set with a cameo depicting ‘Le chagrin d’Achille‘.

Crystal perfume bottles that once held Joséphine’s exquisite jasmine, lavender, lily and violet scents.

A fine white batiste nightdress, edged with Ile d’Aix lace.

A bill from Au Grand Turc, the most fashionable couture house in Joséphine’s Paris. Joséphine’s enormous debts were notorious as she spent vast amounts on clothes, shoes and accessories and never managed to stay within the confines of the already generous allowance bestowed upon her by Napoléon. This particular bill is for ‘un schal de cachemire vert pistache vendu à sa majesté impératrice et reine’ (a pistachio green Cashmere shawl) and was issued on the 6th April 1809.

Fashion plates

22 Jan

Madame la Comtesse de Provence, dressed to impress in shimmering buttercup yellow and azure blue silk.

Madame la Comtesse d’Artois, in blue silk teamed with exquisite late ruffles.

Marie Antoinette, her skirt decorated with garlands of real flowers.

A mourning outfit, for the stylish widow about town.

A beautiful Duchesse at Versailles.

A dress inspired by the fashions of Henri IV’s court.

A winter ball gown, perfect for those stylish Parisian Christmas parties.

Rainy day

22 Jan

It’s a cold, wet rainy day today. I hope that I can look as chic as this when I have to venture out later on! I very much doubt it though…

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