The Empire Style - France - Part 1

The French Revolution began in 1789 and the reign of Louis XVI ended with his execution in 1793. During the violence and upheaval, many aristocratic homes were sacked and much fine handmade furniture was wantonly destroyed. The revolutionary government sold a great many pieces from the royal palaces, the agents of foreign powers being among the biggest buyers. Many craftsmen with known monarchist sympathies fled abroad to escape the Terror. Yet, two years before Louis and Marie Antoinette finally went to the guillotine, furniture was being officially commissioned for the Convention Nationale in a severe, no-nonsense style which was really a late version of Louis XVI, deprived of its trimmings.
Known as the style republicaine, it was made for the government of the day by Georges Jacob, to design by Charles Percier (1764 - 1838) and Pierre-Francois-Leonard Fontaine (1762 - 1853).

Having completed their first task for the Convention, they separated briefly, Fontaine going to London for a time and Percier becoming - significantly, as his future work demonstrated - a designer of scenery for the opera. In 1798 they joined up again in Paris, designing furniture to be made by Georges Jacob for the Council of Five Hundred (one of the two chambers in the government of the Directoire, 1795 - 1799).

At that time, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821) was establishing himself, having put down an insurrection in 1795 for which he was rewarded with the hand of Josephine, and the command of the army of the Alps and of Italy. He had established his headquarters, in an almost royal style, at Mombello, near Milan. Here he assembled works of arts which he sent home to Paris. In 1798 he conquered Egypt and the triumph was commemorated in a greatly increased use of Egyptian motifs of the fitted and non fitted furniture being produced, furniture which was already beginning to shake off the short lived austerity of the style republicaine.

France, ringed with enemies, made Napoleon 'First Consul' in 1799, and in the same year Fontaine and Percier were given an introduction to Josephine, who commissioned them to redesign the Chateau Malmaison as her residence. Having thus demonstrated their talents, they were given the task by Napoleon himself of creating a suitable background for him in his capacity as military dictator of France. Furniture of the Consulate (1799 - 1804) displays an increasingly archaeological interest in ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan forms, with a heavy admixture of Egyptian ornament. This is particularly noticeable in the more expensive, commissioned works, such as the chairs in the music room at Malmaison which have sabre legs a la grecque, topped with arm-supports in the form of winged sphinxes. For the bourgeoisie, a simpler rendering of the same ideas had to suffice, the legs often being square-tapered or turned types, and the sphinxes appearing as heads only, shorn of their wings. The style is recorded in the first edition of the designs of Fontaine and Percier, published in 1801 as Recueil des decorations interieurs - the first known use of the term 'interior decoration'.