The 2023 Mount Vernon Symposium

Symposium Registration, Bookout Reception Hall

 Welcome and Introductions

The Garde-Meuble de la Couronne: From its Creation to Revolutionary Sales

Stéphane Castelluccio

The Garde-Meuble de la Couronne was the administration in charge of furnishing the apartments of the members of the royal family in the residences of the French sovereign. King Henry IV created it in 1604 as part of his policy to reorganize the kingdom after the Wars of Religion. This talk will present the management, exercised by only three different families during a century and a half, as well as the functioning of this administration which took an increasing importance throughout the 18th century. It will explain the changes in its organization during the Revolution, and end with the reasons, principles and organization of the revolutionary sales of the Crown's furniture, decided by the new Republic from 1793.

“A little French ease adopted would be an improvement": Lessons in Sociability and Decorative Arts from 1780s Paris

Amy Hudson Henderson 

After the American Revolution, an increasing number of American diplomats, businessmen, students, artists, and tourists found themselves in Paris mixing amongst themselves in the upper echelons of French society. It was a heady time, ripe with opportunities for forging new relationships and identities. Here, in 1784, a young Nabby Adams observed that Americans would do well to adopt “a little French ease” as an antidote to the stiffness and reserve that seemed to mar their social circles back home. What did she mean? This paper answers that question by exploring extant correspondence and household furnishings. By focusing on the acquisitions and behaviors of the prominent Americans who spent time in Paris during the 1780s, we deepen our understanding of the role of French decorative arts in both sociability and diplomacy and discover why these objects appealed to George and Martha Washington. 

Break

Adam T. Erby

George and Martha Washington’s French Furnishings: From the American Revolution to the Retirement Years

Henry Auguste: A Goldsmith in Revolutionary Paris

Iris Moon

This talk explores the unlikely career trajectory of the Parisian goldsmith Henry Auguste (1759-1816) during the French Revolution, drawing on new research published in Luxury after the Terror. Crafty, wily, and untrustworthy, but obviously talented with a hammer and chisel, Auguste started off as an apprentice to his well-known goldsmith father, who worked for Louis XVI. Beyond the French court, Auguste acquired a number of prestigious clients, including the British connoisseur William Beckford, for whom he fashioned an ewer made out of pure gold. Just as the volatile politics of the French Revolution sought to overturn the values of the Ancien Régime in favor of new ones, Auguste sought to refashion himself as more than a goldsmith during a moment of tremendous opportunity—and great risk. 

Reception, Mansion East Lawn

Mansion Open House

Dinner, Ford Orientation Center

Continental Breakfast, Bookout Reception Hall

Welcome and Introductions

Revolutionary Things

Ashli C. White

During the late eighteenth century, a wide range of objects associated with the American, French, and Haitian revolutions crisscrossed the ocean.  Furniture and ceramics; clothing and accessories; maps, prints, and public amusements—all circulated among diverse actors who wrestled with the political implications of these items.  In this presentation we will examine the unique ways that transatlantic revolutionary things shaped how people understood contested concepts like equality, freedom, and solidarity.  And, we will explore how these objects became a means through which individuals—enslaved and free, women and men, poor and elite—promoted, and sometimes tried to thwart, the realization of these ideals on the ground. 

Break

À la française: Designing French North America, 1700-1820

Philippe Halbert

At its height, New France extended from eastern Canada, across the Great Lakes, and down the Mississippi River to Louisiana. Although its population remained small, French North America was no less dynamic in terms of artistic originality or creative output. Even after New France's fall in 1763, areas of French settlement held fast to creole syntheses of Gallic aesthetics and vernacular tradition. This presentation will introduce a cross-section of objects and buildings whose stories reveal the vibrant legacies of French cultural identity as it took root in North America before 1800.

From West to East: Huguenot Craft Communities in London’s Soho and Spitalfields

Tessa Murdoch

Drawing on research undertaken for her recent publication, Tessa will speak about the formation of Huguenot artisan communities in Soho and Spitalfields. Leading personalities, include engraver Simon Gribelin, resident in West London who married into the Spitalfields based Mettayer family. The complex history of the Courtauld family, established in West London, gravitates from silversmithing in Soho and the City to textile production in Spitalfields and beyond. Craft communities centred on conformist and non-conformist French speaking churches and were gradually assimilated into Anglican churches. Huguenot refugees developed mutual support systems, friendly societies, the French Hospital which still flourishes as almshouses and the Westminster French Protestant Charity School. These Huguenot charities document the contribution of Huguenot craftsmen and women to British culture.

Lunch, Founders' Terrace

An American in Paris: Walt Disney and France

Wolf Burchard

Walt Disney was about to turn 17 when he first set foot in France in December 1918. The buildings, the art and the atmosphere had a lasting impact on the animated world he would go on to create. Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, an exhibition shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Wallace Collection in London and the Huntington Art Gallery in Pasadena, brought together the seemingly disparate worlds of 20th-century hand-drawn animation and 18th-century decorative arts, which upon closer inspection reveal remarkable similarities. Wolf Burchard will relate how the exhibition explored Disney’s fascination with European art and the impact it had on the studio’s output, especially the three French fairytales retold in hand-drawn animation: Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Break

A Passion for Porcelain: Sèvres in the Wallace Collection

Helen Jacobsen

Ever since the early days of its development in the mid-eighteenth century, the porcelain produced at the Sèvres Manufactory outside Paris has been a magnet for collectors, attracted by its vibrant colours, rich gilding and innovative designs. The Sèvres collection at the Wallace Collection was put together in the nineteenth century, but its collectors were no less beguiled by its flamboyant luxury and exquisite craftsmanship. This lecture will follow the evolution of some of the most celebrated pieces ever produced at the manufactory and will explore the passions that gave shape to what is now one of the finest collections of Sèvres porcelain in the world, a testament to its enduring fascination.

James Monroe’s Use of French Furnishings in the White House and the Restoration of the Bellangé Suite

Melissa Naulin

Following its burning during the War of 1812, the President’s House required almost all new furnishings before it could reopen for President James Monroe’s use in 1817. Relying on his extensive knowledge of fashionable home goods gained through his two European diplomatic appointments, Monroe worked to secure a large number of these new furnishings from Paris. This talk will focus on these government-purchased French goods, many of which remain amongst the most-treasured objects in the White House collection. It will also detail the recent effort to restore the furniture suite made by Pierre Antoine Bellangé and purchased for Monroe’s “large oval room” (today’s Blue Room) to its original splendor. 

Reception, Donald W. Reynolds Museum Lobby

View French decoratives arts in the exhibition, Mount Vernon: The Story of an American Icon

Dinner, Mount Vernon Wharf

Continental Breakfast, Bookout Reception Hall

"Fit for a King": Point Breeze, Joseph Bonaparte's New Jersey Estate

Wendy A. Cooper

No sooner had the British defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (resulting in his exile to St. Helena), than his older brother Joseph thought it prudent to leave France. By the fall of 1815 he arrived in the United States, desiring to replicate his circumstances in France. He bought property along the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey, built a grand house, and filled it with fine European paintings, sculpture, and furniture. Called Point Breeze, this haven of culture and beauty became a destination for the intellectual and curious.  Joseph became friends with numerous Philadelphians, including Joseph Hopkinson, president of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and over several decades he lent to their annual exhibitions. Following Joseph’s death, two auctions of his collections were held in 1845 and 1847. These important catalogues further inform us of the impressive and glorious interiors he created and shared with numerous visitors.

Forging a New Vernacular: The Transformation and Triumph of a French Ébéniste in Federal New York

Peter M. Kenny

Charles-Honoré Lannuier (1779-1819) arrived in New York in the spring of 1803 a thoroughly-trained Parisian ébéniste who, according to his inaugural newspaper advertisement, had “worked at his trade with the most celebrated Cabinet Makers of Europe.” Well-versed in the elegant forms of the late Louis XVI period, which still held sway during the earliest period of his training in Paris, Lannuier’s design vocabulary at the time of his arrival also included the harder edged yet brilliant neoclassical style of post-Revolutionary France known as Directoire (1795-99), and the Consulat (1799-1804), a heavier more monumental style featuring the more archaeologically correct forms of le goût antique. This was Lannuier’s Parisian stylistic legacy. How he transformed this legacy, ultimately becoming one of the two principal leaders of the New York school of cabinetmaking alongside his greatest rival, Duncan Phyfe, is an inspiring and uniquely American story.

Break

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and the Material Creation of an Imperial Legacy

Alexandra Deutsch

Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (1785 -1879) is often remembered for her short, but remarkable marriage in 1803 to Napoleon's youngest brother, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. Although their mésalliance resulted in divorce, their union set her and future generations of American Bonapartes on a path that allied them with France and an imperial legacy. Drawing from thousands of documents and a collection of more than 600 objects associated with the Bonapartes, this richly illustrated lecture charts the history of Elizabeth's long life during which she meticulously created and documented a material world tethered to France. From her fashion to her silver, jewels and furniture, Elizabeth's self-presentation proclaimed her French connection. Her obsessive documentation of her possessions reveals a fascinating and complex narrative that spans multiple generations and reaches far beyond Baltimore.

Symposium Adjourns