In 1785 Louis XVI purchased the Château de Saint Cloud (fig. 49) in Marie Antoinette's name from the duc d'Orléans. The château, situated on a hillside overlooking the Seine not far from Paris, became the queen's favorite summer residence. Built in the sixteenth century and rebuilt during the seventeenth, the palacewas in need of renovation. The architect Richard Mique (1728-1794) enlarged and altered it, and appropriate furnishings were ordered for the queen's apartment.Many pieces of furniture were commissioned from Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sene (1748-1803), a member of an important dynasty of Parisian chair makers who received a royal appointment in 1784. Sene provided a set of seat furniture for the queen's dressing room, called her cabinet particulier ox cabinet de toilette that is described in the 1789 inventory of Saint Cloud. The daybed, the bergère (a comfortable chair upholstered between the arms and the seat), and the fire screen from the set are now in the Museum's collections (figs. 50?57). They were the gift of Ann Payne Blumenthal, the second wife of George Blumenthal. The painted and gilt frame of the low daybed (fig. 50) is embellished with floral motifs. Six short tapering and fluted legs surmounted by Ionic capitals support the piece. The front stiles of the head- and footboard, which are of equal height, are carved with female half-figures wearing Egyptian headdresses (fig. 51). The berg?re (fig. 52), which has a medallion with Marie Antoinette's initials on its top rail (fig. 53), is decorated in a similar manner. A decade before Napoleon's North African campaign was to inspire the fashion known as égyptomanie, the queen appears to have had a taste for ornament derived from ancient Egyptian art. Seated classical female figures, rather than Egyptian caryatids, decorate the feet of the fire screen (figs. 54, 55), and a woman who once held a cornucopia reclines on its top. The carver is not known, but Louis-François Chatard (ca. 1749-1819) was responsible for painting and gilding the frames.According to the 1789 inventory the set was originally upholstered in a white-twilledcotton with rows of individual flowers embroidered by the queen herself. When the three pieces came to the Museum in 1941 only the fire screen's show cover (fig. 56)had survived. Although the cotton ground is much discolored, Marie Antoinette'sinterlaced initials, composed of blossoms embroidered in satin stitch, are in remarkably good condition (see fig. 57).

Fragment de lé de tenture. Satin blanc broché en soie nuée et chenille, dessin de perdrix, branches d'arbrisseaux, guirlandes de fleurs et ornements.
Dimensions : en trois coupons d'une longueur totale de 2m45 (1m10; 0m90; 0m45).

Historique :
Acheté par le Garde-Meuble à la faillite du fabricant Gaudin, 1789. 
Très célèbre tenture, fréquemment attribuée à Philippe de Lasalle ; ne fut utilisée qu'à l'époque Empire. Placée en 1805, elle décore pendant près de 180 ans la chambre de l'Impératrice à Fontainebleau.

The Palace of St. Cloud belongs to the Duke of Orleans, is situated on the declivity of a mountain washed by the Seine. . . . The view from the house is delightful.— Harry Peckham, A Tour through Holland . . .and Part of FranceLouis XVI purchased the country residence of the duc d’Orléans a few miles west of Paris for Marie-Antoinette in 1785. Being in need of renovation, the palace was enlarged and altered for the queen, and many pieces of furniture were commissioned from Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené. A member of an important dynasty of Parisian chairmakers, Sené had been appointed menuisier to the Crown in 1784.A detailed 1788 description of this set, which also included four matching armchairs and a stool, indicates that the pieces were intended for one of Marie-Antoinette’s private rooms at Saint-Cloud, her Cabinet Particulier. The frame of the daybed, originally longer but shortened at a later date, is embellished with carving of ivy on the seat rail and garlands of roses along the crest rail. Ionic capitals surmount the short legs, and most remarkable of all are the Egyptian female half-figures on tapering supports that decorate the front stiles. Even though in his bill Sené called them simply caryatids, these figures clearly express the queen’s taste for ornament derived from ancient Egyptian art, well before Napoléon’s North African campaign made it fashionable. Similar ornament is found on the bergère (a comfortable armchair upholstered between the arms and the seat ), which, in addition, has a medallion on top with Marie-Antoinette’s initials framed by myrtle branches and roses. The matching screen, however, displays classical female figures on its feet and top rail. Unfortunately, the identity of the sculptor is not known, but Louis-François Chatard is documented as having painted and gilded the wooden surfaces.The 1789 inventory of Saint-Cloud records the entire suite in the queen’s Cabinet de Toilette, or dressing room. Listed by its show covers, as was customary for seat furniture, the set is described as being upholstered in white cotton twill, embroidered with a small floral ornament in silk. Known to have worked on needlepoint projects all her life, Marie-Antoinette did the embroidery herself, which she executed in satin stitch. Modern replicas of the queen’s handiwork, including her interlaced monogram on the panel of the fire screen, grace the frames of the furniture today. The colorful floral embroidery on the light cotton ground conveys a sense of summer, the season Marie-Antoinette preferred to spend at Saint-Cloud.Epigraph. Peckham 1788, p. 199.

The same 1789 inventory [of Saint Cloud] mentions a much larger set of furniture that had been commissioned from Georges Jacob two years before for the Salon des Jeux du Roi, or King's Gaming Room, at Saint Cloud. Jacob, one of the most successful chair makers of the eighteenth century, supplied sixty-two pieces of furniture, including sixteen identical armchairs, for this room where fortunes were won and lost at the gaming tables. According to the detailed account, Jacob charged 24 livres per armchair for cutting the walnut to shape and joining the various parts together. The carving, by an unidentified carver, cost 180 livres, and the gilding, by Louis-François Chatard, amounted to 240 livres. A paper label pasted underneath the frame of an armchair in the Metropolitan (fig. 58) identifies it as having been ordered in February 1788 for the gaming room at Saint Cloud. The notches cut underneath the frame next to the maker's stamp indicate that it is the third of four chairs that were ordered from Georges Jacob at that time, to supplement the set he had supplied the previous year. These formal chairs with straight backs, called fauteuils meublants, would have been placed along the walls of the room together with the settees and bergères of the set. The rectilinear frame of the armchair, with its curved front seat rail, scrolled arm supports, and turned straight legs all carved with guilloches, rosettes, and stylized leaves, is the epitome of neoclassicism. The 1789 inventory describes the upholstery on the set as a gray blue brocaded gros de Tour, or ribbed silk. Much of the gaming room seat furniture, including twelve of the armchairs, was still recorded at the palace in the spring of 1798. The Museum's chair was eventually acquired by Georges Hoentschel. The 1908 catalogue of his collection lists its Saint Cloud provenance but not its maker or date.

Damas 3 couleurs fond cramoisi, dessin arabesque représentant des nymphes faisant des sacrifices (des figures d'Hercule supportant des cerfs et un vase). Tenture. Lampas liseré 2 lats, fond satin de 8. Soie.

Historique : 
Employé à Compiègne dans le petit cabinet de la comtesse d'Artois (inventaire de 1791).

1788, China

1788, China

Description