The designs of the celebrated tapestry of Gobelins and of Beauvais, used for the covering of the finest furniture of this time, also underwent a change; and, instead of the representation of the chase, with a bold and vigorous rendering, we find shepherds and shepherdesses, nymphs and satyrs, the illustrations of La Fontaine’s fables, or renderings of Boucher’s pictures.
Without doubt, the most important example of meubles de luxe of this reign is the famous “Bureau du Roi,” made for Louis XV. in 1769, and which appears fully described in the inventory of the “Garde Meuble” in the year 1775, under No. 2541. This description is very minute, and is fully quoted by M. Williamson in his valuable work, “Les Meubles d’Art du Mobilier National,” and occupies no less than thirty-seven lines of printed matter. Its size is five-and-a-half feet long and three feet deep; the lines are the perfection of grace and symmetry; the marqueterie is in Riesner’s best manner; the mountings are magnificent—reclining figures, foliage, laurel wreaths, and swags, chased with rare skill; the back of this famous bureau is as fully decorated as the front: it is signed “Riesener, f.e., 1769, a l’arsenal de Paris.” Riesener is said to have received the order for this bureau from the King in 1767, upon the occasion of the marriage of this favourite Court ebeniste with the widow of his former master Oeben. Its production therefore would seem to have taken about two years.
This celebrated chef d’oeuvre was in the Tuileries in 1807, and was included in the inventory found in the cabinet of Napoleon I. It was moved by Napoleon III. to the Palace of St. Cloud, and only saved from capture by the Germans by its removal to its present home in the Louvre, in August, 1870. It is said that it would probably realise, if offered for sale, between fifteen and twenty thousand pounds. A full-page illustration of this famous piece of furniture is given.
A similar bureau is in the Hertford (Wallace) collection, which was made to the order of Stanilaus, King of Poland; a copy executed by Zwiener, a very clever ebeniste of the present day in Paris, at a cost of some three thousand pounds, is in the same collection.
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette.
[Illustration: Boudoir Furnished in the Taste of the Louis XVI. Period.]
It is probable that for some little time previous to the death of Louis XV., the influence of the beautiful daughter of Maria Theresa on the fashions of the day was manifested in furniture and its accessories. We know that Marie Antoinette disliked the pomp and ceremony of Court functions, and preferred a simpler way of living at the favourite farm house which was given to her husband as a residence on his marriage, four years before his accession to the throne; and here she delighted to mix with the bourgeoise on the terrace at Versailles, or, donning a simple dress of white muslin, would busy herself in the garden or