One of the handsomest pieces of 18th-century furniture in the New France collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is this butternut and pine commode from the Montréal area, dated 1740-1760.  As mentioned in the two previous posts, Louis XV styles in New France only took hold around 1740 and persisted for decades after the British conquest in 1759.

A commode from New France/Québec in the ROM.

Although obviously provincial in style when compared to the work of the great ébénistes active in Paris at the same time, it’s a very fine piece.  As with provincial furniture in France itself, the furniture in New France was simpler in design and execution and used humber materials than that of the capital and the court.  In this case, the fancy floral moulding at the bottom, the sophisticated serpentine front, and the elaborate hardware indicate that it was a high-end piece for its time and place.  Very likely it was commissioned by a well-off family.

As a fan of 18C French decorative arts, there’s nothing I love more than a Louis XV-style fauteuil, or armchair.  Naturally, the first exhibits in the Royal Ontario Museum’s New France collection that caught my eye were these 2 elegant Louis XV fauteuils.

Two handsome fauteuils from New France in the ROM.

The dates given for both pieces are 1760-1790.  To look at them, you would think they were from before 1760 — and you would be right if they were French.  In New France, however, Louis XV styles persisted well into the 19C.  This was the effect of being cut off from the mother country after the British conquest of 1759.

Let’s look more closely at each chair.

During my long weekend in Toronto, I managed to check out the furniture of New France collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

Attentive readers who also follow Versailles Century on Instagram might remember that I posted this photo some time ago.

Rococo to Rustique, a book about the early French-Canadian furniture collection at the ROM.

I promised to visit the museum and write a follow up post.  In fact, I think there will be a series of posts.

VC is back home after a long weekend in Toronto, having digested 2 Baroque opera performances, not to mention visiting Canada’s largest museum.  This post is just a quick update about what’s coming up on the blog later this week.

Here are the receipts for the 2 operas:

The Elgin Theatre in Toronto, home of Opera Atelier and venue for Dido & Aeneas.

The Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, home of the Canadian Opera Company and venue for Ariodante.

As promised in the previous post, I will review both performances on the blog.

I also managed a flying visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), of which I’m now an out-of-town member.

The protuberant glass structure in the middle distance is the main entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM ) in Toronto.

The ROM has a significant collection of furniture and other objects from New France, which fits nicely into VC’s period frame.  I will dedicate the last post of the week to the museum’s collection of rustic Rococo furniture from old Québec.

Please check back in a day or two for the review of Dido & Aeneas.  I loved it, but I do have one quibble.  Stay tuned for details!

The only church that most visitors to Versailles see is the Château’s own chapel.  This is understandable, of course, because it’s the Château that people come to see.  Today, however, we’re going to explore 2 churches in the town of Versailles, the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame) and the Cathedral of St. Louis.

The interior of the chapel at the Château de Versailles.

Let’s begin with the older one, the Église Notre-Dame, or the Church of Our Lady.

This church was built quite early in the development of Versailles.  It was erected by Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708) between 1684 and 1686, presumably in the time that he could spare from his work at the Château.  Remember that Louis XIV had only moved into the Château for good in 1682.

Before the chapel that we see today was completed in 1710, there were other chapels in the Château, but the town needed a church, too, hence the construction of Notre-Dame in the Rue de la Paroisse.  If you walk northward from the Château, you can make the church out as you approach the Place Hoche.

Place Hoche, with the Church of Our Lady (Notre-Dame), one of the 2 main churches of Versailles, clearly visible to the right of the statue.

It’s sad but true, dear friends.  Versailles Century’s tour of the 18C rooms at the Carnavalet Museum comes to an end today.  Our final destination is a walnut-paneled salon that contains my favourite piece in the entire museum: a divine daybed upholstered in yellow.

I would like to show you more pictures of this handsome salon, really I would.  Unfortunately, the light was so dim and you’re not supposed to use flash.  Just a few of my photos turned out decently.  Here’s one.

A wood-paneled salon in the Carnavalet Museum.

We pursue our continuing series of visits to the Carnavalet Museum this week.  Today’s destination: a drawing room formerly in the hôtel particulier of the Dukes of Uzès.*  Its most noteworthy feature is a set of splendid boiseries, or carved panels.

View of a drawing room salvaged from the hôtel d’Uzès.

The boiseries of this drawing room were designed and executed in 1767 under the supervision of the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who was also responsible for the decoration of the Café Militaire, as explained in a previous post.

I didn’t mean to buy the November issue of Architectural Digest, I really didn’t, but I just couldn’t resist the travel feature.  It’s a 3-page spread about the Palazzina Cinese, a gem of a chinoiserie villa in Palermo.

The first page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

By strict chronological reckoning, the chinoiserie decor of the Palazzina Cinese falls outside the 1682-1789 timeframe of the Versailles Century because it dates from after 1800.  The spirit of chinoiserie, however, is decidedly 18th century, so I rule it within bounds.  Basta!

The villa was purchased as a holiday home by King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily* after he arrived in Palermo in 1799.  He’d been driven out of Naples by a republican uprising.  Fortunately, his other kingdom, Sicily, remained loyal.  He and his wife Maria Carolina, sister of Marie-Antoinette, settled down to life in Sicily, which included decorating their new folly.  They promptly settled on a decorative scheme in the ‘Chinese’ taste.

Actually, the rooms feature not just chinoiserie, but also turcquerie, which you can make out in the picture at top left on the second page of the article (see below).

The second page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

You can read the full article with its high-quality photos on the AD website.  Check it out here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/palermo-italy-casina-cinese.

*The 2 kingdoms were merged in 1816, after which the unified state was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

We’re not nearly done with our commemorative series of visits to mark the temporary closure of the Carnavalet Museum.  Today we go to the Café Militaire.

As I’ve remarked before, one of the wonderful things about this museum is that it preserves interiors from vanished buildings, such as the staircase of the vanished Hôtel de Luynes, which we inspected in a recent post.  Another one of these preserved interiors is that of the Café Militaire.

The decoration of this establishment was  commissioned from the young architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux by the distiller Godeau.   The venue was a house built in 1761-62 by another architect on the site of what is now the Louvre des Antiquaires.  The house, which no longer exists, was in the ‘Greek’ style, so Godeau wanted a suitably ‘Greek’ decorative scheme.

According to the onsite info placard — from which I got all of this information, by the way — the architect opted for a martial scheme of 12 columns in the form of fascicles (vertical bundles) of lances topped by capitals in the guise of warriors’ helmets.

The paneling of the vanished Café Militaire preserved in the Carnavalet Museum.  Note the columns with the helmet capitals.

In our continuing series ‘in honour of’ the temporary closure of the Carnavalet Museum, we examine 4 chinoiserie panels from the former residence of the Duke of Richelieu in Paris.

Why 4?  They are meant to symbolize the 4 elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water.

The first 2 of 4 chinoiserie panels: Air and Earth.