Marie Antoinette's dairy at Rambouillet

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2000 by Carolin C. Young

The idea that women's primary function is to nurse their children was one of the cornerstones of Rousseau's philosophy, and he drew the further conclusion that women naturally loved dairy products. [11] In addition, Rousseau defined cleanliness as one of the greatest feminine virtues, and it was a quality that Diderot's Encyclopedie considered central to a well-run dairy. [12]

Louis XVI visited both the dairy of Louis Philippe (1725 -1785), duc d'Orleans, at Le Raincy and that of Louis Joseph (1736-1818), prince de Conde, at Chantilly before commissioning the dairy at Rambouillet, which was strongly influenced by them. The one at Chantilly was built between 1689 and 1694 under the direction of Jules HardouinMansart. It was destroyed in 1799, but descriptions and drawings show that it consisted of three rooms en suite leading to the principal rotunda with a vaulted ceiling. The dairy was made of white stone and paved in white marble. An assortment of vases and faience was displayed on a built-in shelf that circled the rotunda. A small trench was cut into the floor for the water that flowed from four ram's-head faucets. The room was hung with pictures of pastoral scenes and paintings inspired by the cult of Isis, who is symbolized by a cow. This arrangement became the mode the Rambouillet dairy.

The dairy at Le Raincy, one of the first isolated pleasure dairies, was noted for an extensive cane-colored Wedgwood service designed specifically for it. The order for this set has been preserved, but no pieces are known to survive. The firm made many such services in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for English clients, but the prince de Conde was one of the few French clients to purchase these wares. The cream-colored earthenware service made by Wedgwood for the dairy of Lavinia, Countess Spencer, at Althorp in 1786 may resemble the sort of wares made for Le Raincy. It included large ovoid, footed urns with covers in which to keep cream cool, as well as ladles, milk sieves, large oval pans with a pouring lip at one end in which the cream was allowed to rise, shallow perforated skimmers with a pouring lip for separating and straining the cream, spoons, butter churns, and tiles to line the inner walls of the dairy. [15]

The dairy at Rambouillet went far beyond these earlier dairies in luxury design, and iconography, thanks to the talents of the men assembled by the comte d'Angiville11r. He had supervised the reorganization of the French Academy in Rome before becoming the director general of the king's buildings, and while in Rome he had become an advocate of archaeologically based neoclassicism. He chose Hubert Robert, one of the most important picturesque landscape gardeners and painters in France, to oversee the building of the dairy Robert had worked in an advisory capacity at the French Academy in Rome from 1754 to 1765, and he had already designed the classically inspired pleasure dairy at Mereville. The evidence indicates that Robert supervised the overall plan of the dairy at Rambouillet, with other artists and designers submitting their ideas for his approval. [16] These included the architect Jacques Jean Thevenin; the sculptor Pierre Julien, who had won a Prix de Rome in 1765, which sent him to that city right af ter Robert left; and Jean Jacques Lagrenee le Jeune, a co-artistic director of the Sevres porcelain factory, who had spent 1765 to 1769 in Rome producing design books after antique wall paintings. Robert himself designed the furniture for the dairy which was made by Georges Jacob (see Pls. VUI-X).