Point Breeze: Joseph Bonaparte's American - estate of former king in New Jersey; art, furniture collections

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Patricia Tyson Stroud

The new house was patterned after his 1730 chateau in Prangins, Switzerland, with a central block and two perpendicular wings (P1. III). (8) Richly carved mahogany doors opened onto a spacious hail and staircase. To the left was the billiard room in which hung a version of the great painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps on a rearing white stallion by Jacques Louis David (P1. V). This painting was ordered by Charles IV of Spain, and Bonaparte claimed it as his own after succeeding to that throne. On the other walls hung Two Lions and a Fawn by Frans Snyders (1579-1657) and Charles Joseph Natoire's La Toilette de Psyche (P1. X). (9) The furnishings included a massive desk in the Empire style, a table with an Italian marble top, sofas and chairs with horsehair seats, and a billiard table. At the windows hung white muslin curtains bordered in green, an ample red and white patterned rug covered the floor, and from the ceiling hung four gilt-copper chandeliers. (10)

Reuben Haines (1786-1831), a friend of Bonaparte's son-in-law Charles Lucien Bonaparte, described the library as housing "the most splendid books I ever beheld." (11) The collection, the largest in the country numbered some eight thousand volumes at a time when the Library of Congress contained only sixty-five hundred volumes. (12)

In the grand salon, blue merino covered the chairs and sofas and served for curtains. Several large tables with black and gray marble tops and ornamented with bronze stood against the walls. (13) The intricately carved marble fireplace mantel (now in the Burlington County Historical Society Burlington, New Jersey) had been sent from Italy as a gift from Bonaparte's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839). The clock on the mantel was a gift from Napoleon. The figure of Urania, the muse of astronomy, was inspired by an antique statue. (14) A Gobelins carpet covered the floor. The paintings in this elegant room were mostly portraits of the imperial family by Francois Gerard: Napoleon in his grand court robes, Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain wearing a mantle of green velvet edged with ermine, and a painting of Julie as queen of Naples with her two young daughters (P1. IV), which Napoleon commissioned in 1808 for his Salon de Famille at the palace of Saint-Cloud.

Across the hail was a worn devoted entirely to statues of Bonaparte's family They included busts of his father, Carlo Bonaparte (1746-1785), and brothers Louis (1778-1846) and Jerome (1784-1860), all by Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850); a bust of his son-in-law Charles Lucien Bonaparte (who became one of the most famous ornithologists of the nineteenth century) by Raimondo Trentanove (1792-1832); and busts of Joseph Bonaparte's sisters Elisa Bacciochi (1777-1820) and Pauline Borghese by Antonio Canova. There was also a statue of Pauline as Venus Victrix, lying half naked on a couch (P1. XII). Two visiting Quaker ladies recorded their reaction to this statue as follows:

[Bonaparte] stood some time perfectly enraptured before [the statue], pointing out to us what a beautiful head Pauline had; what hair; what eyes, nose, mouth, chin, what a throat; what a neck; what arms; what a magnificent bust; what a foot--enumerating all her charms one after another, and demanding our opinion of them. Necessity made us philosophers, and we were obliged to show as much sangfroid on the subject as himself; for it was impossible to turn away without our prudery's exciting more attention than would have been pleasant. (15)