The Regency style's debt to Napoleon

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2004 by Paula A. Baxter

Householders prized the inherent elegance and pomp of Empire furnishings, which became a regular part of English furniture designers' repertoire, albeit refined to suit English taste. Through a large span of the nineteenth century, writers on period design even used the term English Empire for decoration that would today be designated Regency. (11)

Revealing clues about the nature of Napoleon's influence on Regency culture and decoration can be seen in the work of contemporary caricaturists. For example, in An Evening Party of February 1826 by George Cruikshank (1792-1878), vivid satirical portraits of high society figures whirl around a ballroom with evocatively familiar window draperies and wall moldings. In the background stands a bust of Napoleon, crowned with a fresh green laurel wreath! Napoleon, already five years in his grave, might have lost his mighty empire--but he had won the stylistic war for the hearts and minds of his English conquerors.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

An exhibition entitled Decoration in the Age of Napoleon: Empire Elegance Versus Regency Refinement, which was organized by Paula A. Baxter, is on view in the Edna Barnes Salomon Room at the New York Public Library in New York City through April 2, 2005.

(1) Steven Parissien, George IV: The Grand Entertainment (John Murray, London, 2001), p. 203.

(2) The Regency style is generally dated from 1783, the year the Prince of Wales attained his majority and ordered the redecoration of Carlton House, his London palace, and ends with the death of his brother and successor, William IV, in 1837.

(3) Steven Parissien, "Regency Style," in Encyclopedia of Interior Design, ed. Joanna Banham, vol. 2 (Fitzroy Dearborn, London, 1997), p. 1039.

(4) Jean-Francois Barrielle, Le style Empire (Flammarion, Paris, 1982), p. 48.

(5) Mario Praz, On Neoclassicism, trans. Angus Davidson (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1969), p. 155, points out that the Empire style has been criticized for its cold, still, and easy to caricature tendencies.

(6) Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Bonapartism, 1800-1815 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1990), pp. 35-54. Napoleon tightly controlled his image, urging his artists to depict his achievements in the most glorious light possible.

(7) The best overview of the widespread passion for ancient Egyptian imagery after Napoleon's campaign appears in James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival, a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste (Manchester University Press, Manchester, England, 1994), pp. 118-147.

(8) The illustration French Collage Bed in the Repository of Arts bears a striking resemblance to the tented beds seen in the chateau de Malmaison and the chateau de Fontainebleau in France, although it is much less opulently ornamented (Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, vol. 13 [February 1815], Pl. 7). Advertisements for such items generally called them "French."

(9) Margaret Jourdain, Regency Furniture 1795-1830, rev. ed. Ralph Fastnedge (Country Life, London, 1965), p. 85.