Madame de Pompadour - Report from Europe

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2002 by Miriam Kramer

The birth of Jeanne Antoinette Poisson in 1721 was unremarkable. She was the daughter of an official linked to Paris financiers and was educated in a convent away from the capital. At the age of twenty she married the nephew of her mother's lover, and four years later, in February 1745, she met Louis XV at a masked ball at Versailles. Within four months the king made her marquise de Pompadour and pensioned her husband off to farm in the country. By the end of the year she moved into apartments at Versailles.

For the next nineteen years, until her death in 1764, Madame de Pompadour was the kings mistress, confidante, and adviser. Her cole at court cannot be underestimated: even though the sexual aspect of their relationship ended after about five years, she continued to live at court and exert considerable influence on the king and therefore on the French government. She came to love the luxuries that she could command, and she filled her many residences with the best possible furniture and furnishings.

Two exhibitions currently on view in London are devoted to Madame de Pompadour. The first, on view at the Wallace Collection until January 5, 2003, is entitled The Art of Love: Madame de Pompadour and The Wallace Collection. It brings together objects that belonged to her, arranged to give an idea of the way she has been seen over the past two hundred years. The aim, according to Jo Hedley, one of the two curators of the exhibition, is to impart a feeling of her aesthetic. The other curator of the show is Rosalind Savill, the director of the Wallace Collection. There is no catalogue.

The second exhibition is at the National Gallery. Entitled Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress, it was previously seen in Munich and Versailles. Pompadour had at her disposal the best artists in France, and they took the opportunity to paint her frequently. The curator of the exhibition in London is Humphrey Wine. The show runs until January 12, 2003. The accompanying catalogue is written by Colin Jones, a professor of history at Warwick University. It is distributed in North America by Yale University Press and may be ordered by telephoning 800-288-2129.