Founding Fathers & French Furniture
King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette sit on a Louis XVI style couch, intrigued by the most famous American in the world, Benjamin Franklin, "l'ambassadeur éléctrique." Franklin referred to French King Louis XVI as the Father of American Independence.
Benjamin Franklin received at the French Court in Versailles in 1778 by Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette (sitting), by Anton Hohenstein (ca 1823). Hand-colored lithograph by John Smith.
Benjamin Franklin said "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." Yet John Adams reported while in Paris that Franklin rarely came home before midnight, and strolled into the office around noon the next day. "The life of Doctor Franklin here in France is one long party. He eats breakfast late in the afternoon and as soon as breakfast is over, crowds of carriages come to his court; philosophers, academicians and economists… but by far the greater part [are] women and children come to have the honor to see the great Franklin and to have the pleasure of telling stories about his simplicity, his balding head and scattering straight hairs." Unfortunately Adams did not understand the value of Franklin's publicity stunts in terms of securing French aid for the American Revolution.
Franklin arrived in France wearing a marten (pine forest weasel) fur hat for warmth on the wintery atlantic and soon realized that it showcased him as an eccentric backwoods sage. Although he had never lived outside of the city, he played into this image, writing home for vast supplies of these furry hats. He knew that the French wouldn't appreciate a pretender trying to dress as elegantly as they did, and so wore a fur hat to most public appearances from that point on.
Thomas Jefferson replaced Franklin as minister to France in May of 1785, and took up residence in the twenty-four room Hôtel de Langeac on the outskirts of Paris (a more central location today near the Champs-Elysées). Much of Jefferson's business and enjoyment was carried out in the house. Large dinners were held, Lafayette organized an impromptu conference there during the heat of the French Revolution, and it is where John Trumbull began work on his series of paintings commemorating the American Revolution. Jefferson decorated the house in the neoclassical Louis XVI style, and took great care and pleasure in planning every detail of his domestic surroundings.
The Hotel de Langeac shown to the left of the city gates.
Trumbull's Declaration of Independence, a smaller prototype of which he began at Jefferson's Paris home.
The Center of American Life in Paris
Jefferson's Hotel de Langeac, by the same architect who designed the Arc de Triumph, was the center of American life in Paris. When Jefferson returned to Virginia in 1789, the furnishings of this Paris house "must have been the first shipment of Louis XVI furniture to reach the United States," wrote Metropolitan Museum of Art Curator of Prints, Hyatt Mayor.
French Furniture at the Unveiling of the Declaration?
Alexander Hamilton sits in a gilt wood Louis XVI style armchair, as the Declaration of Independence is presented to him by it's main author. Trumbull painted more elegant furniture into the scene that what was truly present, favoring the preservation of the image of the nation's founders over historical accuracy. The gilt wood chair would have been in the Hôtel de Langeac where the painter was working in 1786, but not in Philadelphia in 1776.
"Monsieur" Jefferson's calling card while serving in Paris as Minister to France.
French Neoclassical Armchair
One of a series of six in lacquered beechwood, circa 1785, that Jefferson purchased in Paris and brought back to Monticello. Their rectilinear lines were true to Jefferson's neoclassical tastes, and the curved back offered a high level of comfort for the time. They were dispersed in the 1827 estate sale but have since returned for display on the "little mountain." Photo: Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Moving Jefferson's Furniture through a Revolutionary Mob
When Jefferson left France in 1789, his secretary William Short and his Maître d'Hôtel arranged for his belongings to be crated and shipped In all, eighty-six crates were packed with his vast and lavish collection of furniture, busts, paintings, porcelaine, and silverware. The shipment contained miscellaneous marble pedestals, fifty pounds of parmesan, fourteen cases of wine, and one hundred and forty five rolls of wallpaper from the "Royal Manufacture of hangings for Decoration." At Havre, a revolutionary mob mistook this excessively luxurious cargo for the belongings of a family of aristocrats that had managed to escape the previous day. The shipping company tried to contain the chaos and reported later to William Short that the "inflamed and ignorant multitude" opened the heaviest crates in search of hidden gold.
Although the shipment was declared under Jefferson's diplomatic passport, this did not exclude the chance that it was all in truth the treasure of some escaping noble. In a 1790 letter, John Adams related how "Count Sarsfield, one of the most sensible French Noblemen," once invited him to London hoping that Adams would use his diplomatic privileges to smuggle some impressive mirrors out of France (Adams to Dr. Walsh, 10 Oct. 1790; FC in MHi: AM).
Two of Jefferson's French mirrors in the front parlor of Monticello. He listed them as "looking glasses 5.f. long" in his 1815 tax list.
Tall Gilt Wood Mirrors such as these were first used by the french to enhance interiors by reflecting candlelight and daylight. Generally long and tall, pier mirrors or "trumeau" mirrors were meant for the spaces along the wall between windows, or above an overmantel. Jefferson admired what he had seen in France and, along with building larger windows, incorporating these pieces into his interiors was part of his redesign scheme for Monticello. The panes of the mirrors are divided because 18th century manufacturers could only produce sheets of glass up to a certain size.
Although some of Jefferson's original collection is unaccounted for, much of it has returned to Monticello, the furniture and art almost as extraordinary today as it first was on his Virginia mountaintop.