Le grand salon de l’Impératrice au château de Fontainebleau du temps de l’impératrice Eugénie

Abstract

Between 1856 and 1858, Empress Eugenie renewed the furnishing of her "grand salon" at Fontainebleau. She made a choice of two different sets of Louis XVI chairs which were covered with the same white ground silk decorated with flowers: two settees coming from the "Garde-Meuble" and an important set of richly carved and gilded chairs, armchairs and stools coming from the Throne room and the chapel of the château. Later, she added temporally a second set of painted chairs coming from another apartment of the château. Few years later she used this second set to refurnish the Petit Trianon. The most important fact in her approach is that she made a choice of genuine Louis XVI pieces of furniture and not pieces in the style of the period, as she did in other imperial palaces. It is probably the consequence of her wish to have contemporary furniture in a room of which decoration dated from the time of Queen Marie-Antoinette.

Keywords

• impératrice Eugénie
• château de Fontainebleau
• sièges d’époque Louis XVI
• meuble Vaudreuil