Decorative Arts Trust

TRUST MEMBERS MEET THE PAST IN NEW ORLEANS...

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The corn capital, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe to cap the columns at the new Capitol in Washington, DC, was part of “Jefferson’s America.”

When Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States, the old world met
the new in a peaceful exchange. To commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of that clasping of hands, the New Orleans Museum of Art created an exhibition, “Jefferson’s America, Napoleon’s France.” It opened on the weekend of April 10, and the Decorative Arts Trust was there, to celebrate the event and elaborate on it by gathering members and scholars in a scintillating symposium.

The weekend was opened by Jason Wiese, Special Collections Librarian of the Historic New Orleans Collection. His lavishly illustrated presentation gave us the cartographic background we needed to comprehend the development of the region.

Dee Schwab from Richmond, VA, and daughter Lelia Schwab from Charlotte, NC, enjoy the view from a traditional New Orleans balcony. Photo: Ralph Harvard.

We received an introduction to the arts of the Crescent City from Jessie J. Poesch, Tulane’s Emeritus Professor of Art. Dr. Poesch’s was the first lecture to be presented under the auspices of the Jonathan L. Fairbanks Lectureship about which you may read on page 1. She described the development of the region under the French, Spanish and Americans. Significant for the city’s future was its founding by military and government officials who demanded excellent maps and kept detailed records. Her tongue-in-cheek introduction to some of the city’s “Great Men” amused us, but also clarified the region’s cultural history.

Gail Winkler, under whose direction many historic houses have been restored, showed us the French origins of the interiors and window treatments that are perhaps the most distinctive feature of 19th century American homes. She attributed their lavish use to advances in textile technology; changes in American class structure; and the expansion of the communications network. She showed virtually identical designs moving from France to England to America, becoming more widely available with each move.

Lecturer Susan Taylor Leduc from Paris meets Napoleon at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

From the walls of New Orleans to the tables: Ceramics Curator John Keefe of the New Orleans Museum took us from the 18th into the mid-19th century, showing us the English and French wares that were the fashion, talking about their distribution, pointing out the influence of Josephine’s taste, and bringing us to their coalescence in the rococo revival styles of mid-century.

Victoria Cooke, Curator of Paintings at the New Orleans Museum and also curator of the Museum’s exhibit, used portraits of Jefferson and Napoleon to exemplify their different styles: Rembrandt Peale’s record of a man in a dressing gown, with unkempt hair and a distant gaze; David’s imperial image of an autocratic face with a golden laurel crown. Napoleon, despite his revolutionary beginnings, affected the trappings of royalty and used imperial style to secure his control and to remake France in the image he wished. Jefferson was creating the whole idea of a presidential image. In Paris he had been Minister to the King, and covertly a revolutionary. But he had also brought home 86 crates of French goods, to furnish his home and form his country’s taste.

The grand and beautiful interiors of historic New Orleans.

Susan Stein, Curator of Monticello, showed us how well Jefferson succeeded in adapting himself to French taste, then bringing that taste home and adapting it, in turn, to make it appropriate to the New Nation. He bought “a boatload of furniture” (her words), and 63 classic paintings, to import “the encyclopedia of western civilization” (his words). Over the years, adding to it significant Native American artifacts and portraits of the great men of the past and of his own age, he created at Monticello the small universe he’d dreamed of — the melding of Old World and New, past and present.

Napoleon didn’t need to think so creatively. He had Josephine to do it for him. Susan Taylor Leduc, Parisian member of the team responsible for the exhibit, showed us the manner in which Josephine treated the gardens and grounds at Malmaison as both a country seat and ornamental farm, creating a model landscape and a testing ground for plants and animals that could be acclimated to France and useful to its economy.

With the insights presented by our speakers, the spectacularly beautiful exhibit was even more illuminating. John Bullard, Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art greeted Trust members at the door and introduced us to the objects gathered from around the country, many sent from France. The lectures and the exhibit aided our understanding of the two nations at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. And the opportunity to view the exhibit at a less crowded time helped us draw even more from it.

(Left) Trust members being greeted by Mary Louise Christovich as we visited 19th century homes in her neighborhood, the Garden District.

(Below) Taking a break before dinner at the old casino in City Park are Susie Singer, Ridgefield, CT, Delores Crane, New Hope, PA, Gary Singer, and Barbara Kreines, Cincinnati, OH.

We visited the Historic New Orleans Collection, an extraordinary repository of documents, drawings, maps and books related to the city’s past. It was a privilege to see many of the maps shown us in slides by Jason Wiese. And, we were guests at the charming home of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Besthoff who have recently given their sculpture collection to the New Orleans Museum of Art. A walk through the Garden District visiting several private homes was graciously arranged by Mary Louise Christovich.

Carl Sorenson from New York, NY, samples a vernacular wooden chair on a slave cabin porch at Evergreen Plantation. Photo: Ralph Harvard.

Eugene Cizek, Director of Preservation Studies at Tulane, was responsible both for a lecture on the Plantation Houses of River Road and a Thursday Optional Tour to several of them. Work on the preservation and interpretation of some of the houses has been done under his guidance; and all of them are indebted to his tireless efforts on their behalf. Who will forget the sense of classical order and monumentality of the regularly-spaced venerable oaks and weathered slave cabins at Evergreen, the gracious double parlors at Destrehan, or the Vieux Paris porcelain on the sideboard at L’Hermitage, a private home where we were guests of the owners who are dedicated preservationists and collectors.

The Symposium’s final offering was fitting. A Palm Sunday visit to the city’s oldest cemetery, where we walked among ranks of silent stone tombs, then a chance to wander among freshly green trees and blooming plants at the Botanical Gardens. Like Spring, New Orleans seems to renew itself endlessly.