Madame du Cayla’s Gothic study at the Château de Saint-Ouen

From the mid-18th century onwards in England, ‘Gothic’ experiments such as that of Horace Walpole (1717–1797) at Strawberry Hill began to emerge. This villa, a veritable Gothic fantasy, built and furnished in Twickenham from the 1750s onwards, brought together ancient and modern collections from the Middle Ages and the recent national past, going against the almost universal contemporary taste for antiquity and its revival.

In France, such attempts were essentially limited to garden ‘fabriques’. It was Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837) who introduced the troubadour style and a taste for the Middle Ages into interiors during the Consulate, though with limited success.

In the *Memoirs of a Woman of Distinction on the Consulate and the Empire*, behind which Zoé Talon, Countess of Cayla (1785–1852), a favourite of Louis XVIII and a friend of Hortense’s, it is indeed recounted that the future Queen of Holland was the first to launch the fashion for interior decoration in a neo-Gothic style, in the spirit of nascent Romanticism. “It was, moreover, Hortense who brought the Gothic style into fashion, who gave rise to chivalry, who gave rise to the new school, etc., etc. This princess, driven by a particular obsession, insisted that the furniture in her apartment should, in its form, recall that of bygone centuries, and that the paintings, set in antique-style frames, should depict scenes from our ancient history”. The Lady of Distinction also points out that “Hortense’s whim did not bear fruit during the Empire”.

In France, this interest in national history was felt above all in literature (The Constable of Bourbon by the Count of Guibert in 1785) and in painting, with the troubadour style. With the Revolution and the uncertainty surrounding the political and national future, the whole of Europe—and France in particular—turned its attention to its history and national monuments. Whilst Neoclassicism had admired the ruins of Rome, France in 1800 began to admire its own ruins. During the Consulate, Chateaubriand wrote and published works in a new style: *Atala* (in 1801) and *René* (in 1803), and above all *The Genius of Christianity* (in 1802).

Madame du Cayla appreciated the Gothic style, which was almost a political manifesto of the monarchy’s medieval history for the king’s favourite and a staunch royalist. Around 1825–1827, she had a room furnished in the Gothic style on the first floor of the Château de Saint-Ouen. Only a few objects from the collection are known to have survived: ‘a clock, depicting a Gothic pavilion with stained glass, […] in matt gilded bronze, with a Sienna marble plinth’, signed and dated by Lucien-François Feuchère (c. 1760–c. 1841) based on designs by the Saint-Ouen architect Jean-Jacques-Marie Huvé (1783–1852), ‘a small chandelier, in matt gilt bronze, with eight lights, coloured glass”, attributed to Feuchère, “three armchairs […] four chairs […] in carved Gothic ebony, with matt gilded bronze fittings, upholstered in purple velvet, with fine gold trimmings and tassels”. The seats bear the mark of Louis-Alexandre Bellangé Fils (1796–1861). The cabinet also contained a sofa,

two stools, two footstools and an ebony desk. Bellangé, son and successor to Pierre-Antoine Bellangé (1758–1827), who became a master joiner in 1788, presented ‘a table and a sample of [these] Gothic chairs’ at the 1827 Industrial Exhibition. He was awarded the silver medal, thanks to his restraint in the ‘use of a style that fashion has brought back into favour, but which good taste forbids us to overuse’. His talent lies in evoking a medieval imagination without resorting to pastiche. The pavilion-style backs and bamboo legs evoke China, whilst the use of ebony and metal inlays recall the precious furniture of the 17th century. In this way, he sidestepped the reservations of French taste, which was still heavily influenced by Neoclassicism. The clock and the chandelier, on the other hand, display all the expected characteristics.

Adolphe Blanqui, History of the 1827 Exhibition of Industrial Products, Paris, 1827.

Sylvain Cordier, Bellangé, Cabinetmakers: A History of Taste in the 19th Century, Paris, 2012.

Memoir of a Woman of Distinction on the Consulate and the Empire, *Mercure de France*, 1987.