5
City & Village Tours: 0208 692 1133
(much grander than it sounds!) ‘Tragedies en Musique’
were a very popular form of entertainment which
somehow leads me to tell you that poor Lully died
having accidentally stabbed himself in the foot with his
time marking cane.
It was Louis’ patronage of the writers that created the
Golden Age of French literature. Moliere, La Fontaine
and Racine all prospered during his reign and helped make
the court at Versailles dazzle unlike any other. Textiles of
all kinds would have been very much part of the French
court and the V&A has a superb collection of 18
th
century
silk woven in Lyons, including those designed by Jean
Revel whose name is one of the few that have come down
to us today. We should expect to see the famous Louis
XIV needlepoint which will have been cleaned and
restored at the De Wit manufacturers in Belgium.
After an appeal to raise the necessary £1.3 million, the
V&A has recently bought the vast painting of La Visite
de Louis XIV au Chateau de Juvisy. Not only is the
painting by Pierre-Denis Martin vast, it also gives us an
extraordinarily detailed account of what daily chateau life
would have been like. There are over 200 figures in the
painting, walking the dog, scything the grass, fishing,
working in the kitchen gardens as well as the figure of the
King himself. We know that the visit really happened as
an account of it was written in 1762. The painting is all
the more precious as it was thought to be lost and the
chateau itself was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944,
although very early photographs show the painting to be
very accurate. Expect it to take pride of place in gallery 5.
Incidentally in September this year Queen Elizabeth II
will become our longest reigning monarch, overtaking
Queen Victoria’s 63 years and 217 days. However, we
will have to wait until May 2024, a month after the
Queen’s 94
th
birthday, for her reign to overtake that of
the Sun King. When he became King our monarch was
Charles I and he died in the reign of George I. During his
reign we had Civil War, the Commonwealth under Oliver
Cromwell, the Restoration of the Monarchy of his cousin
Charles II, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London,
the abdication of James II, the Glorious Revolution under
William and Mary, Queen Anne’s 17 pregnancies and the
Accession of the House of Hanover. So it is hardly
surprising that his heir, Louis XV, was his great grandson.
Louis le Bien Aime or Beloved was one of the names
by which Louis XV was known. His title in French,
Louis Quinze, is used to describe the Rococco style that
is characterised by the quite incredible and elaborate
craftsmanship of his reign. The most expensive furniture
ever produced is Louis Quinze, decorated with exotic
woods such as ebony and walnut, brass, tortoiseshell
and mother of pearl. He gave his patronage to the Sevres
factory which created some of the most ornate and
valuable porcelain the world has ever seen. He was also
immortalized as the Sun God Apollo by the great artist
Francois Boucher. Boucher was the son of a lacemaker
who rose to become the Head of the Royal Gobelins
Manufactory who produced the greatest tapestries of its
day. He designed for the Sevres porcelain factory, textiles
and theatre costumes and sets. He also gave art classes to
his greatest patron, Louis’ most famous mistress, Madame
de Pompadour. The two of them became synonymous with
the most extravagant of rococco art and she, of course,
gave her name to the hairstyle that inspired Elvis’s quiff.
The museum has declared its intention of offering insights
into the lives of those who knew the objects intimately,
whether designer maker or consumer. Every object has
a story to tell and, I would imagine, few more so than a
chair that belonged to Marie Antoinette. It has undergone
studied and careful reupholstering in France where they
had to strip it of its seventies’ swags, repair the damage
done by numerous restorations and by means of a variety
of techniques involving rabbit skin glue and cling film,
restore it to its former grandeur.
It was not only French monarchs who commissioned great
works of craftsmanship. In 1979 the V&A acquired most of
a service of Sèvres porcelain from the Duke of Wellington.
The original service of 72 pieces was commissioned by
Napoleon to be given as a divorce gift to his wife
Josephine. Not surprisingly she rejected it and it came
into the ownership of the Duke of Wellington when it was
given to him by Louis XVIII. What is so interesting about
the service is that it is a very early example of what became
known as Egyptomania. Although Napoleon’s campaign
in Egypt ultimately failed, he started our modern interest in
Egyptology that led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
Indeed, in France the campaign in Egypt was seen as
having been a great success, a national triumph, creating
a huge public interest in all things Egyptian. Napoleon
was the great master at using image as power.
When the Victoria & Albert Museum decided to go ahead
with their extraordinary project to rethink the entire
museum, they were going back to their origins, educating
through visits. Prior to embarking on their first project, the
British Galleries, they had a team of designers, curators
and educators spend two years visiting museums all over
Europe, North America and Australia. They followed the
ideas of Howard Gardner and his Theory of Multiple
Intelligences, that people take in their information in many
different ways and so if you exhibit your objects
accordingly, museum visitors will be able to take in a great
deal more. Like many museums they did a great deal of
audience research but unlike most museums they listened
to it. They have created the blueprint for how we can learn
through objects in a museum so I hold out great hope that
the new V&A Europe Galleries will really give us an
understanding of what made Versailles great. All those
years ago working with my American high school students
I saw how their lives could change in one week in Europe.
I can’t wait to see how the V&A use their objects and
treasures to tell the story of the Bourbon dynasty and their
place at the cultural heart of 17
th
and 18
th
century Europe.
Visit The Wallace Collection or the new Europe
Galleries at the V&A as part of an erudite and
entertaining day trip called
All Our Waterloos.
Please turn to the next four pages for tour descriptions.
