Le Pavillon de la Paix

What is behind the name? Just a nice picture of fashionable people eating ices? 
Well it is a picture what attracts me on so many levels - as a woman but also as a person interested in history and learning more. And more. 

Detail from "Pavillon de la Paix"
Picture British Museum Reg. No. 1856,0712.634
used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I love a fresh ice on a warm day. 

I love the elegant clothing of the consulate era.

I love the cheeky poems and verses what don't always translate well, but makes me giggle in front of my computer or in archives. 
I love to find hints to buildings what aren't existing anymore.

Detail from "Pavillon de la Paix"
Picture British Museum Reg. No. 1856,0712.634
used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Theodor Josef Hubert Hoffbauer. Paris à travers les âges.

Paris: Firmin-Didot et cie, 1885.

Image curtesy of Wikimedia.org

What do we actually know about the building? It was attached to the Galerie Beaujolais - what is one of the galeries of the Palais Royal, named after the neighbouring Rue de Beaujolais.
We know this on one hand from this engraving by Hoffbauer, set in 1815, yet published in 1885.

Do we have any contemporary mention? Yes - we do.

In a review about a new map of Paris. No, the café isn't mentioned, but as an indication to the printer Esnault, Marchand d'Estampes et de Cartes Géographiques who is selling this new map.

Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden, Weimar im Verlage des Landes-Industrie-Comptoirs 1808 (Well... My dear Mr Bertuch, there's no way escaping you).

In regard of having been a testing site for a new fangled way of lighting, what is enhanced by reflectors, and left the public "Très satisfait de ce nou[v]el éclairage".

(Journal de l'Empire, Samedi 27 Juin 1812 (Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, Volume 3))

What do we know about the printer of the print what gave my blog it's name?
François Jules Gabriel Depeuille may not tell you much as a name, but I think it very likely that you've seen of the prints of his workshop. I just discovered a beauty with a fun story, what I might share in the future. 

Detail from "Pavillon de la Paix"
Picture British Museum Reg. No. 1856,0712.634
used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Tap the Link, to see the print in High Res.

Maybe I succeeded a little bit sharing why I fell for that print? 
Have a great week!

A Paris, où elle tenait salon

It is a phrase we read every so often, but sometimes I think we as in "people of today" don't really understand the meaning.

Tenir salon is often misunderstood as being a hostess with generous supply of coffee, tea and cake, where great minds meet and greet. But is it? I think Wikipedia has a nice introduction to it: 

"A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation" 

It's not the quantity or the quality of your tea, but the quality of the mind what would entice interesting people to attend your salon. When we read that Rahel Varnhagen or Johanna Schopenhauer, or Germaine de Staël or Elisa Baciochi or the dowager duchess Anna Amalia, Caroline von Humboldt and many more held salon, it's like a badge of honour, saying that these women were intellectually on a level with their guests, and also gifted with diplomacy and tact. 

Watercolor by Caspar Melchior Kraus, of an evening gathering at the dowager duchess Anna Amalia (ca. 1795). Goethe Nationalmuseum, Weimar

To give an example: a great beauty or a rich lady could easily give a soirée, and certes, some big names and other celebrities would show up. But they would not be salons. You could have spirited conversation at the Tivoli. Or the Frascati. But that wouldn't be salons. 

That name is reserved to someone who inspires mutual conversation with a great mind, what entices that man or woman (though men were more accepted to be intellectual…) to attend your salon, and you might do a bit of name dropping to invite somebody else, and thus widen the circle.

A painter might be interested to hear, what a scholar of ancient history might think of specific great myth, and again that historian would be interested, how a writer or an actor would interpret that feeling, and a politician would try to understand how to mingle it with recent events and they and everyone else would go home feeling that they would have gained a little more insight in that  topic.

Some of the greatest salons didn't even offer any refreshments, or very little, and you'd better bring your own buttered bread along or eat before you attended the gathering. The conversation was the real delight.

And in that light, really think that we ought to pay much more attention to the phrase "She established a salon" or "salonnières", as this leads us to some of the most interesting ladies in our time period, what would frankly blow us away with their knowledge, wit and intellect.

P.S.: Charlotte von Schiller is often seen as a droopy little wife of a genius. But she as well as her sister Caroline established a salon. Should tell us a wee bit about them, shouldn't it?

Found this lovely little gravure of a parisian salon at this art dealers:

http://www.galerie-napoleon.com/Salon-Litteraire_10c29-fr.html

The Frascati

While posting yesterday's trouvaille, I realised that many hints to actors, plays, places are quite obvious to me, but maybe not to everyone else. (I remember the puzzled look on Monsieurs face when discussing the find)

I think I'll start a wee series, with short introductions to places and sights, for future reference and less footnotes ;-)

Today:

The Frascati

Thanks to the generous online access of the Rijksmuseum we can enjoy this lovely engraving in high resolution, without travelling to see it in their archives.

As you can see, it's an opulent place. Elegant. Where one goes to see and be seen, and to enjoy delicious food. Debucourt gives us an impression of the place in 1807.

The French Wikipedia Page also offers us a first hand report from an English visitor in 1802, who was quite smitten by the place.

I would love to find in some archive or other some documents telling us what they've had on offer, and how pricey it was. I interpret from it being frequented by the readership of the Journal des Dames et des Modes (what wasn't cheap), that the prices correspond, and we can use the Florian or LaDurée as a modern equivalent. The original Frascati was demolished in the 19th century, the name though lives on with an Italian Deli in the middle of Paris.

The description of the Rijksmuseum illustrates it beautifully as well: "In 1789 the Italian Garchi Café Frascati opened near the Paris Opéra. This became a spot where sophisticated Parisians went not only to enjoy perfumed ices, lemonade, punch and tea, but also, and more importantly, to be seen. On 4 August 1806 the Journal des Dames observed, ‘Last Thursday, Frascati glittered as never before. Its rooms were filled with ladies dressed up as if going to the theatre.’"

Sabine, the wonderful scholar behind Kleidung um 1800 also found a reference in the German publication Journal des Luxus und der Moden, April 1802, where a correspondent describes the splendours of Paris to the magazine's readership.

As I love to see whenever the Journals interlock and shed different bits of light on a subject, I would like to share her find: 

http://zs.thulb.uni-jena.de/rsc/viewer/jportal_derivate_00112815/JLM_1802_H004_0015_a.tif