Magnificently restored, the Duc d'Aumale's apartment in Chantilly, decorated by Eugène Lami, reminds us that the eclecticism of the Second Empire was born under the July Monarchy.
Neo-Renaissance dining room, later transformed into an office. Display sideboard and bookcase by the Grohé Brothers. Marble paving based on the floor painted by Pourbus in the portrait of Henri IV in the Louvre.
©Sophie Lloyd/Chantilly estate
After Versailles and Fontainebleau, Chantilly pays tribute to the "Louis-Philippe style": a return to grace that began in 1991 with the "1814-1848. Un âge d’or des arts décoratifs" ("1814-1848. A Golden Age of Decorative Arts") exhibition staged by Daniel Alcouffe at the Grand Palais. Many of the works presented were later installed in the new rooms of the Grand Louvre, but at the time, they were not highly regarded by the public, as witness an amusing anecdote: during the lunch after the opening of the "Golden Age", a representative of LVMH (the exhibition sponsor), said to his host, with a knowing smile: "Between you and me, Mr. Alcouffe, it's really very ugly..." Louis-Philippe and his sons played very different roles. The king engaged a dialog with the new bourgeois class, whom he received at the Tuileries because he had cut himself off from the Legitimist society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain (a royalist group who upheld the rights of dynastic succession to the French crown): in their eyes, he was only the democratic son of a regicide. He and his wife Maria-Amelia were content to adopt a very conservative style, as they…
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