SIR GEOFFREY DE BELLAIGUE MEMORIAL LECTURE
The French Porcelain Society is delighted to host the Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue Memorial Lecture with Gabriel Wick, curator of the exhibition Vivre à l’Antique, who will explore the fascinating history of Rambouillet, a château associated with the avant-garde ‘Etruscan’ taste championed by the comte d’Angiviller. John Whitehead will discuss the Sèvres-porcelain service created for its dairy. We hope you can join us!
Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue Memorial Lecture: ANGIVILLER, RAMBOUILLET AND THE “ETRUSCAN” TASTE – Gabriel Wick and John Whitehead
Time: Sunday, 11 July 2021, 18:00PM London, UK (BST)
Members will receive an email invitation with instructions on how to join the online lecture. If you want to join, please contact us for more details on FPSenquiries@gmail.com.
This will be the last Living Room Lecture until Sunday, 5 September 2021.
ANGIVILLER, RAMBOUILLET AND THE “ETRUSCAN” TASTE
Gabriel Wick and John Whitehead
Rambouillet, 30-miles southwest of Paris, is the most recent and the least-known of France’s royal palaces. Acquired by Louis XVI as a domaine privé only six-years before the Revolution, it served successive sovereigns and presidents as a hunting lodge and rustic retreat until 2009, when it was entrusted to the care of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux and opened to the public. In the second half of the 1780s, the king’s de facto minister of the arts, the comte d’Angiviller, developed a number of remarkable projects for the domain — a proposal for the reconstruction of the château à l’antique, a model farm, extensive plantations of American trees, and the menagerie and dairy. The last of these, conceived as a theatrical evocation of the arts and rituals of the Etruscans, benefitted from contributions by Hubert Robert, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, Georges Jacob and the Sèvres manufacture (which Angiviller directed since 1783).
This spring, as part of the exhibition Vivre à l’Antique (19/06/21-09/08/21), elements of the “Etruscan”-style porcelain service and furnishings returned to the dairy for the first time since 1788. In this talk, exhibition curator Gabriel Wick will describe the context and goals of Angiviller’s projects, and John Whitehead will discuss the iconic Sèvres service created for it.