In the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to eighteenth-century French lacquer, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris brings together nearly three hundred objects from various collections in France and the Lackkunst Museum in Münster, enriched by significant contributions from private collectors and antique dealers such as Parisian galleries Steinitz and Kraemer. Being both technologically innovative and visually seductive, lacquer played a central role in the development of rococo taste and aristocratic lifestyle. But it was also subject to increasing moralising critiques directed towards what the marquis de Mirabeau called arts du superflu. Thus the history of lacquer mirrors the evolution of French taste as it occurred, so to speak, layering up on the surface of things.
In the seventeenth century, because of the high cost of importing furniture from India or Iran, Japan or China, there was a considerable impetus to develop a French alternative to Asian lacquer to meet the demand of the growing urban elite. The vernisseurs (or lacquerers) in Paris worked in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, alongside the cabinet-makers: first came Mathieu Langlois, mentioned in documents since 1666. A royal workshop at the Gobelins is first recorded in 1713. Guillaume Martin signed his first contracts in the 1710s, and in 1730 he was given a patent to protect his particular recipe for this shiny, transparent, liquid coating substance made of copal resin. Running a shop with his three brothers, Guillaume eventually became decorator to Louis XV, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and the Infanta of Spain in Naples, and while members of the family gradually left the business between 1750 and 1770, the ‘Martin’ technique remained in use until the end of the century when it was replaced by a new industrial process.
The exhibition’s layout sees the didactic panels progress in chronological order but also organises the nearly twenty rooms around different thematic axes such as royal interiors, jewellery, scientific instruments, and so on. At the entrance, a huge display case at the top of the staircase leading to the exhibition is filled with cabinets, caskets and trays of Asian provenance, introducing the history of commerce from the Orient. This selection of objects shows the exquisite standard of work that French craftsmen were initially confronted with. The following rooms are dedicated to furniture for the urban elite, presenting both imported or locally manufactured boiseries. A few paintings representing urban interiors by François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, and watercolours by Louis de Carmontelle evoke the context in which the objects would typically have been found. Two rooms are dedicated to the taste of the royal family and their entourage, whose members favoured white backgrounds for panels or commodes instead of the oriental reds and blacks. The museum’s central nave is turned into an eighteenth-century Parisian street jammed with berlines, carriages or sedan chairs whose panels are sumptuously decorated with lacquer images and finished with velvet and gilt. This spectacular procession mediates the passage between the intimacy of the home and the street where lacquer had its public manifestation, and captures the historical atmosphere more effectively than the isolating plinth-and-spotlight display of the lateral rooms.
Common to all sorts of objects, from the smallest tobacco pouch to large interior panelling, is the use of widely-available replicable motifs by contemporary French artists that allowed the craftsmen a progressive emancipation from oriental models. Details from compositions by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, François Boucher, Claude-Joseph Vernet or Jean-Baptiste Greuze appear in different variants and across media. The impressive ability of the peintres-vernisseurs to reproduce this imagery is a reminder of both the market’s incredibly quick response to changes in contemporary taste, and the debt of the rococo to oriental iconography. Moreover, the reuse of such images is a testament to their intrinsic formal qualities and to the way they adapted to all sorts of decorative contexts. One wishes that iconographic themes were confronted more directly, either in the show itself or in the catalogue essays, but these are only mentioned in passing. The stunning collection of graphic arts at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, for example, could have added very interesting material to explore the visual sources reinterpreted by the vernisseurs.
On the other hand, the exhibition succeeds in providing detailed information about the manufacturing process. The results of scientific analyses carried out during conservation are presented in a twenty-minute video shot in the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France, showing that the decoration required the application of seven coats of varnish to create the unique effect of French lacquer – shiny, bright and quite durable. Likewise, a selection of treatises, including the Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing by John Stalker and George Parker (1688) and Le vernisseur parfait published by Charles-Antoine Jombert (1771), reminds the visitor of the wide circulation around eighteenth-century Europe of knowledge on technical innovations. The use of papier-maché as a basis for snuffboxes, to make them lighter and yet sturdy enough to apply detailed lacquer decoration to, is a good instance of such a creative approach. However, both the exhibition labels and the catalogue entries fall short of explaining the complex articulation of such objects. Snuff boxes, cigar cases, navettes and other small portable objects often combined many different techniques, and their beauty is in part the result of the collaboration of many hands. In a way, French lacquer owed much of its celebrity to the wide range of products and materials with which it was associated.
The exhibition’s subtitle indicates that at the core of the display is the history of the family of vernisseurs whose name became synonymous with their creations so that still today vernis Martin is the French generic expression designating lacquer work. The main title, by alluding to the ‘secrets’ of French lacquer, suggests a particular focus on crafting techniques and business strategies. It also promises to reveal why this decorative varnish became so successful throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. However, despite the coy title, the exhibition does not disclose such secrets. In recent times, scholarly studies by Michael Sonenscher (1989), Anna Honorata Czarnocka (1989), Thibaut Wolversperges (2000) and Daniel Alcouffe (2008), have investigated different aspects of the trade. However, they have also shown inevitable significant gaps in the history of the craft: as often happens with decorative arts, it is impossible to associate dates or names with most objects, and subsequently to discriminate between workshops, due to the lack of surviving documentation. Why the focus on commerce and authorship then?
This matter aside, the show represents a great achievement as a specialist exhibition by virtue of the amazing array of objects presented and the conservation work carried out to bring them back to their original appearance. Visitors are generally not familiar with lacquer art and in this exhibition they can finally understand why eighteenth-century urban elites desired to be surrounded by such beautifully crafted objects.
Les secrets de la laque française: Le vernis Martin has been at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, from 13 February to 8 June 2014.
It is accompanied by the catalogue, Les secrets de la laque française: Le vernis Martin, edited by Anne Forray-Carlier and Monika Kopplin (Les arts décoratifs, 2014).