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Parisian
Salons
~Background
~Salons of
Enlightenment
~Madame de Stäel
~Salons
of the Restoration
~The Salons
of Victor Hugo
Influence
of Printed Materials
~Pre-Revolutionary
Timeline
~Post-Revolutionary Timeline
~Memoires
Defining
the Parisians
~Parisians
Viewed by Foreigners
~Parisians Viewed by
Themselves
~Paris Fashion
Bibliography
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PARIS
- considered the center of the universe in the late 18th and early
19th centuries, was the home of the salon.
Well recognized all over the world,
the Parisian salon served as a meeting ground for group
discussion on issues of political, social, and cultural discourse.
Foreigners visiting this
vibrant and progressive city often made it a priority to visit
a Parisian salon during their stay.
It
can be said that with the beginning of the late 18th century,
the Parisian salon was no longer a place of idle leisure
but rather a unique social and intellectual setting, providing
the opportunity for both men and women to share similar tastes
and interests.
Please join
me on a journey through some of the greatest Parisian salons
of the late 18th and early 19th centuries where we will discover
how the salons
functioned and evolved in this illustrious City of Light.
Figure 1.1
Jean-François de Troy, La Lecture de Molière (1728)
Courtesy of the Marquess of Chalmondeley, (Goodman,
68).
Five elegantly dressed
aristocratic ladies and two men gather in a richly furnished,
rococo style salon at approximately half past three in
the afternoon and listen as one man reads aloud the light work
of Molière,
a well-known 17th century French playwright. As the reader pauses,
everyone's focus seems to be wrapped elsewhere, in their own thoughts
and desires. The straightforward gazes of the woman resting in
the background, left of the reader, and the woman lounging in
the luxurious chair to the far right of the foreground remind
us that we are looking in on de Troy's artistic rendering of an
18th century salon. De Troy's painting suggests to us that
this particular salon may not have been a serious, intellectual
gathering, but rather a sociable assembly of mixed guests.
As
we travel through a small selection of Parisian salons,
you will discover that unlike the salon featured in this
painting, which appears idle and frivolous, there did in fact
exist salons that were more than merely social gatherings
but real "working spaces" where both men and women met (Goodman,
74).
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