A hand-colored etched fire screen celebrating the “Golden Age of France” under Louis XVI. Paris: chez Petit, rue du Petit Pont à l’Image Notre-Dame, [late 1781].
Scalloped pasteboard screen, measuring 269 x 238 mm. at its widest points, on its recto an allegorical etching within a decorative border, on verso an engraved explanatory text within rocaille border with dolphins and other royal motifs, both sides hand-colored (at the printshop) in gouache and watercolor; the printer’s imprint at foot on both sides; the screen secured in the fork of a (possibly modern) wooden handle (obscuring tiny portions of the scene and text). Condition: one or two tiny chips, overall very well preserved.***
A wonderful survival of an ephemeral domestic object from the ancien régime, this hand-colored etched portable fire screen (or “ecran à main”), celebrating King Louis XVI, Queen Marie-Antoinette and their newborn son the Dauphin (Louis Joseph, born 22 October 1781), was produced by a Paris imagier or printseller.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, printsellers produced hundreds of thousands of prints for all kinds of objects of daily use. Few survive. One of the most ubiquitous household objects using prints was the fire screen. Fire screens served to shield people’s faces from the direct heat of the fire. Such screens were necessary to prevent the thick layers of make-up, used by both sexes (though fire screens were mainly a feminine accessory: cf. Rizzoni, p. 111), often to hide the ravages of smallpox, from not only melting but killing them: the pasty cosmetic preparations contained wax and white lead. This toxic combination was rendered still more deadly by heat, which accelerated the interaction of the chemicals with the skin.
Some screens were standing objects on poles; others, like this one, were hand-held. Originally wicker, they were often made of embroidered textiles, but in the 18th century, the “golden age” of écrans à main, the use of prints to decorate the screens became commonplace. Naturally, the vast majority of these fragile screens, “used so close to the fire that most of them probably ended up in it,” have disappeared (Letourmy and Crépin, transl., p. 389, and see below).
The etching on the “recto” (the image side) of this screen comprises a border of flowering plants and volutes enclosing an allegorical scene with at center a medallion containing the profile of King Louis XVI, held aloft by two female figures, one holding the cross, symbolizing the Church, the other, representing “Liberality,” dispensing largesse from a cornucopia to a crowd of common people at bottom right, the tower and steeple of Notre Dame visible in the distance behind them. At the top Divine Right is pictured as the blazing Tetragrammaton (Jehovah), above a naked woman (Truth) carrying a banner lettered “Regis christianissimi pietas augusta.” At bottom left a putto holds a banner lettered “Franciae aetas aurea.” On the verso is an engraved text explaining the meaning of the scene, within a rocaille border consisting of a pair of large dolphins whose tails are lily flowers (fleurs-de-lis), entwined with large lily plants whose flowers emerge at the top, flanking the royal sun-orb, which contains three fleurs-de-lis. This explanatory text, headed La piété du Roi et sa liberalité [The piety and generosity of the King], reads: “Religion holds her Cross in one hand, and in the other the Medallion of the King; above Truth unfurls a banner bearing these words: Regis christianissimi pietas augusta [the august piety of the most Christian king]; behind [her] one sees Jehovah, with God’s name written in Hebrew characters, to show that Royal power comes from him alone; on the other side of the Medallion, Liberality pours medallions [sic, actually fruits, flowers and coins] in profusion to the People, who receive them with cries of `Long live the King, the Queen, and Monseigneur the Dauphin.’ In the distance one makes out the towers of Notre Dame; in the foreground is a Spirit holding a scroll with these words: Franciae aetas aurea [the golden age of France].”
The irony of these last words is obvious. Perhaps this screen, with its Royalist propaganda, was spirited out of France by an émigré family, as it is hard to imagine it surviving the Revolution intact.
The main scholarly work on printed fire screens of the ancien régime is an 8-part article by Georgina Letourmy and Daniel Crépin. For their census of imagiers who produced these screens, Letourmy and Crépin relied as much on advertisements or other second-hand sources as on surviving examples of the screens themselves. By far the largest number of screens in their census was produced by the imagier and papetier J. E. (or E. J.) Petit, creator of the present example. Petit had bought the stock of F-C. Guérard in 1755, later adding to it the stock of Nicolas III Bonnart, and he remained active, at the same address, near the rue St. Jacques, until 1789. In a printed advertisement from 1761, held by the Musée Carnavelet (and reproduced by Letourmy and Crépin, p. 554), Petit called himself “the only one to sell historical screens” (Il vend seul les Ecrans historiques: his predecessor had used the same wording: ibid., p. 450). Among the plethora of goods sold by Petit, which included decorated, marbled, colored and lined papers for many uses, writing utensils, ready-made découpages and varnish to apply them, a variety of portable altars, tooth-whitening products, and prints, were “hand-screens of all kinds.” In a longer advertisement for his shop, reproduced by Grand-Carteret, he supplied additional details: “Tient magasin d’écrans à main, peints et en découpures: il vend seul les écrans historiques, et les Fastes du Roi en 6 écrans, très intéressant”.
Printed paper fire screens were often sold in series of six, and the present screen was the third of six screens published to celebrate the birth of the Dauphin. (The no. 3, partially hidden by the wooden handle, is engraved at the foot of the text.) The series was announced in the Journal de Paris on Christmas Day 1781: “Le Sr Petit, rue du Petit Pont a I'Image Notre Dame, vient de mettre à jour une suite de six beaux écrans, représentants des sujets allégoriques de l’Accouchement de la Reine. Le n° 1 est intitulé : Accouchement de la Reine; le n° 2 : Les voeux accomplis ; le n° 3 La Piété du Roi et sa Libéralité ; le n° 4 Les Réjouissances Francaises ; le n° 3, la Joie Publique ou les Spectacles gratis, et le n° 6, L'Illustre Nourrisson. Ces écrans sont enluminés avec beaucoup de soin” (cited in Letourmy and Crépin article, part 8, p. 165, who cite two other copies of this fire screen, at the Musée Carnavelet and in a private collection in the UK, the “McLaren collection”). For this series Petit used the complex scalloped form (no. 2 of three standard shapes identified by Letourmy & Crépin), which was “particulièrement recherchée” (Rizzoli, p. 113). The text side is enclosed in the same twin dauphin border in all six screens.
The Musée Carnavelet holds the only known complete series of these screens, which were exhibited at the Bibliotheque municipale de Versailles in 2006-2007 as part of an exhibition on Marie-Antoinette. The excellent essay by Nathalie Rizzoni concludes thus: “In contrast with fans, which were often virtuosic creations made using noble materials, and which therefore attracted the interest of collectors at an early date, hand screens, which had very little monetary value at the time, made of fragile material and essentially ephemeral, often ended up in the fire or in attics or cellars, becoming easy prey to rodents and humidity. This explains the scarcity of these objects in museum collections...” (transl).
Georgina Letourmy and Daniel Crépin, “L’ecran à main à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Le Vieux-Papier, vol. 39-40 (2012-2013), nos. 403-410; this screen described in part 8 (no. 410), p. 166; Nathalie Rizzoni, “Écrans a main pour célébrer la naissance du Dauphin (1781),” in the exhibition catalogue Marie-Antoinette, femme réelle, femme mythique (7 Dec. 2006 - 24 Feb. 2007, Bibliotheque municipale de Versailles), pp. 111-115. Cf. Préaud, Dictionnaire des éditeurs d'estampes à Paris sous l'Ancien régime (1990), p. 235; J. Grand-Carteret, Papiers & Papeteries de l’ancien temps (1913), p. 280-281. Item #4478
Price: $6,500.00
Status: On Hold