Charles Percier
Encyclopedia
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
French architect, interior decorator and designer, who worked in a close partnership with Pierre François Léonard Fontaine
Pierre François Léonard Fontaine
Pierre François Léonard Fontaine was a neoclassical French architect, interior decorator and designer.Starting from 1794 Fontaine worked in such close partnership with Charles Percier, originally his friend from student days, that it is difficult to distinguish their work...
, originally his friend from student days. For work undertaken from 1794 onward, trying to ascribe conceptions or details to one or other of them is fruitless; it is impossible to disentangle their cooperative efforts in this fashion. Together, Percier and Fontaine were inventors and major proponents of the rich, grand, consciously-archaeological versions of neoclassicism we recognise as Directoire style and Empire style.
Following Charles Percier's death in 1838, Fontaine designed a tomb in their characteristic style in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
. Percier and Fontaine had lived together as well as being colleagues. Fontaine married late in life and after his death in 1853 his body was placed in the same tomb according to his wishes.
Biography
Percier was born at Paris in 1764. In 1784, at age nineteen, he won the Prix de RomePrix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
, a government-funded fellowship for study in Rome. There he met Fontaine. One early product of their collaboarion was Palais, maisons et autres édifices modernes dessinés à Rome ("A palace, houses and other modern buildings designed in Rome"), which attracted the attention of prospective clients when they returned to Paris. At the end of 1792, near the end of the first phase of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, Percier was appointed to supervise the scenery at the Paris Opéra, a post at the center of innovative design. Fontaine returned from the security of London, where he had been exiled, and they continued at the Opéra together until 1796. Claude-Louis Bernier (1755–1830) was a third member of their team.
Napoleon Bonaparte liked their work. The calculated theater of the Empire style, its aggressive opulence restrained by a slightly dry and correct sense of the antique taste, and its neo-Roman values, imperial yet separate from the ancien régime, appealed to the future emperor. He appointed them his personal architects and never wavered in his decision; they were at work on imperial projects almost until the very end of Napoleon's time in power. The relationship only dissolved when Napoleon retired to Elba. After the restoration of the House of Bourbon in 1814, they found themselves associated too intimately with the Empire ever to earn an official commission again. From that time forward, Percier conducted a student atelier, a teaching studio or workshop. One of Percier's pupils, Auguste de Montferrand
Auguste de Montferrand
Auguste de Montferrand was a French Neoclassical architect who worked primarily in Russia. His two best known works are the Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg.-Family:...
, designed Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor in Saint Petersburg, Russia is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city...
in St Petersburg for Tsar Alexander I
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
.
They worked for ten years (1802–12) on the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
. The old palace had not been a royal residence for generations, so it was free of any taint associated with the detested Bourbons. It stood in the heart of Paris, so that the vain Emperor could be seen coming and going, unlike Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
, which, besides, had been rendered uninhabitable through destruction and looting.
They worked on the Tuileries Palace
Tuileries Palace
The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...
that faced the Louvre across the Place du Carrousel
Place du Carrousel
The Place du Carrousel is a public square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, located at the open end of the courtyard of the Louvre museum, a space occupied, prior to 1871, by the Tuileries Palace...
and the parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
s. In that prominent square, Percier and Fontaine designed the Arc du Carrousel (1807–8), commemorating the Battle of Austerlitz
Battle of Austerlitz
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon's greatest victories, where the French Empire effectively crushed the Third Coalition...
,
They also worked at Josephine's Château de Malmaison
Château de Malmaison
The Château de Malmaison is a country house in the city of Rueil-Malmaison about 12 km from Paris.It was formerly the residence of Joséphine de Beauharnais, and with the Tuileries, was from 1800 to 1802 the headquarters of the French government.-History:Joséphine de Beauharnais bought the...
, at the Château de Montgobert
Château de Montgobert
The Château de Montgobert in the midst of the Forest of Retz, near Soissons, in Montgobert, Aisne, Picardy, is a neoclassical French château that was built for Antoine Pierre Desplasses between 1768-1775 on the site of an ancient seigneurie....
for Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte
Pauline Bonaparte was the first sovereign Duchess of Guastalla, an imperial French Princess and the Princess consort of Sulmona and Rossano. She was the sixth child of Letizia Ramolino and Carlo Buonaparte, Corsica's representative to the court of King Louis XVI of France. Her elder brother,...
, and did alterations and decorations for former Bourbon palaces or castles at Compiègne
Château de Compiègne
The Castle of Compiègne is a French château, a royal residence built for Louis XV and restored by Napoleon. Compiègne was one of three seats of royal government, the others being Versailles and Fontainebleau...
, Saint-Cloud
Château de Saint-Cloud
The Château de Saint-Cloud was a Palace in France, built on a magnificent site overlooking the Seine at Saint-Cloud in Hauts-de-Seine, about 10 kilometres west of Paris. Today it is a large park on the outskirts of the capital and is owned by the state, but the area as a whole has had a large...
, and Fontainebleau.
Percier and Fontaine designed every detail in their interiors: state beds, sculptural side tables, and other furniture, wall lights and candlesticks, chandeliers, door hardware, textiles, and wallpaper. On special occasions, Percier was called upon to design for the Sèvres porcelain manufactory: in 1814 Percier's published designs were adapted by Alexandre Brogniart, director of Sèvres, a grand classicising vase 137 cm tall, that came to be known as the "Londonderry Vase" when Louis XVIII gave it to the Marquess of Londonderry just before the Congress of Vienna
Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
. Percier and Fontaine published several later books, notably Recueil de décoration intérieure concernant tout ce qui rapporte à l'ameublement ("Collection of interior designs: Everything that relates to furniture", 1812) with its engravings in a spare outline technique. These engravings spread their style beyond the Empire; they helped put a French stamp on the English Regency style and influenced the connoisseur-designer, Henry Hope
Henry Hope
Henry Hope was an Amsterdam merchant banker born in Boston, in Britain's Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America.-Early years:...
.
Legacy
At the end of 1804, Charles Percier officially retired and devoted himself to teaching. The following are some of his students:- Augustin Caristie (1783–1862)
- François Debret (1777–1850)
- Martin-Pierre Gauthier (1790–1855), prix de Rome 1819
- Alphonse de GisorsAlphonse de GisorsHenri-Alphonse de Gisors was a 19th-century French architect. His major work is his extension of Salomon de Brosse and Jacques Lemercier's Palais du Luxembourg between 1836 and 1841 - in 1835 he added a new facade overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, and in 1836 he extended the lateral façades...
(1796–1866), second prix de Rome 1823 - Jacques Hittorff (1792–1867)
- Jean-Jacques-Marie HuvéJacques-Marie HuvéJacques-Marie Huvé was a French architect who practiced in Paris, working in a neoclassical manner that he refined working in the atelier of Percier and Fontaine, Napoleon's chief architects....
(1783–1852) - Louis-Hippolyte LebasLouis-Hippolyte LebasLouis-Hippolyte Lebas was a French architect working in a rational and severe Neoclassical style, who was trained in the atelier of Percier and Fontaine, the favoured architects of Napoleon...
(1782–1867) - Achille Leclerc (1785–1853)
- Paul Letarouilly(1795–1855)
- Auguste de MontferrandAuguste de MontferrandAuguste de Montferrand was a French Neoclassical architect who worked primarily in Russia. His two best known works are the Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg.-Family:...
(1786–1858) - Bruno Renard (1781–1861)
- Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti (1791–1853)
External links
- Palais, maisons et autres édifices modernes (1798)
- Recueil de décoration intérieure: 1801; 1812
- Empire Style
- Percier and Fontaine Collection