LESZCZYNSKA Marie (EN)
Biographical Article
Nothing indicated that Marie Leszczyńska, born on June 23, 1703 in Trzebnica (Poland, region of Lower Silesia), would become Queen of France. She was the second daughter of Catherine Opalińska (1680-1747) and Stanislas I Leszczyński (1677-1766), deposed King of Poland (reigned 1704-1709 and 1733-1736) who was forced to cede his throne to the Elector of Saxony Augustus II. Along with her sister Anne, born in 1699, and her parents, Marie Leszczyńska found refuge in Wissembourg (Alsace) in 1719. Her father’s past glory allowed him to consider a union for her with a great character. After refusing the Marquis de Courtenvaux, grandson of Minister Louvois and Captain of the Cent-Suisses, he considered the son of the Margrave of Baden, but was turned down. Humiliated by this affront, he was surprised by a marriage proposal from Louis-Henri de Bourbon (1692-1740), head of the house of Condé. The story wound up taking a completely different turn. It was not simply an alliance of royal blood, but a union with the King of France himself that awaited the young Marie Leszczyńska. In 1723, the death of Philippe d'Orléans (1674-1723), regent of the powerful kingdom of France, raised fears of the consecration of the younger branch: if Louis XV were to disappear without issue, the heir to the throne of France would be the son of the deceased regent. However, the Louis XV, aged 13, was then engaged by policy to a 7-year-old child, the Infanta of Spain Marie-Anne Victoire de Bourbon (1718-1781). First this alliance had to be broken off, at the risk of diplomatic incident. Advised by Cardinal de Fleury (1653-1743), his former tutor, and the Duke of Bourbon (1692-1740), Prime Minister since the death of the regent, the young king accepted without difficulty that the daughter of Philippe V of Spain (1683-1746) be sent back to her country. Then the Duke of Bourbon, with the help of his mistress, Jeanne-Agnès Berthelot de Pléneuf Marquise de Prie (1698-1727), then set out to find a Catholic princess, of royal blood and capable of quickly giving birth to a dauphin. Only one princess met all these criteria: Marie Leszczyńska. Thus, on September 5, 1725, the daughter of a dethroned king married Louis XV in the Chapel of the Trinity at the Château de Fontainebleau. She was 22 years old, seven older than the sovereign. Having become queen of France, she immediately complied with the ceremonial imperatives of her royal function. She gave birth to ten children between 1727 and 1737. In private, she led a simple existence, devoid of intrigue, with her family and a circle of close friends who shared her tastes for letters, music, and games. Each day, the queen retired for several hours to meditate, pray and do needlework. She perfected her artistic education and practiced painting with the help of Étienne Jeaurat (1699-1789), her "dyer", painter to the King's Cabinet, who advised her and helped her copy the paintings of her favorite artists. The very Christian queen regularly visited the boarding school for young girls from the poor nobility of Saint-Cyr, created by Louis XIV (1638-1715) and Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719). She protected hospices, dispensaries, and charitable foundations, and was particularly interested in the Carmelites of Compiègne. With her own funds, she helped the priest of Saint-Sulpice to create the house of the Child Jesus, which helped poor young girls be brought up and women to find jobs. It also supported the works of the daughters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and the brand new devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by establishing one of its brotherhoods in the parish of Notre-Dame in Versailles. Finally, it financed the construction of the queen's convent, not far from the castle (current Hoche high school in Versailles). Never was any queen of France so attached to the relief of misery. She preferred the living environment of Versailles to other royal residences. She spent nearly forty-three years at the Palace of Versailles, and was thus the sovereign to have shared the life of the court the longest. The queen died in Versailles on June 24, 1768. Her body was buried in Saint-Denis, and her heart was transported to Nancy to rest with her parents.
The Collection
Queen Marie Leszczyńska has a deep attraction for Asia, and more particularly for China. She turned out to be a true collector and sponsor of exotic-inspired decorations for her private apartments in Versailles. On the occasion of a new campaign of works in 1747-1748, she had an Oriental cabinet fitted out with "Indian" wallpaper, that is to say, with Chinese decoration. A few years later, in 1761, she asked the Bâtiments du Roi to have it replaced by new paneling adorned with a set of canvases painted by five painters from the King's Cabinet (Coqueret, Frédou, de La Roche, Prévost and Jeaurat), as well as by herself, a painter in her spare time. However, the testimony of Mrs. Campan, tutor to the Queen's daughters, minimises the involvement of the royal artist: "[The Queen] only reserved some draperies and small accessories.” The paintings in this new Cabinet des Chinois revealed the sovereign's Far Eastern taste. They depicted a picturesque China, inspired by the collections of travellers. We discover, for example, the preparation of tea, the evangelisation of the Chinese by the Jesuits, a fair in Nanjing. Architectures, costumes and landscapes are meticulously described; the bird's eye perspective is inspired by Chinese painting. In her will, the sovereign bequeathed these paintings to her lady-in-waiting, the Comtesse de Noailles (1729-1794), asking her to keep them "for love of her". Acceptance of the bequest entailed heavy expenditure, and the Noailles demanded compensation for the woodwork and mirrors in the room. The lady of honour thus restored the Cabinet to its original state, in a pavilion in the park of the Hôtel de Noailles-Mouchy, in Paris. The Cabinet des Chinois remained with the descendants of Madame de Noailles until it was acquired by the Palace of Versailles in 2018. In terms of decorative arts, within the royal family, the queen was the first to benefit from a chest of drawers veneered with Japanese lacquer panels on a black background. Delivered on September 26, 1737 for his retirement cabinet at the Château de Fontainebleau, this chest of drawers was provided by the mercier merchant Thomas Joachim Hébert (1687-1773), with the collaboration of the cabinetmaker Bernard II Van Risen Burgh (AN, O1 3312, fol. 92 v°-93, n° 1115). Today, these drawers are kept in the musée du Louvre (OA 11193). On June 22, 1748, Hébert delivered, for the queen's bedroom in her apartment at the Carmelites of Compiègne, a chest of drawers "of varnished Indian wood with a black background with flowers and golden branches, in a compartment with a silver background" (AN, O1 3314, fol. 90, no. 1461). To accompany this chest of drawers, the merchant Lazare Duvaux (circa 1703-1758) sold two corner cupboards “open, in red lacquer with fillets" and a "bookshelf, open on the sides, in red lacquer with black fillets" (AN, O1 3314, fol. 90 v° and 91). The cabinetmaker of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, Gilles Joubert (1689-1775), procured for the queen's bedroom at Fontainebleau in 1755 two chests of drawers in "Chinese lacquer with a black background and local figures and flowers" (AN, O1 3316, fol. 77 v°, n° 2017). At Versailles, no important lacquer furniture seems to have adorned her apartments, except in the Cabinet des Chinois, where, as described in her posthumous inventory, a "two-storey pedestal table in the manner of lacquer worked in the Greek style" and a "lacquer chest of drawers [...] all the edges of which are gilt". Marie Leszczyńska's refined taste for lacquer objects prompted her to collect pieces imported from Japan, renowned for their high quality, some of which were acquired from the dealer Lazare Duvaux. On November 19, 1749, she purchased "a box of lacq [sic] made from two cases, lined with aventurine lacq inside, trimmed with copper fittings and gilt ormolu" at 144 pounds (Courajod L., 1873, no. 347). She spent 1,512 pounds on December 28, 1758 for "a very beautiful casket of lacq garnished in gold" and 600 pounds for "two potpourris of lacq mounted on birds" (Courajod L., 1873, n° 3305). Louis XV knew that the Queen would appreciate her New Year's gift consisting of a "shelf of a very beautiful lacquer [...] containing a chiffonier with four compartments, two small drawers and an egg of the most beautiful lacquer" found in 1768 in the Queen's inner cabinets. The queen's posthumous inventory mentions about fifteen lacquer pieces, including several trays: "a vine-leaf tray, bearing a gold-lined Japanese goblet with a gold spoon", another supporting a "small cup of carnelian mounted in gold", a "red lacq on which there is a cup, saucer, lid and sugar bowl of white porcelain". The marchand-merciers provided her with several lacquer potpourri, including one resting on a porcelain tray, and "a rather fine potpourri of old grid lacquer." She also owned several caskets and boxes, the most valuable of which consisted of "a box of the most beautiful lacquer with four rounded sides, containing five small boxes also of the most beautiful lacquer." Like other great connoisseurs of her time, Marie Leszczyńska collected porcelain from the Far East offered by Parisian merchants who had them embellished with gilt bronze mounts. Her bedroom at Versailles exhibited "eight Turkish blue and gold vases, two large scrolls of Japanese porcelain, two cats mounted on feet of ormolu, two ewers from Japan mounted in ormolu". Her postmortem inventory also lists in her private cabinets two "Japanese pot-pourris vases with a green background, mounted in ormolu", "a large green Japan potpourri with flowers in relief", and "two potpourri with gridded ormolu handles with six sides of the most beautiful Japan in rocaille". There were also pagodas, such as "two pot-pourris as world maps, ancient Japanese porcelain, Chinese magots" or this "small group of 4 white figures of ancient Japanese porcelain", in reality probably from the Chinese ovens of Dehua. In her boudoir, the queen kept the "figure of a Chinese man holding a rooster" and a couple felines, a tiger and cat. Of an older taste, the "two large candlesticks of Japanese porcelain mounted in silver", like the "small clock in Japan mounted in gold and silver", are probably the very first pieces acquired by the queen. Among the gifts made by the king to his wife was a set for the consumption of tea and chocolate preserved in a box inlaid with rosewood. This kit was given at the birth of the dauphin, the fourth child and first son of the royal couple, who was born on September 4, 1729. Marie Leszczyńska kept the kit in her interior cabinets. Popular in the West starting at the end of the 17th century, exotic drinks, tea, and chocolate, were enjoyed after careful preparation. This set includes several silver gilt pieces marked with the hallmark of silversmith Henri-Nicolas Cousinet (?-c. 1768), received as a master in 1724, and six pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain with "Kakiemon" decoration. It is a perfect example of the creations made under the direction of Parisian marchand-merciers who liked to combine various materials and launched some of the most refined inventions of the 18th century. The engraved arms of France and Poland, partially erased, accompany the chiseled ornamentation of the rococo-style mounts, with reeds, shells and dolphins evoking the marine world. When Marie Leszczyńska died at Versailles in 1768, the essentials were in her Grand Cabinet. This service was bequeathed to the Countess of Noailles, Duchess of Mouchy, one of her ladies-in-waiting. This precious set entered the museé du Louvre in 1958 (OA 9598).
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