Madame Adélaïde (EN)

Biographical article

Marie Adélaïde de France was the sixth child, and fourth daughter, of Louis XV (1710-1774) and Marie Leszczyńska (1703 – 1768). Unlike her younger siblings, Marie Adélaïde was raised and educated at Versailles, along with her older sisters Madame Louise Élisabeth (1727-1759), Madame Henriette (1727-1752), and Madame Marie Louise (1728-1733), as well as her brother Louis, Dauphin of France (1729-1765). She was put in the care of Marie Isabelle de Rohan, Duchesse de Tallard (1699-1754), and studied Italian under Italian librettist Carlo Osvaldo Goldini (1707-1793) and music under French polymath Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732 – 1799). According to Madame Campan (1752 – 1822), ‘Madame Adélaïde, in particular, had a most insatiable desire to learn; she was taught to play upon all instruments from the horn (will is be believed!) to the Jew’s harp.’ (Campan J.-L.-H., 1854, p. 58).

In 1744, Mesdames Henriette and Adélaïde were moved from the royal nursery to their household, the Household of the Mesdames aînées, and two years later were provided their own dame d’honneur, Marie-Angélique-Victoire de Bournonville, duchesse de Duras (1686-1764). Following the death of Henriette in 1752, the Household of the Mesdames aînées became the Household of Madame Adélaïde, run by Marie-Suzanne-Françoise de Creil, duchesse de Beauvilliers (1716-1780), and Adélaïde was therefore unique in being the only unmarried princess with her own separate household. Madame Adélaïde never married: in the late 1740s when she reached the appropriate age for marriage, there were no potential Catholic suitors of appropriate status. In 1761 it was reportedly suggested she marry the recently widowed Charles III of Spain (1716-1788), but she refused upon seeing his portrait.

When her younger sisters returned from Fontevrault in 1748-50, Adélaïde headed the group of the four unmarried younger sisters, including Madame Victoire (1733-1799), Madame Sophie (1734- 1782), and Madame Louise (1737-1787). Adélaïde had a dominant and ambitious personality, with a strong will, and dominated her younger sisters. Madame Campan said that, ‘Madame Adélaïde had more talents than Madame Victoire; but she was altogether deficient in that kindness which alone creates affection for the great: abrupt manners, a harsh voice, and a short way of speaking rendered her more than imposing. She carried the idea of the perogative of rank to a high pitch.’(campan J.-L.-H., 1854, p. 63). She was unique amongst her unmarried sisters with her political ambition, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to gain influence through her father the king, her brother the Dauphin, and then through her nephew, the next Dauphin and Louis XVI (1754-1793).

Along with her siblings, Madame Adélaïde unsuccessfully attempted to sabotage their father’s relationship with Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764) and later Madame du Barry (1743-1793). In the early 1750s, when Madame de Pompadour’s health was deteriorating, Adélaïde took her place as the favourite and close companion of her father. Following the death of Marie Leszczyńska in 1768, Adélaïde encouraged her father to remarry to prevent another royal mistress, supporting the Dowager Princess de Lamballe (1749-1792) for the role. Nonetheless, in 1769 Louis XV introduced Madame du Barry to court. In 1770, Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) became the Dauphine, and during her first years in France she became close with the Mesdames due to the close relationship they had with their nephew the Dauphin Louis. Madame Adélaïde worked to gain Marie Antoinette’s support against Madame du Barry and frequently encouraged the Dauphine to rebuff Madame du Barry. By 1772 this had created a rift in the relationship between the King and Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780), and her ambassador, concerned for the political consequences for the relationship between France and Austria, forced her to speak to Madame du Barry, thus throwing off Madame Adélaïde’s plot and ending the close friendship between Adélaïde and the Dauphine.

From April 1774 until the death of King Louis XV on 10^th May 1774, Madame Adélaïde and her sisters attended to their father through his illness with smallpox. The sisters caught smallpox and were quarantined near the Palace de Choisy but later recovered. Following the succession of her nephew Louis XVI, Madame Adélaïde came to play a political role once again: she provided a list of minister candidates, thus playing a significant role in the formation of the new government, and became his political advisor. Her supporters and followers included the Duc d’Orléans (1725-1785), the Duc de Richelieu (1696-1788), the Duc d’Aiguillon (1720-1788), the Duchesse de Noailles (1729-1794) and Madame de Marsan (1720-1803). Ultimately, her involvement in political affairs was opposed at court and Louis XVI was obliged to exclude her. In 1777, Madame Adélaïde was created Duchesse de Louvois by her nephew the King. She, along with her sister Victoire, distanced themselves from court and preferred to spend time in their own Château de Bellevue at Meudon. Following the disintegration of their relationship with Marie Antoinette, the salon of the Mesdames became a hotspot for nobility in opposition to the Queen; it was frequented by the minister Maurepas (1701-1781), whom Adélaïde had supported for his position, the Prince de Condé (1727 – 1776) and the Prince de Conti (1717-1776), both members of the Anti-Austrian party, and Beaumarchais, who read aloud his satires of Austria.

Madame Adélaïde and her sister Victoire were present at Versailles during the Parisian women’s march on 6 October 1789, and amongst those gathered in the King’s apartment on the night of the attack on Marie Antoinette’s bedroom. When leaving Versailles for the Tuileries in Paris, their wagon separated from the procession and headed instead to the Château de Bellevue. Upon obtaining their passports to leave for Rome, Adélaïde and Victoire were due to leave on 3 February 1791. However, an anonymous tip-off of their intention to leave caused a protest at the National Assembly, and on 19 February a crowd of women gathered at the Palais Royal and intended to march to Bellevue to prevent the Mesdames’ departure. Nonetheless, they departed on 20 February 1791. The Mesdames were temporarily halted by a protest against their departure in Moret, and detained for several days from 21 February in Arnay-le-Duc. Back in Paris, riots continued against the Mesdames’ departure, and protestors marched on the gardens of the Tuileries demanding the King order his aunts’ return. Following a debate in the National Assembly it was decided that the Mesdames’ departure had little consequence for the overall cause of the Revolution. Whilst protests at Arnay-le-Duc further delayed their departure, the Mesdames eventually left on 3 March and headed to Savoy, where the King of Sardinia installed them at the Château de Chambery. Adélaïde and Victoire arrived and were welcomed in Rome on 16 April 1791, where they remained for five years. When Italy was invaded by Revolutionary France in 1796, the Mesdames left for Naples, and when Naples was invaded by France in 1799 they left for Corfu, eventually settling in Trieste. Adélaïde died in 1800 and her body, along with that of her sister Victoire who died in 1799, were ordered back to France by Louis XVIII during the Bourbon Restoration, and buried at the Basilica of Saint-Denis.

The collection

The inventories taken of the collections of Madame Adélaïde during her lifetime focus on furniture and furnishings, which could lend the impression she had little interest in the visual arts such as painting and sculpture, and objets d’art, with the exception of her extensive collection of Sèvres porcelain recorded at the Château de Bellevue. Despite this absence from the record, we know that Madame Adélaïde engaged in patronage activities, and was an enthusiastic patron of the woman painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749-1803). In fact, Madame Adélaïde was so taken by Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with Two Pupils (1785; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 53.225.5), that she made an offer to buy it for 10,000 livres (Sprinson de Jesús M., 2008, p. 160).

Patronage Activities

Whilst Marie-Antoinette patronised Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) and Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire were determined to construct a separate identity, holding their court at the Château de Bellevue away from Versailles and patronising Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (Sprinson de Jesús M., 2008, p. 157). In 1787 Labille-Guiard produced pastel portrait preparatory studies of the Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire, which are now housed, along with the finished portraits, in the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Upon hearing that Vigée Le Brun had been commissioned to paint a portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children for the Salon of 1787, Marie Adélaïde, determined to not be overshadowed, commissioned Labille-Guiard to paint full-length portraits of herself, her sister Madame Victoire, and her niece Madame Elisabeth, to be exhibited alongside that of Marie Antoinette at the Salon (the portrait of Madame Victoire was not finished until 1788 and was exhibited at the Salon of 1789). The Mesdames were so pleased with the result that they requested Louis XVI grant the artist the title 'premier peintre des Mesdames’ to appear alongside Labille-Guiard’s name in the Salon livret (Sprinson de Jesús M., 2008, p. 162). This display of portraiture represented the division present in the Royal Family in the lead-up to the Revolution. According to Jean Cailleux, ‘In opposition to the Queen’s extravagance, to her capricious nature, to her friends, in opposition to the feebleness of the King who yielded to the demands of his wife, there was the coalition of the daughters of Louis XV, Mesdames. The latter represented the spirit of the old Court, the rigid moral and Christian principles of their mother and of the Dauphin, their brother.’ (Cailleux J., 1969, p. iv). Further, the commissioning of these portraits demonstrated Adélaïde’s role as matron of her family’s memory, according to Jennifer Milam, she ‘directed a type of female power most appropriate to her situation through the pairing of her own portrait with those of her sisters’ (Milam J., 2003, p. 117).

Porcelain in the Collection

The Mesdames were amongst the most loyal patrons of the Manufacture royale de Sèvres, acquiring numerous pieces: Madame Adélaïde acquired more than 26,000 livres worth between the years 1766 and 1788 (Baulez C., 2001, p. 13). The inventory taken at the Château de Bellevue in 1786 (A.N., O/1/3379) is testament to Madame Adélaïde’s keen interest in Sèvres pieces. Included in the collection were several sculptures of female figures in Sèvres biscuit porcelain, as well as numerous vases in varying Sèvres colours, including blue de Roi, gris de lin,white and gold, red and gold, and apple-green. Several of these vases were mounted with bas reliefs in the Etruscan style. Included in the collection of porcelain at Bellevue were two large Japanese porcelain vases with a celadon green background and adorned with figures and rinceau ornament.

Books in the Collection

Amongst her sisters, Marie Adélaïde was the most keen bibliophile, and her library had over eleven thousand volumes, surpassed only by the library of Madame de Pompadour. The bindings of the Mesdames were differentiated by colour: Madame Adélaïde’s collection was bound in red morocco, Madame Victoire’s in green, and Madame Sophie’s in citron, with the armorial of the fille de France the same on all books. Included amongst the Mesdames’ collection of books was a copy of a well-known work by Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674-1743), Geographic, Historical, Chronologial, Political, and Physical Description of the Chinese Empire and Chinese Tartary. Enriched with General and Particular Maps of These Countries, first published in Paris in 1735 and re-edited in 1770. The work was common to the finest contemporary libraries in the eighteenth century, and included travel diaries, extensive maps, and precise descriptions of Chinese provinces and their main cities, highlighting the results of the French Jesuit missions in China, and offering a thrill for French intellectuals who showed a keen interest in China (Rochebrune M.-L. de, 2014, pp. 7-8).

Asiatic Objects in the Collection

The records do not demonstrate that Madame Adélaïde had an interest in collecting a wide amount of Chinese and Japanese objects, although there are some items worth noting besides the aforementioned Japanese vases at Bellevue. In her apartments at the Château de Compiegne was a furniture set consisting of a bed, curtains, large armchairs, stools, and a screen all covered in chiné taffeta. Chiné was a fabric which used the technique of weaving pre-dyed threads or printing with the intended pattern, creating a soft, blurred effect once the threads are woven into cloth. Chiné fabric became increasingly popular in mid-eighteenth-century Europe along with the craze for all things Eastern. Although the earliest examples came from China, by the 1760s France was producing its own chiné fabric. It is not known if Madame Adélaïde’s furniture was produced from original or French reproduction chiné taffeta, however, the design certainly shows an interest in chinoiserie, consisting of flowers and Chinese figures on a white background.