A Louis XVI royal lacquered wood bergère, delivered by Jean-Baptiste Claude Sené for Madame Elisabeth at the Tuileries castle, circa 1791

Delivered ‘for the service of Madame Elizabeth, interior cabinet’ by Jean-Baptiste Claude Sené at the Tuileries Palace, 14 November 1791

This bergère is a moving testimony to the daily life of the royal family at the Tuileries Palace, their last home before their imprisonment and the fall of the monarchy in France. It belonged to a discreet member of the family, but probably the most touching for her kindness and loyalty to the royal couple and their children, Madame Elisabeth, sister of King Louis XVI.

Life in the Tuileries Palace after the days of October 1789

5 and 6 October 1789 marked the return to Paris of the royal family, who had been forcibly escorted from the Palace of Versailles by the people of Paris. Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, their children and a few close relatives moved into the Tuileries Palace, a former royal residence that had fallen into disuse. It took several months and some eight hundred workers to restore the residence to its former splendor.

Madame Elisabeth had a flat in the Pavillon de Flore on the first floor, next to Madame de Lamballe, Marie-Antoinette's closest friend, where she received furniture from Choisy, Meudon and Versailles. The Tuileries Palace became the new home of the Court, with its courtiers and its daily etiquette. As Madame Elisabeth put it, the Court is established almost as it was in the past: we see people every day’. The royal family was still able to place a few orders with the Garde-Meuble to complete the furnishings of this immense residence with its almost non-existent private areas.

From 1790 onwards, Madame Elisabeth was able to order several pieces, including the bergère shown today, which bears the label ‘Pour le service de Madame Elizabeth aux Tuileries, cabinet de l'angle’. On 14 November 1791, by order number 108, Jean-Baptiste Claude Sené delivered ‘two half-headed bergère prepared for sculpture’, invoiced at 20 livres, the sculpture of which was executed by Laurent and which were subsequently painted. Two other bergères were also ordered for the cabinet after the library. In the inventory of 1791, these bergères are listed as ‘2. bergères 6. fauteuils, le tout couverture de (...) les bois sculptés peints en blanc’ (archives nationales O/1/3417, p. 250).

The second bergère, bearing the label ‘Pour Le Service / de Madame Elizabeth. au Thuilleries/ Cabinet de l'entresols/n°108’ was sold by Mes Bailleul et Nentas in Bayeux on 5 April 2021 (€72,000) and then presented at Christie's Paris on 20 April 2023, lot 632.

In 1790, Madame Elisabeth commissioned Jean-Baptiste Boulard to make furniture in the same style for the Château de Compiègne, including a sofa, two bergères, two armchairs and four chairs. One armchair and one chair from this set are in the Musée de Compiègne (C.56.015/2 and C53.053).

Madame Elisabeth

Elisabeth-Philippe Marie Hélène de France, known as Madame Elisabeth, was born in Versailles in 1764, the youngest child in the family of the Dauphin and Marie-Josèphe de Saxe. When Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette came to the throne in 1774, Elisabeth lived at Versailles alongside her family and did not marry. In 1781, her brother offered her the Montreuil estate, where she lived on a regular basis. Her kindness and charity were recognized by those around her, qualities she retained throughout her life, even in the worst moments. When the Revolution broke out, Elisabeth decided to stay with the royal family and went with them to the Tuileries Palace after 6 October, when the people of Paris came to take Louis XVI and his family back to the capital.

Madame Elisabeth accompanied the King and Queen when they fled to Varennes on 20 June 1791, before returning to the Tuileries, which had become a gilded prison. She was then transferred to the Temple prison, where she lived in a cell with her niece and from where she learned that her brother had been executed, but not her sister-in-law. On 10 May 1794, after a semblance of a trial, she was guillotined on the Place de la Révolution and her body thrown into the mass graves of the Errancis cemetery.

The Tuileries Palace

A royal residence located opposite the Louvre, the Tuileries Palace was built by Catherine de Médicis under the orders of the architect Jean Bullant from 1570, with a central building flanked by two wings including the Bullant Pavilion, which Henri IV had connected to the Louvre between 1607 and 1610 via the Galerie du bord de l'Eau. A wing was then added to the south of the palace to link the Bullant pavilion and the Grande Galerie. At their junction, the Pavillon de la Rivière was built, a pavilion that took the name of Flore in 1669. Louis XIV carried out some work to restore symmetry to the whole. During the 18th century, the palace was gradually deserted and Louis XVI and his family discovered the Tuileries in a sorry state in October 1789. Despite this, court life continued until the royal family fled to Varennes in June 1791, after which they returned to the Tuileries before being transferred to the Temple prison and then the Conciergerie when the monarchy fell on 10 August 1792. The Convention and then the Comité de Salut Public took possession of the palace, which under the Empire became one of the favourite residences of Napoleon I and Josephine.