The style of architecture and design under King Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) was a more eclectic development of French neoclassicism, incorporating elements of neo-Gothic and other styles. It was the first French decorative style imposed not by royalty, but by the tastes of the growing French upper class. In painting, neoclassicism and romanticism contended to become the dominant style. In literature and music, France had a golden age, as the home of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and other major poets and artists. Much of the style was taken from the personality of the King himself. Unlike his Bourbon predecessors, he wore business dress, not formal robes, he lived in Paris, and he shunned ceremonies; he carried his own umbrella, and imposed no official styles. Louis Philippe furniture had the same types and forms as the earlier French Restoration style, but with less decoration; comfort was the primary consideration. The Louis Philippe commode, with a marble top and a marquetry covering, was a popular example of the style.
Architecture
The style of public buildings under Louis-Philippe was determined by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, or Academy of Fine Arts, whose Perpetual Secretary from 1816 to 1839 was Quatremère de Quincy, a confirmed neoclassicist. The architectural style of public buildings and monuments was intended to associate Paris with the virtues and glories of ancient Greece and Rome, as it had been under Louis XIV, Napoleon and the Restoration. Under Louis Philippe, the monuments begun by Napoleon, including the Arc de Triomphe were completed. New monuments, such as the Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde and the July Column in Place de la Bastille were purely classical. The July Column was inaugurated on 28 July 1840, on the anniversary of the July Revolution, and dedicated to those killed during the uprising. Following the return to Paris of the ashes of Napoleon from Saint Helena in 1840, they were placed with great ceremony in a tomb designed by Louis Visconti beneath the church of Les Invalides. The reign of Louis-Philippe also saw the beginning of a movement to preserve and restore some of the earliest landmarks of Paris, inspired in large part by Victor Hugo's hugely successful novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris), published in 1831. The leading figure of the restoration movement was Prosper Mérimée, named by Louis-Philippe as the Inspector-General of Historic Monuments. The Commission of Public Monuments was created in 1837, and in 1842, Mérimée began compiling the first official list of classified historical monuments, now known as the Base Mérimée. The first structure to be restored was the nave of the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest in the city. Work also began in 1843 on the cathedral of Notre-Dame, which had been badly damaged during the Revolution, and stripped of the statues on its façade. Much of the work was directed by the architect and historian Viollet-le-Duc, who sometimes, as he admitted, was guided by his own scholarship of the "spirit" of Medieval architecture, rather strict historical accuracy. The other major restoration projects were Sainte-Chapelle and the Hôtel de Ville, dating to the 17th century; the old buildings which pressed up against the back of the Hôtel de Ville were cleared away; two new wings were added, the interiors were lavishly redecorated, and the ceilings and walls of the large ceremonial salons were painted with murals by Eugène Delacroix. Unfortunately, all the interiors were burned in 1871 by the Paris Commune.
The Beaux-Arts style
During the same period, a small revolution was taking place at the École des Beaux-Arts, led by four young architects; Joseph-Louis Duc, Félix Duban, Henri Labrouste and Léon Vaudoyer, who had first studied Roman and Greek architecture at the French Academy in Rome, then in the 1820s began the systematic study of other historic architectural styles including French architecture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. They instituted teaching about a variety of architectural styles at the École des Beaux-Arts, and installed fragments of Renaissance and Medieval buildings in the courtyard of the school so students could draw and copy them. Each of them also designed new non-classical buildings in Paris inspired by a variety of different historic styles; Labrouste built the Sainte-Geneviève Library (1844–50); Duc designed the new Palais de Justice and Court of Cassation on the Île-de-la-Cité (1852–68); Vaudroyer designed the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (1838–67), and Duban designed the new buildings of the École des Beaux-Arts. Together, these buildings, drawing upon Renaissance, Gothic, Romanesque and other non-classical styles, broke the monopoly of Neoclassical architecture in Paris.
Furniture
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