Joséphine — Musée du Luxembourg — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 12 → June 29, 2014

On the occasion of the bicentenary of Empress Josephine’s death at Malmaison on 29 May 1814, this exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg seeks to renew the image of a woman who left a deep imprint on French history; a woman of her time, who still incarnates an extraordinary destiny in a society in the throes of change.

When she was born in Martinique in 1763, there was no hint of the adventure that lay before her. Married at sixteen to Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, she was thrown into prison during the Revolution and narrowly escaped the guillotine owing to Robespierre’s timely fall. Bonaparte, then only a twenty-six-year-old general, fell for her charms and married her in 1792, less than five months after their first meeting. She rose up with him: wife of the First Consul after the coup d’état of 18 Brumaire (9 November 1799), she became the first Empress of the French, crowned by Napoleon in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on 2 December 1804. On 30 November 1809 the Emperor told her what she had been dreading to hear ever since she had discovered she could not give him an heir: he wanted a divorce. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison and thereafter indulged her taste for the arts and gardens. On her travels she had occasion to appreciate that she was still in favour with the people, who again paid their respects at her funeral in the Rueil church on 2 June 1814.

Benefiting from some remarkable loans, the exhibition evokes not only Josephine’s life but all the fields in which she left her mark, starting with the decorative arts, by showing her luxurious furnishings and tableware, and fashion, through her elaborate, elegant clothes and jewellery. Portraiture is also given pride of place with emblematic works such as a large portrait of her by Prud’hon, now in the Louvre, or one by Gros, in the Musée Masséna in Nice. Visitors are given a glimpse the intimacy of her apartments, her taste for the most varied collections — old and modern painting, sculpture, antiquities — and her passion for gardens, flowers and birds. These little known aspects of her life illustrate the crucial role that Josephine played in setting the style in the consular and imperial period.

Eloi Lignereux, Table de Toilette de Madame Bonaparte aux Tuileries, vers 1800-1803 140 × 132 × 73 cm © Rmn — Grand Palais / Daniel Amaudet

For the first time in France, it will be possible to gauge Josephine’s place in French art; this could not have been done without the generosity of public and private lenders, in France and abroad, such as the Musée du Louvre, the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the Victoria & Albert Museum, H.R.H. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and the contribution of the Malmaison collections.

An exhibition organised by the Réunion des musées nationaux-Grand Palais in collaboration with the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau

Chief curator: Amaury Lefébure, director of the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau