Fashion and the Reinvention of Court Costume in Portrayals of Josephine de Beauharnais (1794-1809)
Susan L
Mode et réinvention de l’habit de cour dans les portraits de l’impératrice Joséphine de Beauharnais (1794-1809) - L’image d’une Joséphine Bonaparte à la fois souveraine et femme de mode s’élabora durant son règne en tant qu’impératrice des Français (1804-1809), brouillant la frontière traditionnelle entre l’habit de cour et la mode, qui, sans être totalement rigide, s’assouplit dans le contexte politique et économique de l’Empire napoléonien.Cet article examine la modernité de l’habit de sacre de Joséphine et son symbolisme historique. Aucun des deux portraits officiels de Joséphine ne propose une représentation fidèle de son costume impérial, révélant ainsi des mutations de la mode, dans le sens moderne, qui avaient envahi la garde-robe curiale. L’article examine aussi les portraits de Joséphine peints durant son règne qui, s’ils se dispensaient de représenter les regalia impériaux, montraient néanmoins une ambition artistique très forte ou étaient publiquement exposés. Ils dévoilent les profonds antagonismes entre les représentations de sa personne publique et privée et étaient symptomatiques d’une évolution dans l’idéologie de la femme au pouvoir en France.
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1This essay studies the inventive deployment of fashion in paintings of Josephine Bonaparte during the period of her rise to public prominence, which began in the mid-1790s, through her reign as empress of the French (1804-09). One of its concerns is the status of visual images as a form of evidence about court costumes and fashion, recognizing the difficulty of separating the styling of the clothes from their representations in the visual arts. Pictures constitute an extremely important, and sometimes the only, material source of information about clothing that may not survive or may differ from its representation in archival documents and other textual sources. Yet visual images cannot be assumed faithfully or ‘transparently’ to describe the garments they depict. Instead, they are better thought of as translations, which are governed by representational conventions of their own. Indeed, visual images are capable of generating new images that refer as much if not more to those pictorial conventions as they do to actual garments or objects. In this regard, it is worth attending to distinctions between the genres and media of pictorial representation since their formats and physical characteristics can be telling in themselves of the role of fashion and costume in representing a court, particularly in a modern era of print culture and public exhibition. I shall be looking especially at official portraits and popular engravings of Josephine in formal court costume, and will also consider portraits and genre paintings that presented her in more informal situations during the years of her reign. The divisions in this rich pictorial culture reveal changes in Josephine’s status as a female sovereign, and show that her portrayal as empress cannot simply be regarded as a revival and continuation of the imagery of the pre-Revolutionary court.

Josephine’s Image during the Directory and Consulate

Josephine’s Coronation Costume

21 Victorine de Chastenay-Lanty, Mémoires de Madame de Chastenay, 1771-1815, ed. by Alphone Roserot, (...)

ce n’était plus la robe de mousseline avec le grand ruban à plat, c’étaient des robes de velours et de satin, de toutes les nuances de de toutes les couleurs. Il me fallut du temps pour m’y accoutumer ; je ne jugeais pas le prix des étoffes, et la bigarrure des couleurs choquait trop fortement mes yeux pour me paraître magnifique .

The Historical Symbolism of the Costume

37 ‘Paris, le 19 Thermidor’, Journal des dames et des modes, no. 64, 20 Thermidor an XII [8 August 18 (...)

La fureur de la broderie pour le costume des Dames est portée à un tel point, qu’une petite-maîtresse fait non-seulement broder son schall, son fichu, ses ceintures, sa robe, son mameluk, sa pèlerine, ses manches et son sac à ouvrage, mais même sa chemise et son mouchoir de nez : la broderie blanche et en cotton est la seul en vogue pour les mouchoirs .

Images of Josephine, Official and Private Contexts

29In conclusion, one might say that for all the shifting formations of styles, the official paintings of Josephine in court costume represented a modified continuation of Ancien Régime traditions. They amalgamated the conventional magnificence and formality of the portrait of the queen with a reinvention of court costume that emphasized modern fashion and historical symbolism. The other categories of painting briefly considered here, informal portraits in a grand format and genre paintings of Josephine performing her imperial role, which were also produced during her reign, were most indicative of the changed milieu in which she operated as empress.