Photo: Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau, Malmaison France.

A toilette mirror with a reconstruction of Joséphine’s pearl parure.

 

Photo: Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau, Malmaison France.

A bill from Au Grand Turc, the most fashionable couture house in Joséphine’s Paris. Joséphine’s enormous debts were notorious as she spent vast amounts on clothes, shoes and accessories and never managed to stay within the confines of the already generous allowance bestowed upon her by Napoléon. This particular bill is for ‘un schal de cachemire vert pistache vendu à sa majesté impératrice et reine’ (a pistachio green Cashmere shawl) and was issued on the 6th April 1809.

 

Photo: Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau, Malmaison France.

 

A tortoiseshell hair comb, set with a cameo depicting ‘Le chagrin d’Achille‘.

Photo: Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau, Malmaison France.

Crystal perfume bottles that once held Joséphine’s exquisite jasmine, lavender, lily and violet scents

 

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Mathilde Bonaparte

 

 

Mathilde Bonaparte

Born in Trieste, Mathilde Bonaparte was raised in Florence and Rome. She was originally engaged to her first cousin, the future Napoleon III of France, but the engangement was later broken following his imprisonment at Ham. She married a rich Russian tycoon, Anatole Demidov, on November 1, 1840 in Rome.

Anatole was raised to the station of Prince by Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany shortly before the wedding to fulfill the wishes of Mathilde's father and to preserve Mathilde's station as Princess. Anatole's princely title was never recognised in Russia. They had no children. The marriage between these two strong and prominent personalities was stormy. Prince Demidoff insisted on keeping his lover, Valentine de St Aldegonde, which of course was fiercely resisted by Mathilde. 

  Portrait of Valentine, Duchess of Dino, by Vigée Le Brun

In 1846, Mathilde fled the household for Paris with her new lover Émilien de Nieuwerkerke and with Anatole's jewelry. The jewelry constituted the dowry that Anatole was forced to bankroll for his father-in-law so it formed the property of Anatole. Princess Mathilde's mother was Emperor Nicholas I of Russia's first cousin, and the emperor supported Mathilde in her clashes with her spouse, a Russian subject. As consequence, Anatole chose to live much of his remaining life outside Russia. The terms of the separation announced by the Tribunal in Petersburg forced Anatole to pay annual alimony of 200,000 French francs. Anatole vigorously pursued the return of his property, which led Mathilde and her strong circle of literary friends to mount highly personal and unfair counter-attacks using the public media. In the end, Anatole's heirs never recovered his property since Mathilde's last will was altered towards the end of her life.

Portret Émile de Nieuwerkerke van Mathilde Bonaparte (1856/7)


Princess Mathilde lived in a mansion in Paris, where she was a prominent member of the new aristocracy during and after the Second French Empire as a hostess to men of arts and letters as a salon holder. She disliked etiquette, but welcomed her visitors, according to Abel Hermant, with an extreme refinement of snobbery and politeness.

At the fall of the monarchy in 1870, she lived in Belgium for a while, but soon returned to Paris. Throughout her time in France, she maintained ties with the imperial court in Saint Petersburg, her maternal cousins. In 1873, following the death of Prince Demidoff in 1870, she married the artist and poet Claudius Marcel Popelin (1825–1892). She was the only member of the Bonaparte family to stay in France after May 1886, when the French Republic expelled the princes of the former ruling dynasties. In 1896, she was invited to a ceremony at Invalides par Félix Faure at a visit of Emperor Nicholas II Russia and his wife Empress Alexandra.
She died in Paris in 1904, aged 83.

Mathilde Bonaparte: I'd be selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio."

 

Mathilde Laetitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte, Princesse Française (27 May 1820 – 2 January 1904), was a French princess and Salon holder. She was a daughter of Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharina of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg.

Princess Mathilde lived in a mansion in Paris, where she was a prominent member of the new aristocracy during and after the Second French Empire as a hostess to men of arts and letters as a salon holder. She disliked etiquette, but welcomed her visitors, according to Abel Hermant, with an extreme refinement of snobbery and politeness. Théophile Gautier was employed as her librarian in 1868. Referring to her uncle, Emperor Napoleon I, she once told Marcel Proust: "If it weren't for him, I'd be selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio." wiki/Mathilde_Bonaparte

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Prinses Mathilde (1820-1904), een nicht van keizer Napoleon III, was enorm aangedaan door het ter ziele gaan van de Bonapartedynastie. Haar vader huwelijkte haar in 1840 uit aan een Russische prins, Anatole Demidov de San Donato, maar dit huwelijk maakte haar niet gelukkig. Nadat ze officieel gescheiden was, vestigde zij zich in Parijs waar ze in 1852 deelnam aan een coup die een machtsherstel van de familie Bonaparte beoogde, en derhalve  tot doel had Napoleon III opnieuw op de Franse troon te krijgen. De prins-president Napoleon III maakt het Elysée-paleis tot zijn officiële residentie en organiseert er weelderige recepties die de gloriedagen van het koninklijk hof doen herleven. In deze periode beleeft ook prinses Mathilde haar gloriedagen. Zij, die bekend staat als "Notre Dame des Beaux-Arts" en als "Second lady van Frankrijk" -keizerin Eugénie is namelijk de first lady- zal vanaf 1853 het artistieke leven beheersen, daarbij genietend van de financiële welstand die haar neef  haar garandeert en waarmee ze haar juwelencollectie kan spekken. In haar eigen herenhuis aan de rue de Courcelles en in haar kasteel in Saint-Gratien omringt zij zich met kunstenaars en vrienden, waaronder Gustave Flaubert en Marcel Proust. Na haar dood laat zij haar neven een schitterende juwelencollectie na, waaronder dit prachtige stuk.

 Het verwerven van nieuwe rijkdom bood bepaalde families de kans om zichzelf snel te verrijken en zich de Europese levensstijl aan te meten. De families Dupont de Nemours, Gould en Vanderbilt, de immens rijke erfgenamen van deze financiële imperia, zullen zich in de Europese samenlevingen integreren en banden met de oude Europese adel smeden. In 1895 huwelijkt Alva Vanderbilt zijn dochter Consuelo in Londen uit aan de hertog van Marlborough. In datzelfde jaar trouwt Anna Gould, de rijkste erfgename van Amerika, met Boni de Castellane. Volgens de gravin van Clermont-Tonnerre was dit één van de meest 'onnatuurlijke' verbintenissen denkbaar. diamonddivas

 

        Inside Princesse Mathilde's mansion, rue de Courcelles (until 1857)
 

 

La Salle à manger de la princesse Mathilde, rue de Courcelles, Sébastien Charles Giraud RMN / Jean-Gilles Berizzi

 

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