5 - Royalists versus Vandals, and the Cult of the Old Regime (c.1860–1880)

Summary

The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune 1870-71 exercised a dramatic impact on the rhetoric around private collecting, this chapter suggests. It examines why conservative collectors such as baron Jérôme Pichon felt that they were personally under attack as the city was shelled and burned during the année terrible, and suggests that heritage became intensely politicised, as radicals were blamed for repeating the vandalism previously seen in the Revolution of 1789. The chapter emphasis the emergence of a belligerent branch of art history written by Pichon’s associations- like Louis Courajod and baron Charles Davillier- and stresses that conservative collectors took their vision of the past into the public sphere through the vibrant culture of temporary exhibitions which emerged under the Second Empire. Through the figure of baron Léopold Double, it explores the cult of the old regime created by royalists but also argues that this cult proved very unstable in the new political and economic circumstances of the 1880s.