Design for a room with double doors decorated with garlands of fruit and flowers, scrolls, and lattice work
Medium
pen and ink and watercolor on tracing paper; mounted on heavy wove paper
Dimensions
Overall: 9 1/2 x 12 5/16 in. (24.2 x 31.2 cm) image: 5 x 9 5/16 in. (12.7 x 23.7 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Dodge Fund, 1967
Accession Number
67.827.259
Tags
Art Historical Context
This exquisite design drawing by French architects Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise and Eugène-Pierre Gourdet captures the opulent interior tastes of 19th-century Europe. Created between 1830 and 1897, it depicts a pair of grand double doors for a room adorned with lush garlands of fruit and flowers, intricate scrolls, and delicate lattice work. Such motifs evoke the lavish decorative arts of the Second Empire and early Third Republic periods, blending neoclassical elegance with playful abundance. Rendered in pen and ink with watercolor on translucent tracing paper—then mounted on sturdy wove pa...
About the Artist
Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise|Eugène-Pierre Gourdet · 1897–1897
Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise, born Jules Lachaise on September 2, 1836, in Paris, emerged as a prominent French painter and draughtsman specializing in lavish interior decorations during the Second Empire and beyond. Little is known about his early life and formal training, though he married Berthe Gourdet in 1866, forging a close professional partnership with her brother, the decorator Eugène-Pi...