The Revolution put an almost complete stop to the production of articles of luxury. Deprived of commissions from the royal family and the aristocracy, many artists were reduced to complete inactivity and poverty; others went abroad to seek new employers elsewhere and the protection France no longer accorded to skill and experience. The destruction or dispersion of the fine examples of art-work produced under the monarchy still further aggravated the situation. It is true that some few members of the government made laudable efforts to have the masterpieces which were taken from the churches and palaces preserved as the most valuable heirlooms of the nation. It was for this reason that at the public sale of the effects of Madame du Barry two pieces of furniture were kept back; and Alexandre Lenoir filled the Musee des Petits August ins with treasures, but nothing could long prevail against the need of money to raise armies with which to resist the European coalition. It was an ominous sign of the times when a large number of valuable works of art passed into foreign possession under pretext of their being exchanged for arms and ammunition without any profit accruing to the Republic.

Napoleon found but a small group of decorators who had come safely through the terrible times of the Revolution, most of whom, though they had not lost the skill of brilliant days gone by, had ceased to turn to nature for inspiration, surrounded as they were by an artificial society, which aped the manners of the ancient Romans and judged art entirely by the standard of the painter David. Those who tried to remain faithful to the traditions of their youth died, as did Riesener, in obscurity. The rest had to adapt themselves to the taste of the new Caesar, who cared nought for the ideal or the symbolic, but only for matter-of-fact, historical records. Prud'hon laid aside his facile brush to make feeble designs for furniture, and to keep Thomire supplied with motives for reproduction in bronze. The brothers Jacob, who had learnt cabinet-making from their father under Louis X VI., and had worked for the Convention in 1793, now gave themselves up to the manufacture of massive mahogany furniture, that Thomire decorated with slim antique gods and goddesses, or with palm- and laurel-leaves. The younger of the brothers retired in 1804, leaving Jacob Desmalter to inundate France and Europe with productions which, however perfect from a technical point of view, were altogether unpleasing and unsatisfactory as works of art.

Nearly all the drawings for this furniture were supplied by the architect Percier and his inseparable collaborator Fontaine. Many fine works bear witness to the talent and refined taste of these two masters, leaving no doubt that they did violence to their own convictions in order to meet the requirements of a public and a ruler whose taste was perverted in an extraordinary manner by the revolution of ideas that had recently taken place. There is no doubt that in more peaceful times, under a prince less economical in his personal luxuries, they would have been able to rescue French furniture from sinking below the level of that produced by Germans in the best time of the monarchy; indeed, one may even imagine that their own predilection for the best features of the Renaissance might have led to a healthy and essentially French revival, for there was a tendency amongst the general public to revert to the old national sources of inspiration. This is proved by the so-called Romantic, that is to say, the Gothic, movement which took place soon after the fall of Napoleon, but which, so far at least as decorative art was concerned, did not result in a style with any vitality, chiefly because of the increasing incapacity of the craftsmen, who had now sunk to the position of mere workmen, and also because of the general want of taste amongst a people whose artistic education had been completely neglected for a quarter of a century.

France still retains the traditions - strangely degenerate and unprogressive, it is true - of the furniture designed in the Louis XIV. period. It is impossible to predict when a decisive movement will take place which will reform, from an artistic point of view, the decoration of the home. It is, however, certain that such a movement will arise, for history teaches us that a renaissance invariablv follows a decadence, but she teaches us also that great reactions only come about under the inspiration of some grand idea dominating the national spirit, combined with a general conjunction of all forms of talent. This is a lesson all might well take to heart.