It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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Réjouissances à l’annonce de l’abolition de l’esclavage. 30 pluviôse an II / 18 février 1794.
The party organised by the Paris Commune to celebrate the abolition of slavery reunites a great number of Sans Culottes in front of the temple de la Raison inside Notre Dame. To galvanise citizens was extremely important during that winter of An II because the Revolution had to fight a war, a civil war and problems concerning the Parisians’ subsistance.
Fight against slavery isn’t part of a special politic of the Convention. At best the deputies tried to oppose Black people against the English invading the colonies. In the gravure, the Revolutionars and the Blacks are depicted as equals, both fighting against oppression: it is done to celebrate the Convention’s glory trough the abolition of slavery.
Nine of Hearts, France c. 1752-1826 (via The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Plat de la manufacture Desmoutiers (18è).
Saint Amand is known for its faience, produced, in the past, by ancient faience factories who was used the bianco sopra bianco technical.
- 1705 Nicolas Desmoutier built a faience factory, managed by himself and by the family Dorez, descendants of Bartélémy a ceramist from Lille, in the next place. The faience factory equipment was sold to Bécart in 1775, who has been installed this firm in Valenciennes.
- 1718, the Fauquez family built their faience factory. They were natives of Tournai in Belgium. The roads, waterways and forests were favourable for transporting the products, so they set up their firm in Saint Amand. But the Treaty of Utrecht, which set the frontier between Tournai and Saint Amand forbade the transport of faience across the border. The faience was hidden in kegsand hay to cross the frontier. The Fauquez’s factory was closed in 1794.
M. LEVETT ET MLLE HELENE GLAVANY EN COSTUME TURC par Jean Etienne Liotard
The piece of work was probably painted in Istanbul, as for other works of Liotard. A small drawing of a Turkish house on the back of the painting seems to confirm the hypothesis. Ms Levet in his Turkish costume is drawn in a similar way on a sheet of paper in the Victoria and Albert Museul of London. Another portait of Ms. Levet in another attitude is located at the Louvres.
VUE DE LA NOUVELLE CAYENNE. (titre inscrit, en caractères inversés) ; Le Débarquement des François pour l’établissement de la nouvelle colonie, / dans le port de la nouvelle Cayenne ou la France Equinoxiale. (titre inscrit)
In 1763, France lost the Seven Years War and a large part of its territories in North America. The same year the Kourou expedition is launched. It plans to become a colony as populated as New York and devoid of slavey.
As it aimed at being a political revenge, it became a source of gravures and painting. But those images aren’t realistic: the clothers aren’t really the one worn in the colonied as they are not adapted to the climate. There’s no river as the European depicted them, and the ships couldn’t navigate on them.
Première page du Traité de Paris de 1763 - Archives du ministère français des Affaires étrangères
The Treaty of Paris, also known as the Peace of Paris and the Treaty of 1763, was signed on 10 February 1763 by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal in agreement, after Britain’s victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years’ War.
The signing of the treaty formally ended the Seven Years’ War, otherwise known as the French and Indian War in the North American theatre, which marked the beginning of an era of British dominance outside Europe.
France ceded almost all of its territory in mainland North America, but retained fishing rights off Newfoundland and the two small islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, where it could dry that fish. In turn France gained the return of its sugar colony, Guadeloupe, which it considered more valuable than Canada.
L’opéra comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called theThéâtre-Italien up to about 1793, when it again became most commonly known as the Opéra-Comique. Today the company’s official name is Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique, and its theatre, with a capacity of around 1,248 seats, sometimes referred to as the Salle Favart (the third on this site), is located in Place Boïeldieu, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier, one of the theatres of the Paris Opéra. The musicians and others associated with the Opéra-Comique have made important contributions to operatic history and tradition in France, and to French opera. Its current mission is to reconnect with its history, and discover its unique repertoire, to ensure production and dissemination of operas for the wider public.
Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, manuscrits, Casimir Barjavel, Diogène, Comtadine, Judaïca, rouleau d’Esther, Torah,
The Bibliothèque Inguimbertine is a scholarly library located in Carpentras. It was established by Joseph-Dominique d’Inguimbert, the Bishop of Carpentras from 1735 to 1754. It has been called “the oldest of our municipal libraries” by current chief librarian Jean-François Delmas. It currently contains about 220,000 books.
Psalmanazer’s book
George Psalmanazar (1679? – 3 May 1763) claimed to be the first Formosan to visit Europe. For some years he convinced many in Britain, but was later revealed to be an impostor. He later became a theological essayist and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and other noted figures of 18th-century literary London.
Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, he is believed to have been born in southern France, perhaps in Languedocor Provence, to Catholic parents sometime between 1679 and 1684
Ile Bouvet
The island was discovered on 1 January 1739 by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, commander of the French ships Aigle and Marie. This was the first time that land had been spotted south of the 50th parallel south. Bouvet, who was searching for a presumed large southern continent, spotted the island through the fog and named the cape he saw Cap de la Circoncision. He was not able to land and did not circumnavigate his discovery, thus not clarifying if it was an island or part of a continent but his plotting of its position was inaccurate forcing several expeditions to fail to find the island again.
The first Norvegia expedition landed on the island in 1927 and claimed it for Norway.
