Enfilade

François-Joseph Bélanger, Château de Bagatelle, 1777, Bois de Boulogne, Paris.

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This upcoming talk is the final installment of the Attingham Trust Spring Lecture Series. Annabel Westman—after more than 40 years of being involved with Attingham—recently announced that she is retiring from her position as executive director, to be succeeded by Helen Jacobsen. (You’re able to stage a virtual passing of the baton by watching a recording of Annabel’s March 8 talk for the lecture series— “What tone is salmon-coloured? Interpreting documentation in historic textile furnishing schemes” —just before you tune in for Helen’s.)

Helen Jacobsen, The Château of Bagatelle: The Story of a Remarkable House and Its Collections
Online, Wednesday, 28 April 2021, 6pm (BST)

Helen Jacobsen, the Director of the Attingham French Eighteenth-Century Studies course, looks at the absorbing story of the Château of Bagatelle, the former hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne that was transformed into a jewel of French neoclassicism as the result of a bet between Marie-Antoinette and her brother-in-law, the Comte d’Artois. Much more than a plaything, Bagatelle survived the Revolution and became the much-loved home of two more of the greatest patrons of French art, the 4th Marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace. Helen, who is also the Curator of French 18th-century decorative art at the Wallace Collection, will chart the life of the house under all three owners, and investigate the continuing connections between Bagatelle and Hertford House.