Eugénie: not the average empress

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Empress Eugénie and the Arts; Politics and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Alison McQueen

The Empress Eugénie was not the average consort;  citing Anne of Austria, Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth I as her exemplars,  she set out to make a difference.

Desmond Seward’s Eugénie: The Empress and her Empire (2004) has already shown why Eugénie (1826–1920) might be called a feminist.  Her physical boldness and independence do have a bearing on her behaviour as Empress. Now, access to archives and other primary sources has made it possible for the first time for Alison McQueen to recreate as accurately as possible Eugénie’s collection and her preferences (mostly for French 19th-century academic art from the Salon), her sharp eye for the latest fashion (not only for her famous wardrobe) and patronage of artists who would convey the right image (Winterhalter being the outstanding example).  Her interest in recreating the ancien régime in the palaces of Fontainebleau, Compiégne, St. Cloud and the less happy Tuileries, amounted to a genius for making the Second Empire a time of notable elegance and renown.

Eugénie also had a charitable side .  A Spaniard by birth, is likely that her upbringing and her experience in Madrid during the Carlist wars (a series of civil wars, 1833–76) made her wary of civil unrest, and so her active interest in health, education and social justice is understandable.    Her very personal involvement in the various schemes was unusual and unprecedented in its extent.   It was a measure of Eugénie’s intelligence and perfectionist nature that she pressed for fresh water, sewers, central heating and mechanical washing machines when she planned the Fondation Eugéne Napoléon.  It cost far more than the necklace she had refused from the City of Paris, choosing instead to use the wedding gift to build this important landmark in the education of women. 

She was supported by a husband who may have been a womanizer, but who was also conscious of the need for social reform rather than absolute rule.  He made her regent on occasions when he was abroad (even allowing her to lead bi-weekly meetings with the Council of Ministers when he was at the thermal baths at Plombières).   She was acting as regent when the Emperor left for the front in 1870 to confront the Prussians, never to return to France.

Eugénie took the advice of others when she was building her collection.  Amongst them was the knowledgeable Comte de Nieuwerkerke (some of whose formidable collection was purchased by Sir Richard Wallace). Yet McQueen persuades us that the Empress developed a taste of her own and bought in an independent and influential fashion which echoes her character.  She was actively involved in the Exposition Universelle of 1855, for instance.  Her collection as so far identified was probably about half the size of that of her husband.

From 1870 the Empress lived  in exile – a widow for nearly 50 years, from 1873, who suffered the death of her only child, the Prince Imperial, in South Africa only a short time after the loss of her husband.  She lived first in England and then in Spain until her death in 1920.   The last chapter of the book explores her determined efforts to have property and possessions returned to her from France, and the construction of a memorial to her husband and son, first in Chislehurst, Kent and then more substantially at St Michael’s Abbey,  Farnborough, Hampshire.   The satirical, post-Empire attacks on her in France were cruel, but no more unkind than other such caricatures. McQueen finds those focused on Eugénie especially offensive.  But, like Marie Antoinette, she was a foreigner, and to the French that was a constant fault with no remedy. She was the wife of a Bonaparte, with a tenuous claim to power – which in due course he lost, and her devotion to the former queen included an awareness of the dangers of power in France.

McQueen’s mission and accomplishment in this assiduously researched book is to reconstruct Empress Eugénie’s position as private collector and public patron during the 18 years of the Second Empire in which she reigned beside her husband.   McQueen has taken the subject and shaken it hard  and interestingly, to reveal new truths about Empress Eugénie; and her book is a valuable contribution to the bookshelf. To those new to the subject, perhaps a broader review or biography would be better read first.  This publication is rather expensive for the individual.

The book has an acknowledged feminist bias, and thus tends to ride over European traditions of the nature of a consort; I also find writing that includes such constructions as ‘…when approaching the chapel, the semantics of their visual experience was coded as a nuanced geographic displacement’ hard to untangle, although on the whole the text is fortunately relatively straightforward.

Empress Eugénie and the Arts; Politics and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century by Alison McQueen is published by Ashgate Publishing, 2011. 368 pp., 12 colour plates/145 mono illus £70.oo (£63 online). ISBN 978-1-4094-0585-6