PERCIER & FONTAINE AND JOSEPHINE'S MALMAISON COMMISSION with Amanda Dunsmore

In April 1799 Josephine Bonaparte signed the deeds to acquire Malmaison, her famous château and estate outside Paris. Six months later, Napoleon returned from his Egyptian campaign to discover the considerable debt now owing on Josephine’s rash purchase. Enchanted nevertheless, he paid it and quickly set about engaging two of the most fashionable young architects to remodel the ground floor interiors, creating some of the most sumptuous decorative schemes of the early Empire Period.

Amanda Dunsmore is Curator, International Decorative Arts & Antiquities at the National Gallery of Victoria. She has a background in Egyptology but now works largely in the field of decorative arts. Her research interests include 17th and 18th century English pottery, 18th century Neo-classicism and early 20th century design and the rise of modernism.

The dining room at Malmaison