Mementoes of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette Garner Right Royal Results

Royal memorabilia of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette and little Louis XVII always fetch high prices, as these relics of a bygone age enjoy a real niche market.

January is an emotional month for French monarchy lovers, as it was on January 21, 1793 that Louis XVI was led to the scaffold. And, judging by the fine and ever-rising results obtained by royal memorabilia at auction, it is clear that nostalgic fans abound, and see these objects as a safe investment! As it happens, the Drouot 2024 auction season ended with the sale for €12,350 of a fragment of the tapestry embroidered in the Temple Prison by Marie-Antoinette and her sister-in-law, Madame Élisabeth (December 17, Coutau-Bégarie auction house). In this memorabilia niche market, the trio of the Romanovs, Elisabeth of Austria and Marie-Antoinette and her family command the highest bids and the most interest. “The more tragic a fate, the more fascinated people are,” says expert Cyril Boulay. In 2006, Sofia Coppola’s film, soberly titled Marie-Antoinette, helped to make the queen more human by focusing on the personal and emotional aspects of her life.

“The Austrian” is Now Loved
Though unpopular with her subjects, “the Austrian”, as she was nicknamed before she even reached France, has long been the queen of hearts at auction. In May 2020, Osenat sold for €43,750 a wooden leather-trimmed travel trunk that had belonged to her: one of three known models. The other two are now in the Château de Versailles. It is an object intimately connected with the queen, evoking the personality of a young woman who adored fashion. In 2018, the Fontainebleau auction house, well-known for its partiality to imperial sales, opened an auction room in Versailles, the city most symbolic of royalty. The director of the department, Jean-Christophe Chataigner, feels it was an obvious move. “Thanks to our Empire sales, we had a database of French and international historical memorabilia collectors,” he says. To avoid any ambiguity, he is keen to point out that “the buyers are not necessarily royalists. The latter follow sales with interest but do not often bid. However, all of them are passionate about the history of France and its heritage.” And true connoisseurs, to boot! There are far fewer mementoes of the royal family than those linked with Napoleon, “so there is a keen appetite, especially for memorabilia with a personal connection,” says Chataigner. On November 15 of the same year, in the same venue, one of Marie-Antoinette’s shoes, soberly trimmed with silk and kid leather, quadrupled its estimate at €43,750. On April 18, 2021, a copper wall fountain with her coat of arms on the reservoir — an object evoking The Queen’s Hamlet — fetched €46,250. On January 5, 2023, this time at Drouot (Pescheteau-Badin), two Sèvres soft paste egg cups belonging to the “pearl and barbel service”, ordered in July 1781 and delivered to the queen on January 2, 1782 (with truly miraculous speed) went for €33,655. The service originally contained 295 pieces. 75 of these were made over to the Petit Trianon through an acceptance in lieu; others turn up sporadically at auction. More recently at Drouot, on March 13, 2024, two half-bottle wine coolers fetched €21,252 and €19,320 respectively during a “Nobility and Royalty” sale staged by the Coutau-Bégarie auction house.

Words and Letters
In October 2019, the Châtivesle auction house presented in Reims (a city closely linked with the monarchy due to the coronations held there) a letter from the queen to Duc Jules de Polignac and his wife Gabrielle, her friend and ‘favorite’ and the governess of her children. The couple had managed to emigrate in the early days of the French Revolution. The year is 1790, and the queen, now in the Tuileries under house arrest, writes of her distress: “Assure her that my friendship for her will never change. I well know how much she feels for me in her heart, given the fresh misfortunes that overwhelm me, but I am strong, and will be able to hold up for the sake of my children and my friends.” The letter fetched €8,669. These letters, written after October 1789 and the forced departure from Versailles, are “very beautiful and poignant: they reveal the very depths of the writer’s soul,” says Jean-Christophe Chataignier. In the Coutau-Bégarie sale mentioned above, another memento of this devoted friendship, a round gold snuffbox with a portrait of the queen painted on ivory, garnered €9,360. The lovely duchess, who possessed the “most appealing and enduring spirit” according to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, died in Vienna on December 5, 1793, exactly 50 days after the queen. Cyril Boulay, who has worked for 20 years with Coutau-Bégarie and was the first to devote specialized sales to this memorabilia, shares these views. He talks enthusiastically about the magic of this market, where “an object is not valuable in itself but for the moment it represents.” He believes that with this type of purchase “the collector brings a little piece of history into their home.” One very telling figure is little Louis XVII, the ‘child martyr’ of the Temple. Few documents concerning him have survived; what have come down are mainly relics, fragments of clothing and locks of hair. On March 3, 2015, at Drouot, the expert proposed some of them, contained in an envelope and duly authenticated. They fetched €3,375, while €40,000 went to the waistcoat worn by the little prince during his captivity: all mementoes religiously preserved by the descendants of Vicomte Alcide-Hyacinthe du Bois de Beauchesne (1804-1873). At Versailles, under Osenat’s hammer on March 12, 2023, a very rare document made its appearance. Only three others of the same kind have been recorded to date: a page of writing, where the child practiced signing his name on five lines. This still clumsy script, certainly dating from the very start of the education of the young boy, who became Dauphin at his elder brother’s death on June 4, 1789, aroused much emotion at €17,500. But we now return to the mother of France’s children in a slightly lighter tone. The guitar she gave to the Marquise de la Rochelambert-Thévalles, her lady-in-waiting, garnered €78,000 on December, 2020 at Aguttes in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and her lute guitar, made especially in Paris in 1770 by her music teacher, the luthier Edmond Saunier (1730-1789), fetched a fine €169,000 on June 15, 2019 in Villefranche-sur-Saône with the Richard auction house. While collectors rush to buy mementoes of Her Majesty, the Château de Versailles misses no chance — when it deems it opportune — to bring the lady back to her domain. For example, on November 25, 2021 (Aguttes, Neuilly-sur-Seine), the institution preempted her portrait as the Dauphine of France. This was the auction debut of the painting, commissioned in 1772 by her mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, from Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (1725-1802). It went for €175,000, joining the sketch already owned by the Château. The CMN (national monuments center) acted likewise on June 15, 2021, on behalf of the Conciergerie, preempting at €6,500 the box in which Marie-Antoinette had kept her belongings just before her execution. A moving memory indeed.