A Parisian Boudoir in London: The South Kensington Museum Sérilly Room

Abstract

In 1869, the South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, purchased the panelling, painted ceiling, windows and chimneypiece from an eighteenth-century Parisian room created in 1778 for the Marquise de Sérilly. This boudoir, as it was then called, was exhibited furnished at least from December 1869 and can thus be considered as one of the first period rooms ever to be installed in a museum. The first part of this article examines what made the Sérilly room distinct in comparison to other similar types of display and to the other objects exhibited in the galleries. It demonstrates that the period room can be considered a 'museum-made' object and underlines the specificity of the experience it offered to nineteenth-century visitors. The second part focuses on the significations of this singular object within the context of a Victorian institution with pedagogical ambitions. It shows how the transformation of this former domestic interior into a period room impacted its original status and meanings in a way that is revealing the museum's moralizing ambitions. In so doing, it argues that the Sérilly room offered the visitors a unique opportunity for self-definition by inviting them to construct themselves as morally superior subjects.