The Salon Dore from the Hotel de Clermont

The Corcoran Gallery of Art acquired the Salon Dore, an eighteenth-century French room, from William A. Clark, a senator from Montana, in 1926 as part of a bequest that included European art and furniture. The Salon Dore originally came from the Hotel de Clermont, located at 69 rue de Varenne in the fashionable seventh arrondissement of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris. This paper examines the ornamental decor, the provenance, and the authenticity of the Salon Dore through a careful analysis of archival material, family inventories, personal interviews with curators, original photographs, and researched monographs by French scholars. Although recomposed by Senator Clark, the Salon Dore nonetheless illustrates the ideals of neo-classicism. Senator Clark succeeded in capturing an outstanding example of Louis XVI French interior architecture.