Lot Essay
Véry's was the most famous restaurant in Paris after the French Revolution. Nixon had taken advantage of the brief Peace of Amiens to visit Paris and make this drawing. There is a covert reference to the war with France, which was to continue for more than ten years, in the confrontation between the poodle and the bulldog in the foreground. A bucolic Englishman is shown appealing for help with the unfamiliar menu, his appearance in great contrast to the ultra-fashionable French customers, many of whom are wearing large hoop earrings.
There were two Véry brothers, of peasant origin from Lorraine, one with an establishment founded in 1790 occupying three arcades in the new commercial development within the Palais Royale next door to the present Grand Véfour and the other with magnificent premises in the Tuileries on the Terrace des Feuillants. This very desirable latter position was owed, it was rumoured, to Maréchal Duroc's admiration for Mme Véry. In this view Mme Véry simpers bashfully behind the counter on the left; by 1814, when she was portrayed by Rowlandson in the establishment at the Palais Royale (drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, engraved 1814).
Véry's salon-like room with sculptures and antique vases on tripods, the walls surrounded with mirrors and mahogany panelling, was the first restaurant to be purpose-built. Shortly before the construction of the Rue de Rivoli swept away this part of the Tuileries, Grimod de La Reynière described it 'Alas this splendid monument erected by M Véry to the glory of good cheer is soon to disappear. This superb restaurant where the sparkle of its mirrors, its crystal, its porcelain, the wealth of its bronzes and sumptuousness of its silverware, etc., which rival the merits of its cellar and its kitchen, made for an ensemble which amounted to the most beautiful Temple which has ever been mounted to the God Comus in any of the four corners of the earth,' see Giles MacDonough, A Palate in Revolution, London, 1987, p.81.
The Véry brothers and other caterers like Boulanger (his establishment was founded in 1765), Beauvilliers (former chef to the Comte de Provence) and Méot (former chef to the Duc d'Orléans), who emerged in the last years of the ancien régime, were proprietors of the first restaurants in the modern sense. These superseded the earlier table d'hote, where customers ate whatever was provided at a communal table, and in its place invented the carte, a long menu with many choices. Nixon has itemised some of the dishes offered by Véry: on the sheet on the floor at the right there is riz á la Turque, matelotte d'anguille, poulette Normand with champagne, Bordeaux and Margaux to drink. The carte held by the customer at the left-hand table offers potage au riz, salade de volaille, riz de veau, poularde pique a la tartare and (with a touch of macabre humour) foi (sic) de chat.
The Revolution hastened the rise of this type of eating house when a large new public was drawn from among the nouveau riche revolutionaries, and the chefs and other staff were recruited from the households of the condemned and exiled aristocracy. Baedeker is somewhat critical of the types who frequented the eating places in the Palais Royale describing them as haunts of 'democrats and malcontents'
There were two Véry brothers, of peasant origin from Lorraine, one with an establishment founded in 1790 occupying three arcades in the new commercial development within the Palais Royale next door to the present Grand Véfour and the other with magnificent premises in the Tuileries on the Terrace des Feuillants. This very desirable latter position was owed, it was rumoured, to Maréchal Duroc's admiration for Mme Véry. In this view Mme Véry simpers bashfully behind the counter on the left; by 1814, when she was portrayed by Rowlandson in the establishment at the Palais Royale (drawing in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, engraved 1814).
Véry's salon-like room with sculptures and antique vases on tripods, the walls surrounded with mirrors and mahogany panelling, was the first restaurant to be purpose-built. Shortly before the construction of the Rue de Rivoli swept away this part of the Tuileries, Grimod de La Reynière described it 'Alas this splendid monument erected by M Véry to the glory of good cheer is soon to disappear. This superb restaurant where the sparkle of its mirrors, its crystal, its porcelain, the wealth of its bronzes and sumptuousness of its silverware, etc., which rival the merits of its cellar and its kitchen, made for an ensemble which amounted to the most beautiful Temple which has ever been mounted to the God Comus in any of the four corners of the earth,' see Giles MacDonough, A Palate in Revolution, London, 1987, p.81.
The Véry brothers and other caterers like Boulanger (his establishment was founded in 1765), Beauvilliers (former chef to the Comte de Provence) and Méot (former chef to the Duc d'Orléans), who emerged in the last years of the ancien régime, were proprietors of the first restaurants in the modern sense. These superseded the earlier table d'hote, where customers ate whatever was provided at a communal table, and in its place invented the carte, a long menu with many choices. Nixon has itemised some of the dishes offered by Véry: on the sheet on the floor at the right there is riz á la Turque, matelotte d'anguille, poulette Normand with champagne, Bordeaux and Margaux to drink. The carte held by the customer at the left-hand table offers potage au riz, salade de volaille, riz de veau, poularde pique a la tartare and (with a touch of macabre humour) foi (sic) de chat.
The Revolution hastened the rise of this type of eating house when a large new public was drawn from among the nouveau riche revolutionaries, and the chefs and other staff were recruited from the households of the condemned and exiled aristocracy. Baedeker is somewhat critical of the types who frequented the eating places in the Palais Royale describing them as haunts of 'democrats and malcontents'