After the American Revolution, an increasing number of American diplomats, businessmen, students, artists, and tourists found themselves in Paris mixing with the upper echelons of French society. It was a heady time, ripe with opportunities for forging new relationships and identities. Here, in 1784, a young Nabby Adams observed that Americans would do well to adopt “a little French ease” as an antidote to the stiffness and reserve that seemed to mar their social circles back home. What did she mean? This talk answers that question by exploring extant correspondence and household furnishings. Focusing on the acquisitions and behaviors of the prominent Americans who spent time in Paris during the 1780s, we will deepen our understanding of the role of French decorative arts in both sociability and diplomacy and discover why these objects appealed to the founders of the American republic.

Amy Hudson Henderson is an independent scholar and museum consultant based in Washington, D.C. With a focus on the early United States, her writing and lectures seek to highlight the political resonance of domestic material culture and how women in the late eighteenth century were integral partners in designing and decorating their homes. She has served as a curatorial consultant, research associate, and guest lecturer at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, James Madison’s Montpelier, George Mason’s Gunston Hall, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Her publications include “French & Fashionable: The Search for George and Martha Washingtons’ Presidential Furniture,” American Furniture (2019), and “A Family Affair: The Design and Decoration of 321 South Fourth Street, Philadelphia,” in Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America 1700-1830, edited by John Styles and Amanda Vickery (New Haven: Published for Yale Center for British Art and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2006). She is currently working on her book manuscript, Furnishing the Republic: Material Culture, Gender, and Politics in the Nation’s Capital, 1789-1800 (under contract, Oxford University Press). Henderson holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Delaware and a B.A. from Grinnell College.