Pauel Barras Revolutionary tea towel

Paul Barras Tea Towel

Cotton-Linen - 95% cotton 5% linen
$32.95
$32.95
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Pauel Barras Revolutionary tea towel
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  • Pauel Barras Revolutionary tea towel
  • Paul Barras Tea Towel
  • Pauel Barras Revolutionary tea towel
  • Paul Barras Tea Towel
Paul Barras Tea Towel

Paul Barras Tea Towel

$32.95
$32.95
Description

Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras, survived the Terror, helped bring it to an end at Thermidor, and went on to become the most powerful of the five Directors who governed France between 1795 and 1799. He introduced Napoleon Bonaparte to Joséphine de Beauharnais. He was present at nearly every pivotal moment of the Revolutionary decade and outlived most of the men who shared those moments with him. His portrait belongs in any serious French interior, including the kitchen.

The image is printed at high definition onto quality cotton at 27.6″ × 19.7″, with the full tonal range of the original portrait preserved: the richness of the period dress, the directness of the gaze, the particular atmosphere of French academic painting at its most politically charged. This is a towel that earns its place on a hook. It looks well folded over an oven rail, draped across a sink edge, or simply hanging where it can be seen. The history it carries is not incidental. It is the point.

Part of La Révolution. Barras entered the Revolution as a minor aristocrat and emerged from it as its most durable survivor — a Jacobin who voted for the execution of Louis XVI, then organized the Thermidorian coup that ended Robespierre’s reign. His contemporaries variously despised and depended on him. History has not been entirely kind to him, which makes him considerably more interesting than most of his era’s official heroes.
A Note from Jeff

I have been interested in Barras for a long time, partly because he is the kind of figure who disappears in the standard telling of the Revolution and partly because the period he presided over — the Directory — is consistently underrated as a subject. The Thermidorian reaction and the years that followed it are where the Revolution settled into something recognizable as a modern political culture: venal, pragmatic, exhausted, and still capable of producing remarkable things. Barras is the face of that period, which is not entirely a compliment, but it is an accurate one.

Putting his portrait on a tea towel is, I freely admit, an eccentric choice. It is also, I think, exactly right. The French have always understood that the kitchen deserves the same visual attention as any other room. Barras, who understood the value of appearances better than almost anyone of his era, would probably approve.
Tea Towel Fabric