Full Name: Jourdain, Margaret
Gender: female
Date Born: unknown
Date Died: 1951
Place Born: Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England, UK
Place Died: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): decorative art (art genre), decorative arts (discipline), eighteenth century (dates CE), English (culture or style), and furniture
Overview
Scholar of eighteenth-century English furniture and decorative arts. Jourdain was the daughter of an impoverished cleric, Reverend Francis Jourdain of Ashburne, Derbyshire. She and her sister, Eleanor, were required to be independent and on their own early in life. Eleanor became principal of a girl’s school and then St. Hugh’s College, Oxford. Margaret supported herself throughout her life by writing on art. In 1908, Jourdain came to the rescue of a former pupil of her sister’s boarding school, Joan Evans. Jourdain urged Evans to bury the girl’s grief and lack of self-confidence by writing a history of English jewelry, which not only built the woman’s self esteem, but launched Evans on a career as a private art historian. Jourdain appears to have written the text for The Decoration and Furniture of English Mansions During the Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries, 1909, ostensibly by Francis Henry Lenygon (1877-1943). Jourdain began writing articles for Country Life, Apollo and the Burlington Magazine on decorative arts in the 1920s. Her first book under her own name, English Decoration and Furniture of the Later XVIIIth Century (1760-1820), appeared in 1922. She produced other volumes in the series. A close professional association developed between her and Victoria and Albert curator John Charles Rogers. When Margaret’s estranged sister, Eleanor, died and left some symbolic possessions to Evans, Margaret took personal offense and never spoke with Evans again. A year before her death she both revised Roger’s 1923 book, English Furniture and co-published with British Museum curator R. Soame Jenyns (1904-1976) Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century. She died after a brief illness at her home. Jourdain was not formally trained in art history. Her works show a keen attention to detail. Jourdain’s furniture books were some of the first to describe construction methods of eighteenth-century makers.
Selected Bibliography
[ghostwriter for] Lenygon, Francis Henry. The Decoration and Furniture of English Mansions During the Seventeenth & Eighteenth Centuries. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1909; English Decoration & Furniture of the XVIth-XIXth Centuries (series) [Library of Decorative Art]: English Decoration and Furniture of the Later XVIIIth Century (1760-1820): an Account of its Development and Characteristic Forms. London: B. T. Batsford, 1922; English Decoration and Furniture of the Early Renaissance (1500-1650): an Account of its Development and Characteristic Forms. London: B. T. Batsford, 1924; and Edwards, Ralph. Georgian Cabinet-makers. London: Country Life Limited, 1944; The Work of William Kent, Artist, Painter, Designer and Landscape Gardener. London: Country Life, 1948; (revised) Rogers, John Charles. English Furniture. London: Country Life, 1950; and Jenyns, R. Soame. Chinese Export Art in the Eighteenth Century. London: Country Life, 1950.
Sources
Coldstream, Nicola. “Joan Evans (1893-1977): Art Historian and Antiquary.” in, Chance, Jane, ed. Women Medievalists in the Academy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. 402-404; [obituaries:] Ralph Edwards. “Margaret Jourdain.” Burlington Magazine 93, no. 580 (July 1951): 239; “Miss M. Jourdain.” Times (London) April 7, 1951, p. 8; “Margaret Jourdain.” Apollo 53 (May 1951): 143.