DeLORME, Eleanor P. 1922-

PERSONAL:

Born October 8, 1922; daughter of O. L. (an owner of a real estate/insurance company) and Eleanor (a teacher; maiden name, Horton) Pearson; married Thomas L. DeLorme (a surgeon and faculty member); children: Thomas L., Charles Pearson, R. Stuart. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Wellesley College, B.A. (Durant Scholar), 1978; Harvard University, M.A., 1980. Politics: Republican. Religion: Protestant. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, writing, travel, restoration of family properties in France, visiting museums, galleries, and private collections.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Jewett Art Center 357B, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481. E-mail—edelorme@wellesley.edu.

CAREER:

Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, began as lecturer, became senior lecturer in art, also adjunct curator for the Davis Museum, 1984—. Participant in lecture series at the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), Harvard University, and other institutions.

MEMBER:

International Napoleonic Society (fellow), Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Club of New York City.

WRITINGS:

Garden Pavilions and the Eighteenth-Century French Court, Antique Collectors' Club (Woodbridge, England), 1996.

Joséphine: Napoléon's Incomparable Empress, Henry N. Abrams Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Frequent contributor to art history journals and books.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Joséphine and the Arts of the French Empire, copiously illustrated book.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eleanor P. DeLorme is an educator and author specializing in art history. Her particular area of expertise is the history of the decorative arts in France, including gardens, the subject of her book Garden Pavilions and the Eighteenth-Century French Court. She has also contributed numerous journal articles on art history, and in 2002, Abrams published her biography of the French empress Joséphine.

Garden Pavilions and the Eighteenth-Century French Court offers extended commentary on the ornamental garden architecture prevalent in France in the era before the Revolution of 1789. Among the works studied in the volume are temples, grottoes, pavilions, and hunting lodges erected at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles, Louveciennes, and other noble sites. A final chapter in the study examines the influence of French garden architecture on similar buildings in the United States. Paula Frosch, writing in Library Journal, called the book "visually pleasing and elegantly written," and concluded that Garden Pavilions and the Eighteenth-Century French Court "should prove of interest to a wide variety of readers."

In her second book, DeLorme traces the life of Joséphine de Beauharnais, using such sources as the memoirs of her two children and her correspondence with Napoléon Bonaparte. Drawing on her background as a historian, DeLorme discusses Joséphine's important role as a patron of the arts during the age of Napoléon, collecting works and influencing standards of style and design. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Joséphine: Napoléon's Incomparable Empress a "sumptuously illustrated and charming volume."

DeLorme told CA: "My mother used to say 'If you can't be French, at least you could be a Virginian.' In any case, I was born with an aching nostalgia for France, and when I first set foot on French soil, around 1963, I could only repeat Napoléon's words when he returned from exile on Elba, 'Me Voici!' For I had finally come home.… It has been my privilege to study it 'sur place' under the tutelage of the finest French scholars and art historians. This has enabled me to bring that enchanted world to my Wellesley students, and to prepare them … for positions in great auction houses, as museum curators, teachers of art history in colleges, and above all, to be cultivated human beings in a world of increasing banality."