Paris Art Market Buzz

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19 November 2009

By columnist Paul Paradis, Art Historian, Specialist Consultant in French Furniture and Decorative Arts.

A Porcelain Follie

The little soft-paste leopard/tiger from Chantilly apparently created a lot of energy in the sale room where it attained the staggering price of €80 000, more than double the high estimate of €35 000.   I have often thought that collectors of porcelain are passionate bordering on the fanatical, and the rarity of this little gem certainly fueled the ardor of their flames.  It will be interesting to find out the identity of the buyer.  Another quirky piece from Chantilly, a seated Buddha-like figure (curiously referred to as a pagode in 18^th century France) reached a final price of €55 000.   Yet another example of the fusion of Asian cultures through European eyes since according to one expert, the depiction of a wise man derives from ancient Chinese Taoism, while the décor of the figure is Korean but depicted in the Japanese manner.  Confused?   I certainly am.

Figure of a seated pagode, Chantilly 1735-1740, sold for €55 000 (Photo Mathias - Baron Ribeyre & Associés, Farrando Lemoine)

 

Unearthed Renaissance Treasures

Last week the art market in Paris was electrified by two prestigious back to back sales at Sotheby’s, one of European silver and objets de vertu (or as my friend Beth says, “small gorgeous things”) and the second, important European furniture and sculpture.  The press was abuzz the previous week concerning a somewhat controversial offer of the so-called trésor de Pouilly-sur-Meuse.  According to the Journal des Arts, an inhabitant of the tiny village of 200 in the Lorraine region was clearing his yard of weeds with the help of a friend in November 2006.  While digging a new drainage trench, the shovel of one of the laborers hit something quite hard and unexpected.  Upon inspection, they discovered two cornerstones hiding several chased and gilt boxes.  They brought the boxes to the mayor, who in turn showed them to the conservator of the regional museum at Bar-le-Duc.  The latter then contacted the regional authority responsible for cultural affairs (the DRAC) who reports to the national government. 

Indeed, the discovery was of national and international importance: the men had uncovered the most important group of non-religious silver discovered in France since 1953.  The pieces date from 1480 to 1570, making them an extreme rarity.  The treasure survived wars and invasions of England in the 15^th century as well as religious strife which virtually tore the country apart in the 16^th century.  More amazingly, in the safety of its underground niche, the treasure escaped the successive édits somptuaires declared by Louis XIV in 1689 and 1709 which required the meltdown of all silver (tragically, including even his own silver furniture in Versailles) in order to fill the royal coffers and finance the wars with the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession respectively.  Consequently, silver items bearing hallmarks prior to this period are extremely rare in France and some of the best examples remain those conserved in foreign collections.

The treasure contains 31 pieces, the most important of which is a ewer bearing a partly legible Parisian maker’s mark datable to 1507.   According to the in-house silver expert, the ewer is the earliest known example from Paris proper, since the one known older example from the treasure of Coëffort bears a provincial hallmark.  The gadrooned sides and lid decorated with a chased gold medallion with (formerly) enameled flowers are characteristic of the sober elegance in the ornamental repertory of silversmiths of the Renaissance.    

 
French parcel-gilt silver covered ewer, c. 1507. (Photo: Sotheby’s Paris)

The estimate on the piece was not published in the catalogue but the house was expecting a minimum of €300 000 prior to the sale.  Another striking lot in the treasure are two stackable parcel-gilt silver beakers, bearing the maker’s mark of a Strasbourg silversmith Théodore de Bry.  This set is firmly datable between 1560 and 1567, because the silversmith first used his mark in 1560 and the specific city mark on the piece went out of use in 1567.  A complete set of twelve silver spoons (c. 1520) from Châlons-en-Champagne represent an important discovery since, according to the in-house expert, it was previously believed that the notion of grouping silverware into 12 based on the number of apostles at The Last Supper hadn’t emerged in France until the end of the 17^th century.  The fact that these spoons were intentionally stored as a group offers strong evidence that the biblical allusion began 150 years before.

 

Set of twelve parcel-gilt silver spoons from Châlons en Champagne, circa 1570. (Photo: Sotheby’s France)

The intrigue concerning the treasure was great because the regional cultural authority had estimated the value at €2 million, and in early 2008 offered the lucky gardener €1.4 million for the entire group, which he allegedly accepted.  According to the Journal des Arts, the person in question became impatient since the funding failed to appear and hence turned to Sotheby’s to auction the treasure.  Sotheby’s had made a good show of a rare 16^th century silver ewer from Quimper in 2007 which attained € 312 000 at auction so were happy to oblige.  The only snag was that the French government declared the silver a Trésor national in April 2009, essentially barring it from exportation outside France.  As I mentioned in the Joseph commode saga (see Paris Art Market Buzz of October 8th) this administrative tool is effective in preserving important national patrimony, but can be the kiss of death at auction.  Sotheby’s fearlessly forged ahead, placing the entire treasure on the glossy cover of the sale catalogue, displayed as if carelessly strewn on a sandy beach or a pirate’s cove. 

The saga came to somewhat of an anticlimax when the press reported that the entire treasure was purchased privately before the auction by the city of Nancy, the regional authorities of Lorraine and two private anonymous donor companies for €1.4 million.  The treasure was displayed at Sotheby’s for the pre-auction viewing despite the news, allowing the curious public and art lovers a glimpse. Fortunately, the treasure now belongs to the Musée Lorrain de Nancy where it can be appreciated by all.  It is surprising that an auction house would have taken such a gamble in these difficult times, but stranger things have happened.  On the other hand, the auction (even without the treasure) offered 277 lots of highly important silver and snuff boxes, and earned an impressive €2 356 975.  The “star” lot was a breathtaking Portuguese silver-gilt salver (circa 1500) that fetched €324 750 (including buyer’s premium), quadrupling its high estimate of €80 000.  The diamond faceted repoussé and chased décor on the platter is believed to make reference to the precious stone as the Portuguese were heavily involved in the diamond trade in the 15^th century, importing directly from the Indian port of Goa after Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. 

      

A Portuguese parcel-gilt silver salver, c. 1500, sold for €324 750. (Photo: Sotheby’s France)

Neoclassicism: A Tale

The furniture sale the following day featured a spectacular bureau plat (writing desk) with its cartonnier (filing cabinet) by French ébéniste Philippe-Claude Montigny (received master in 1766).  This highly neo-classical model, veneered soberly in ebony and featuring an ormolu frieze of vitruvian scrolls, can be dated somewhere between 1766 and 1780 when the cabinet maker probably produced several similar desks.  Many of these, however, were veneered with lighter-hued woods (a desk by Montigny veneered in amarante was also offered at this sale), while this version in ebony is a rarity.  Only two other examples are currently known, one conserved at Woburn Abbey in Bedforshire, England.

Bureau plat stamped by Philippe-Claude Montigny, sold for €600 750. (Photo: Sotheby’s France)

There is a simplified tale that one hears as a student of the history of French decorative arts explaining the origins of neoclassicism in France.  It goes something like this: an elite group of aristocrats, an architect and theorist, including the future marquis de Marigny (brother of Madame de Pompadour, who financed the trip) went to Italy for their grand tour from 1749-1751 and discovered the recently unearthed ruins of Pompeii, Herculaneum and other important sites and antiquities. Upon their return to France, one member of the group, a draftsman and engraver named Charles-Nicolas Cochin, published a scathing criticism of the Louis XV rocaille style that had dominated the decorative arts for two decades.  He described it in very unflattering terms, indicating that the style had no solid foundation with all of its meandering curves, branches to nowhere, stylized seashells and garden trellises, and it lacked rationality.  His article, published in the Mercure de France, entitled Supplication aux orfèvres, ciseleurs, sculpteurs de bois pour les appartements et autres appeared in 1754 and had a profound effect on intellectual society and more importantly, his intended audience: silversmiths, wood carvers, chasers, cabinet makers, etc.  The retour à l’antique was hence officially born.   

The next part of the story explains that an influential financier, named Ange Laurent de La Live de Jully, created one of the first neoclassical décors in his Paris home for which he ordered our now-familiar cabinet maker Joseph Baumhauer (through the designer Le Lorrain) to create appropriate furniture in 1756.  The desk which resulted from this commission (conserved at the Chàteau de Chantilly outside Paris) is thought to be one of the earliest manifestations of the neoclassical style, referred to as the “goût grec”, or Greek taste.

Bureau plat by Joseph Baumhauer, Château de Chantilly. (Photo : Paul Paradis)

The boldness and audacity of the desk’s design should not be underestimated. One needs only to recall the Joseph Baumhauer commode discussed a few weeks ago, in all of its bombé rocaille splendor, and the fact that it was produced at around the same time by the same cabinet maker.  The straight lines, thick gilt-bronze laurel swags, lion masks and clawed feet (all by the master sculptor and bronzier Philippe Caffieri, 1714-1774) are completely foreign to the esthetic prevailing at the time but would influence design well into the next century. 

The bureau plat offered at Sotheby’s is clearly a direct descendent of this first version, although more delicate and less clumsy in approach.  The laurel swags and lion’s paws are gone, but the overall shape, use of contrasting ebony and gilt-bronze, and the vitruvian scrolls are all there.  The evolution to the mature neoclassical style in decorative arts (or Louis XVI as the style-period is known) had come fully into play by the time Montigny created his desk almost twenty years later.  It attained €600 750 (including buyer’s premium), a substantial sum for a piece of furniture from the 18^th century, a period supposedly not in vogue at the moment.  

The enduring quality of magnificent French furniture is always a comfort to me. 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

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