The Burlington Magazine

The Musee Jacquemart-André is a treasure house that graces the Haussmann boulevards in Paris and is perhaps not nearly as well-known as it should be. The recent re-opening of the museum on 6th September, following a period of closure for conservation, therefore provides a welcome opportunity to draw fresh attention to this most romantic and beguiling of collections and the elegant building that houses it.

Some will know the history of the museum, but it is nonetheless worth briefly re-telling as it has all the ingredients of short story by Guy de Maupassant. Nélie Jacquemart was a fashionable young portrait painter, who first exhibited at the Salon in 1863. She was commissioned to portray the rich Protestant banker and bachelor Édouard André in 1872 and in 1881 they were married – somewhat to the surprise of Parisian high society, as the union brought together a couple from very different social worlds. They enjoyed the delightful prospect of a combination of wealth, opportunities to travel and a desire to acquire works of art. Édouard’s aesthetic enthusiasms were also fulfilled through his joint ownership of the Gazette des beaux-arts and presidency of the Union centrale des Arts décoratifs. The Board of the Union included the francophile Richard Wallace, whose own splendid works of art later formed part of the Wallace Collection, London.

The grand hôtel particulier (Fig.1) that Édouard and Nélie filled had been commissioned from the architect Henri Parent (1819–95). Its design refers to eighteenth-century precedents but has a somewhat expansive, theatrical, fin-de-siècle quality and it proved ideal for socialising and as a foil for the collection. Gradually a series of displays developed that focused on its particular strengths, ranging from the Italian Renaissance to the Netherlands and Flanders in the seventeenth century (Fig.2), and eighteenth-century France. Visitors will have different views about what their highlights might be among the works on display, but any such list could reasonably include Donatello’s Martyrdom of St Sebastian (1450–52), Francesco Laurana’s Bust of a Neapolitan princess (1480), Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus (c.1630), Fragonard’s The model’s début (1769) and David’s Portrait of the Comte Français de Nantes (1811), as well as examples of Medici porcelain and Pierre Gole furniture.

Nélie was especially energetic in her collecting: she received a letter from Wilhelm von Bode of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin, in which he ironically complained that he had recently been to Italy to visit his usual dealers only to discover that Mme André had been there just before him and acquired everything.[1] When the collection that the couple built was first mentioned in the pages of this Magazine in 1914, two years after it was bequeathed to the Institut de France, Roger Fry praised in particular her taste, which he felt displayed an ‘intimate love of beautiful things, a love which did not have to seek for its justification and support [. . .] the opinion of the world’.[2]

The recent conservation campaign has involved updating a number of behind-the-scenes facilities and improving physical access as well as some impressive public features of this remarkable ensemble. These include the Smoking Room, which is dominated by British eighteenth-century portraits by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence and John Hoppner, acquired by Nélie on a trip to England before such works became more widely appreciated in France. They are now hung on a sumptuous claret- coloured fabric (it replaces a green one), which matches the decorative scheme recorded in a colour photograph of the room dating from 1913.

The double-flight staircase, which connects the interior Winter Garden room with the upper floor (Fig.3), has also been the focus of a conservation project during the closure. It is made of carrara marble, rouge de rance limestone from Belgium and stucco. A lavish spectacle devised by Parent, the staircase sweeps visitors up to the fresco by Giambattista Tiepolo depicting Henry III being welcomed by the Doge Contarini (1745), a work that links French and Italian historical figures and so echoes the scope of Nélie and Édouard’s tastes. The fresco was transported to Paris in 1893 from the Villa Contarini at Mira, near Venice, a building that they had acquired. A ceiling painting by Tiepolo, which was originally created as part of the same commission for the villa, was also detached and shipped north – a delicate task that took eight months – and installed in a different space, which now serves as the museum’s dining room. Depicting Fame announcing the arrival of King Henry III, it has also been conserved as part of the recent campaign of work.[3] This fresco features a trompe-l’œil balustrade, upon which figures lean, observing and commenting on the king’s arrival. Above in a blue and cloud-flecked sky Fame blows her trumpet, accompanied by three cherubs, one of whom has a cornucopia from which gold coins spill. A monkey is perched on the balustrade, with its tail appearing to extend beyond the frame. This is all suspended above you as you dip your madeleine into a cup of tea.

The temporary closure of the museum has made possible exceptional loans – for example, the Rembrandts were sent to the château de Chantilly and Uccello’s St George slaying the dragon (c.1440) was lent to the Louvre- Lens. Now that the collection is back home, it is joined temporarily by some impressive company: the exhibition organised to celebrate the re- opening comprises a selection of major works from the Galleria Borghese, Rome (6th September 2024–5th January 2025).

When the building and the collection was bequeathed to the Institut de France, it was on the condition that it should be transformed into a public museum. This ambition was respected but the result still retains something of the atmosphere of a private residence – albeit a very grand one indeed – where the benefits of a golden age of collecting, which was also enjoyed by the Rothschilds and the Camondos among others, can be savoured.

[1] Musée Jacquemart-André, The Collections, Florence 2012, p.61.

[2] R. Fry: ‘Three pictures in the Jacquemart-André collection’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 25 (1914), pp.78–81 and 84–85.

[3] For a brief account of the conservation of the fresco, see arcanes.eu/fr/oeuvres/ salle-a-manger-et-escalier-dhonneur-dit-tiepolo, accessed 16th September 2024.

Restoring the ‘belle époque’

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