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The Château de Gourdon Collection includes an important group of works by one of the most emblematic figures of the decorative arts and modernist movement in France – expatriate Irish woman Eileen Gray (1879-1976).

Like Pierre Legrain she had executed pieces for Jacques Doucet, who discovered her at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in 1913. Miss Gray was an extraordinary character, single-minded and individualistic, who managed to capture and express in her own way the prevailing spirit of the age in design through the first decades of the 20th century. She was celebrated in February 2009 during the auction of the Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collections at the Grand Palais when her remarkable  ‘dragons’ chair, circa 1917-1919, originally from the collections of fashionable milliner Suzanne Talbot and the quintessence of her work in lacquer, achieved the record sum of  €21 million.

Eileen Gray arrived in Paris in 1902, studying at the Académie Colorassi and the Académie Julian before exploring the medium of lacquer after her curiosity was sparked by a visit to a small atelier in Soho. She met Japanese artist Seizo Sugarawa with whom she would work for a number of years. An enigmatic personality, as private as she was determined, she chose in the early 1920s to move away from the highly refined lacquer work of her early days, in order to focus on more functionalist designs in metal, glass and painted wood, inspired at first by the Modernist ideas of the Dutch De Stjil movement.

Her creativity and vision found expression in new forms, such as the ‘Brick’ screen – developed from the panels she used in the hallway of the apartment of Suzanne Talbot on Rue de Lota, circa 1922. The black-lacquered screen presented here was part of her personal furnishing and featured in her apartment on Rue Bonaparte. Other examples of her work include the floor light, the black and yellow base of which resembles a piece of Constructivist architecture, again made for her own use, or the ‘Transat’ armchair, circa 1925, in black lacquer with seat made from coated canvas, formerly the property of her friend and collaborator architect Jean Badovici, founder of the avant-garde magazine L’Architecture Vivante, 1923.

Eileen Gray’s evolving vision, as she pursued the alliance of form and function in an expressive modern spirit, is well evidenced in a number of radically Modernist works within the Château de Gourdon collection.  These include the ‘Bibendum’ armchair with a tubular chrome base and seat formed from stacked, curved, cream-coloured ‘sausages’ – clearly evocative of the logo of tire-manufacturer Michelin. 

Miss Gray’s unique inspiration can be seen in her ‘Aéroplane’ ceiling light, circa 1925-28, constructed like an abstract sculpture from metal elements and two sheets of glass, one white, one blue.  This specific example had belonged to Miss Gray. Another was commissioned by the eminent connoisseur and patron of Modernism, the Maharaja of Indore. Among the 15 pieces which make up the Eileen Gray collection, a further notable example is the small circular extendable pedestal table made from nickel-plated tubular metal and with an aluminium top, circa 1927, for her house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, E1027, and the fitted furniture for her bedroom on Rue Bonaparte, an asymmetrical linear construction in grey-painted wood and aluminium, in which she incorporated pivoting drawers and other functional elements. 

The Château de Gourdon Collection focuses on the Modernist phase of Miss Gray's career and, now that the majority of her works have found their way into major museums - including notably MoMA, New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Pompidou Centre and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin - this is the most important group of the extant pieces in private hands. The collection boasts works of impeccable provenance that construct a precious narrative of Miss Gray's most important Modernist design projects.