20TH CENTURY

Details

A POLYCHROME-PAINTED AND PARCEL-GILT PLASTER FIGURE OF A BLACKAMOOR
20TH CENTURY
With feathered headdress and skirt, resting against a cartouche, on a cloud-form base
80½ in. (204.5 cm.) high

Provenance

Charles de Beistegui, placed in the Sitting Room of his Paris apartment in 1936, later château de Groussay, sold Poulain LeFur and Sotheby's, France, 2 - 6 June 1999, lot 1601.

Literature

B. Foucart, J.-L. Gaillemin, Les Décorateurs des années 40, Paris, 1998, p. 37.

Lot Essay

Charles de Beistegui (d. 1970), the legendary bon vivant and later owner of château de Groussay, commissioned Le Corbusier to remodel his rooftop pavilion on the Champs Elysées in 1929. Keen to create an ultra modern interior, he and Le Corbusier collaborated to create a severely functional apartment. The interior included white-painted Louis XV furniture and a carpet of living grass and Cecil Beaton commented on the interior 'a hodgepodge of Napoleon III, Le Corbusier modernism, mechanism, and surrealism'. The open space design divided the dining room from the living room with a baroque superstructure and the present lot was placed beneath it. An article in the Architectural Review of April 1936 described it as Meissen, but when the piece was rediscovered at Groussay it turned out to be plaster.

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