Lot Essay
ANGE-LAURENT LALIVE DE JULLY
The celebrated amateur Lalive de Jully, son of the extremely wealthy fermier général Lalive de Bellegarde, was born in 1725. Brother of the famous Madame d'Houdetot, Lalive d'Epinay and Lalive de La Briche, the four siblings belonged to the exclusive circle of cognoscenti of literature and fine arts in the second half of the 18th Century
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE SAINT HONORE
Ange-Laurent married Louise-Elisabeth Chambon in 1749 and remained in the paternal family hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré. His inheritance of an enormous fortune on the death of his father in 1752, and the anguish occasioned by his wife's death in 1753, provided the stimuli for Lalive to begin collecting on a grand scale
By 1757, Dezallier d'Argenville had already admired and described Lalive's collection, and in 1759 the portrait of the amateur by Jean-Baptiste Greuze was exhibited in the salon (now in the Kress Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, p. 379, pls. 321-2)
In the hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré, the premier étage was occupied from 1752 by Lalive d'Epinay, while the deuxième étage was reserved for the appartements of Lalive de Jully and his young wife. A long overdue refurbishment and important alterations to the hôtel were undertaken. On the premier étage, a sumptuous cabinet embellished with Chinese lacquer panels on a green ground was installed. On the deuxième étage, the architect Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain
'donna des dessins bien lourds pour tous les ornements de l'appartement de M. de Lalive, amateur riche et qui dessinait un peu. Ils firent d'autant plus de bruit que M. de Caylus les loua avec enthousiasme. De là nous vinrent les guirlandes et les vases...'
Of the second floor appartements, two were decorated, that overlooking the street being ornamented with
médaillons avec chutes de fleurs,... de panneaux en relief de plastre représentant des vases et ornement
In July 1762, Lalive married secondly Marie-Elisabeth de Nettine. Through this alliance, he became the brother-in-law of Laborde, banquier de la cour, and son-in-law of the 'banquière des Pays-Bas'. With his new wife, he left the family hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré and purchased the hôtel of Président Duret de Mesnières on the corner of the rue Ménard and the rue de Richelieu
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE MENARD
Built in 1732, the hôtel in the rue Ménard was remodelled à la grecque for Lalive by the architect Barreau de Chefdeville. By 1764 the alterations were completed, and Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture françoise
(QUOTE TO BE INSERTED)
Lalive's hôtel now displayed twin facades, and he reserved the whole ground floor for his collection, with three pièces overlooking the courtyard and four overlooking the garden. The visitor, having crossed the salon where Lalive placed the Boulle bibliothèque bought from the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux in 1756, reached a cabinet hung with his collection of Old Masters. With natural light entering through both the glazed door and window looking onto the garden, the cabinet, panelled to its full height, was enriched on two of the panels with four ivy-carved pilasters supporting an arched vault. A white marble fireplace was mounted with gilt-bronze lion-masks, possibly executed by Philippe Caffiéri, which relate to those on the bureau and cartonnier of the suite now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly (illustrated in S. Eriksen, op.cit., p. 311-2, pl. 85). Next to the fireplace, opposite the entrance, Lalive placed Augustin Pajou's 'Allegory of painting', which stood in a niche on a gilt-channelled semi-circular pedestal, while above the niche and the entrance door, he placed two further bas-reliefs by Pajou emblematic of painting and sculpture
It was at the far end and along the sides of this room that the coquillier was placed. Its existence is first recorded in 1764, but it does not seem possible to determine whether it was delivered together with the bureau plat, cartonnier and chair from the suite, circa 1754 for the hôtel in the rue St. Honoré, or ordered at the end of 1762 for the newly-acquired hôtel in the rue Ménard. The discovery of Joseph Baumhauer's stamp on this piece, while underlining the importance of this ébéniste in the development of French neo-classisism, should not disguise the probable contribution of a marchand-mercier. In fact it is hard to imagine anyone except a marchand-mercier could have co-ordinated the numerous different craftsmen involved in such a commission
Lalive was already a client of Lazare Duvaux by 1756, and Lalive's new hôtel was in the same street as Duvaux's shop. However, the same can also be said of Simon-Philippe Poirier, who Joseph also supplied. His co-operation with the marchand-merciers Hécéguerre and Poirier seems almost continuous and the direct association between Joseph and Poirier, already in existence by 1753, was still fruitful in 1766, when Joseph supplied the Marigny commode for the latter
The recent discovery of Joseph's stamp on the Houghton/Sassoon bibliothèque en bas d'armoire confirms the attribution to Joseph of Lalive's furniture which was first suggested by J.-D. Augarde in his article '1749, Joseph Baumhauer, Ebéniste du Roi', L'Estampille, June 1987, pp. 14-45 (the Lalive furniture discussed and illustrated pp. 24-27, figs. 12, 16 and 39)
Sadly, however, Lalive de Jully became ill and depressed, and his wife was forced to sell his collection. The sale began on the 5th March 1770 and lasted until 16 March, with the coquillier included in the catalogue as lot 268 on 9 March
(DESCRIPTION OF LOT)
While the coquillier was withdrawn from the sale, the bureau plat and cartonnier appear to have been acquired by the duc de Chaulnes, although neither are recorded in the inventory taken after his death
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE D'ARTOIS
The coquillier remained unsold and was acquired by the maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville, a passionate conchologist, who had acquired Lalive's hôtel a month before, together with a part of the picture collection. His tenure was relatively shortlived, however, as in 1785 the maréchal acquired the hôtel in the rue d'Artois from the maréchale de Mirepoix. He therefore had the coquillier dismantled and moved to his new house
The maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville died in the rue d'Artois hôtel on 6 June 1789. In the inventory of the grand cabinet au premier étage taken following the maréchal's death the expert Pierre Rémy recorded
quatre bas d'armoires et deux encoignures propre à enfermer de l'histoire naturelle; le tout plaqué en bois d'ébéne richement garni de frise et autres ornements en bronze doré. Les vantaux à panneaux de glace au nombre de 26 prisé 720 livres
The expert was, therefore, explicit in his statement that the coquillier was broken down into four bas d'armoires and two encoignures. It would, therefore, seem highly probable that the coquillier was adapted in 1785 for the maréchal's new hôtel
Jean-François Leleu was certainly the maréchal's ébéniste. In fact Leleu's associate and son-in-law Stadler was among the creditors of the maréchal in 1789
In the sale of the maréchal's furniture on 23 November 1789, the catalogue description of the coquillier employs exactly the same wording as in the 1770 Lalive de Jully sale, confirming that the two coquilliers are in fact one and the same. It was most probably after the 1789 sale that the coquillier was finally dismantled, as the French Révolution was not conducive to shell collecting!
The four bas d'armoires from the original coquillier are identifiable:- apart from the Houghton example, one was sold together with a later copy, from the collection of Emilio Terry, château de Rochecotte, Ader Picard Tajan, Paris, 9 June 1976, lot 21, (illustrated and discussed by J.-D.Augarde, op.cit., p. 42, fig. 39), while the two others, now in a private collection, reveneered and partly lacking their bronzes, were sold from the collection of Ambassadeur Paul Dutasta, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-4 June 1926, no. 177-178 (sold for 182,000 francs). Henry Sorensen first drew attention to the link between the Emilio Terry cabinet and Lalive's furniture at the time of its sale in Paris (Connaissance des Arts, November 1976, pp. 68-69)
LALIVE DE JULLY AND LOUIS-JOSEPH LE LORRAIN
Born in 1715 in Paris, Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain won the grand prix de l'Académie in 1739 and consequently travelled to Rome, where he remained until 1749 designing decorations for festivities. An uomo universale, he qualified from the Académie in 1752 as a peintre d'histoire, executing ceiling decorations in the hôtels de la Bouexière, d'Augny and Castagnier d'Auriac from 1753. In 1754, Le Lorrain supplied the Count Tessin for Akerö Castle in Sweden:
des dessins de chaises, lits, bureaux, commodes, encoignures, etc...d'un goût admirable et tout à fait nouveau qui n'a pas même été vu; encore moins exécuté par personne
This is certainly the first recorded manifestation of the neo-classical revival in the decorative arts. It is therefore possible, and indeed probable, that the designs for an extremely closely related bureau - if not actually the same bureau - were executed as early as 1754 and 1755
The Swedish drawing may provide a clue to the enigmatic group of four drawings attributed to J. Houdan from the Boulton archive at Great Tew, which have been discussed by Hugh Roberts, loc. cit. Three of the Tew drawings repeat the etchings in the Victoria and Albert Museum which Simon Jervis has attributed to Lalive de Jully himself. ('Two unknown suites of early neo-classical designs', The Burlington Magazine, June 1984, pp. 343-47, while the fourth shows a front view of part of the coquillier. The Tew drawings probably date from circa 1764 when the coquillier is first recorded and perhaps duplicate missing drawings by Le Lorrain recording the general appearance and impact of Lalive's furniture
Le Lorrain probably became acquainted with Lalive through a mutual friend, the comte de Caylus, who went on to praise their neo-classical collaborations enthusiastically. The links between the amateur and his architect are definitively recorded as early as 1755, when a Saint Elizabeth was exhibited in the salon, that had been painted by Le Lorrain for the mausoleum of Lalive's wife, who had died in 1753
The celebrated amateur Lalive de Jully, son of the extremely wealthy fermier général Lalive de Bellegarde, was born in 1725. Brother of the famous Madame d'Houdetot, Lalive d'Epinay and Lalive de La Briche, the four siblings belonged to the exclusive circle of cognoscenti of literature and fine arts in the second half of the 18th Century
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE SAINT HONORE
Ange-Laurent married Louise-Elisabeth Chambon in 1749 and remained in the paternal family hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré. His inheritance of an enormous fortune on the death of his father in 1752, and the anguish occasioned by his wife's death in 1753, provided the stimuli for Lalive to begin collecting on a grand scale
By 1757, Dezallier d'Argenville had already admired and described Lalive's collection, and in 1759 the portrait of the amateur by Jean-Baptiste Greuze was exhibited in the salon (now in the Kress Collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, illustrated in S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France, London, 1974, p. 379, pls. 321-2)
In the hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré, the premier étage was occupied from 1752 by Lalive d'Epinay, while the deuxième étage was reserved for the appartements of Lalive de Jully and his young wife. A long overdue refurbishment and important alterations to the hôtel were undertaken. On the premier étage, a sumptuous cabinet embellished with Chinese lacquer panels on a green ground was installed. On the deuxième étage, the architect Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain
'donna des dessins bien lourds pour tous les ornements de l'appartement de M. de Lalive, amateur riche et qui dessinait un peu. Ils firent d'autant plus de bruit que M. de Caylus les loua avec enthousiasme. De là nous vinrent les guirlandes et les vases...'
Of the second floor appartements, two were decorated, that overlooking the street being ornamented with
médaillons avec chutes de fleurs,... de panneaux en relief de plastre représentant des vases et ornement
In July 1762, Lalive married secondly Marie-Elisabeth de Nettine. Through this alliance, he became the brother-in-law of Laborde, banquier de la cour, and son-in-law of the 'banquière des Pays-Bas'. With his new wife, he left the family hôtel in the rue Saint Honoré and purchased the hôtel of Président Duret de Mesnières on the corner of the rue Ménard and the rue de Richelieu
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE MENARD
Built in 1732, the hôtel in the rue Ménard was remodelled à la grecque for Lalive by the architect Barreau de Chefdeville. By 1764 the alterations were completed, and Lalive published his Catalogue historique du cabinet de peinture et sculpture françoise
(QUOTE TO BE INSERTED)
Lalive's hôtel now displayed twin facades, and he reserved the whole ground floor for his collection, with three pièces overlooking the courtyard and four overlooking the garden. The visitor, having crossed the salon where Lalive placed the Boulle bibliothèque bought from the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux in 1756, reached a cabinet hung with his collection of Old Masters. With natural light entering through both the glazed door and window looking onto the garden, the cabinet, panelled to its full height, was enriched on two of the panels with four ivy-carved pilasters supporting an arched vault. A white marble fireplace was mounted with gilt-bronze lion-masks, possibly executed by Philippe Caffiéri, which relate to those on the bureau and cartonnier of the suite now in the Musée Condé at Chantilly (illustrated in S. Eriksen, op.cit., p. 311-2, pl. 85). Next to the fireplace, opposite the entrance, Lalive placed Augustin Pajou's 'Allegory of painting', which stood in a niche on a gilt-channelled semi-circular pedestal, while above the niche and the entrance door, he placed two further bas-reliefs by Pajou emblematic of painting and sculpture
It was at the far end and along the sides of this room that the coquillier was placed. Its existence is first recorded in 1764, but it does not seem possible to determine whether it was delivered together with the bureau plat, cartonnier and chair from the suite, circa 1754 for the hôtel in the rue St. Honoré, or ordered at the end of 1762 for the newly-acquired hôtel in the rue Ménard. The discovery of Joseph Baumhauer's stamp on this piece, while underlining the importance of this ébéniste in the development of French neo-classisism, should not disguise the probable contribution of a marchand-mercier. In fact it is hard to imagine anyone except a marchand-mercier could have co-ordinated the numerous different craftsmen involved in such a commission
Lalive was already a client of Lazare Duvaux by 1756, and Lalive's new hôtel was in the same street as Duvaux's shop. However, the same can also be said of Simon-Philippe Poirier, who Joseph also supplied. His co-operation with the marchand-merciers Hécéguerre and Poirier seems almost continuous and the direct association between Joseph and Poirier, already in existence by 1753, was still fruitful in 1766, when Joseph supplied the Marigny commode for the latter
The recent discovery of Joseph's stamp on the Houghton/Sassoon bibliothèque en bas d'armoire confirms the attribution to Joseph of Lalive's furniture which was first suggested by J.-D. Augarde in his article '1749, Joseph Baumhauer, Ebéniste du Roi', L'Estampille, June 1987, pp. 14-45 (the Lalive furniture discussed and illustrated pp. 24-27, figs. 12, 16 and 39)
Sadly, however, Lalive de Jully became ill and depressed, and his wife was forced to sell his collection. The sale began on the 5th March 1770 and lasted until 16 March, with the coquillier included in the catalogue as lot 268 on 9 March
(DESCRIPTION OF LOT)
While the coquillier was withdrawn from the sale, the bureau plat and cartonnier appear to have been acquired by the duc de Chaulnes, although neither are recorded in the inventory taken after his death
L'HOTEL DE LA RUE D'ARTOIS
The coquillier remained unsold and was acquired by the maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville, a passionate conchologist, who had acquired Lalive's hôtel a month before, together with a part of the picture collection. His tenure was relatively shortlived, however, as in 1785 the maréchal acquired the hôtel in the rue d'Artois from the maréchale de Mirepoix. He therefore had the coquillier dismantled and moved to his new house
The maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville died in the rue d'Artois hôtel on 6 June 1789. In the inventory of the grand cabinet au premier étage taken following the maréchal's death the expert Pierre Rémy recorded
quatre bas d'armoires et deux encoignures propre à enfermer de l'histoire naturelle; le tout plaqué en bois d'ébéne richement garni de frise et autres ornements en bronze doré. Les vantaux à panneaux de glace au nombre de 26 prisé 720 livres
The expert was, therefore, explicit in his statement that the coquillier was broken down into four bas d'armoires and two encoignures. It would, therefore, seem highly probable that the coquillier was adapted in 1785 for the maréchal's new hôtel
Jean-François Leleu was certainly the maréchal's ébéniste. In fact Leleu's associate and son-in-law Stadler was among the creditors of the maréchal in 1789
In the sale of the maréchal's furniture on 23 November 1789, the catalogue description of the coquillier employs exactly the same wording as in the 1770 Lalive de Jully sale, confirming that the two coquilliers are in fact one and the same. It was most probably after the 1789 sale that the coquillier was finally dismantled, as the French Révolution was not conducive to shell collecting!
The four bas d'armoires from the original coquillier are identifiable:- apart from the Houghton example, one was sold together with a later copy, from the collection of Emilio Terry, château de Rochecotte, Ader Picard Tajan, Paris, 9 June 1976, lot 21, (illustrated and discussed by J.-D.Augarde, op.cit., p. 42, fig. 39), while the two others, now in a private collection, reveneered and partly lacking their bronzes, were sold from the collection of Ambassadeur Paul Dutasta, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 3-4 June 1926, no. 177-178 (sold for 182,000 francs). Henry Sorensen first drew attention to the link between the Emilio Terry cabinet and Lalive's furniture at the time of its sale in Paris (Connaissance des Arts, November 1976, pp. 68-69)
LALIVE DE JULLY AND LOUIS-JOSEPH LE LORRAIN
Born in 1715 in Paris, Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain won the grand prix de l'Académie in 1739 and consequently travelled to Rome, where he remained until 1749 designing decorations for festivities. An uomo universale, he qualified from the Académie in 1752 as a peintre d'histoire, executing ceiling decorations in the hôtels de la Bouexière, d'Augny and Castagnier d'Auriac from 1753. In 1754, Le Lorrain supplied the Count Tessin for Akerö Castle in Sweden:
des dessins de chaises, lits, bureaux, commodes, encoignures, etc...d'un goût admirable et tout à fait nouveau qui n'a pas même été vu; encore moins exécuté par personne
This is certainly the first recorded manifestation of the neo-classical revival in the decorative arts. It is therefore possible, and indeed probable, that the designs for an extremely closely related bureau - if not actually the same bureau - were executed as early as 1754 and 1755
The Swedish drawing may provide a clue to the enigmatic group of four drawings attributed to J. Houdan from the Boulton archive at Great Tew, which have been discussed by Hugh Roberts, loc. cit. Three of the Tew drawings repeat the etchings in the Victoria and Albert Museum which Simon Jervis has attributed to Lalive de Jully himself. ('Two unknown suites of early neo-classical designs', The Burlington Magazine, June 1984, pp. 343-47, while the fourth shows a front view of part of the coquillier. The Tew drawings probably date from circa 1764 when the coquillier is first recorded and perhaps duplicate missing drawings by Le Lorrain recording the general appearance and impact of Lalive's furniture
Le Lorrain probably became acquainted with Lalive through a mutual friend, the comte de Caylus, who went on to praise their neo-classical collaborations enthusiastically. The links between the amateur and his architect are definitively recorded as early as 1755, when a Saint Elizabeth was exhibited in the salon, that had been painted by Le Lorrain for the mausoleum of Lalive's wife, who had died in 1753