![[LOUIS XIV (1638-1715), King of France]. Medailles sur les principaux evenements du regne de Louis le Grand avec explications historiques. Paris: de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1702.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/NYR/2001_NYR_09894_0001_000(034014).jpg?w=1)
Christie's is proud to offer the André Meyer Collection including highly important French furniture and Old Master paintings. This collection was inherited by his daughter, the late Francine Meyer, who preserved it and enhanced it for over two decades. During her lifetime she established a charitable foundation for primary medical research, and it was her wish to have the proceeds from the sale of this collection benefit this cause.
André Meyer was born in France in 1898, and started his financial career at an early age. In 1923 he joined Lazard Frères in Paris, where he eventually became a partner. In 1940 Meyer left France to emigrate to the United States, where he ran Lazard Frères' American Branch until his retirement in 1970.
The celebrated designer Jean-Michel Frank decorated Meyer's apartment in Paris in the 1930's, where Giacometti lamps mixed with XVIIIth century furniture and paintings. He formed a second collection which would eventually include furniture by some of the greatest ébénistes of the Ancien Régime: Carlin, Avisse, Saunier, Delanois, RVLC, Séné, Latz, Boulard and Garnier. In addition, André Meyer's collection once encompassed masterworks by Picasso, Degas, Sisley, Fragonard, Vuillard, Braque, Cezanne, Oudry, Van Gogh, Greuze, and Boucher, some of which were donated during his lifetime to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where a gallery is named after him. Both the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris also possess several paintings donated by Mr. Meyer.
[LOUIS XIV (1638-1715), King of France]. Medailles sur les principaux evenements du regne de Louis le Grand avec explications historiques. Paris: de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1702.
Details
[LOUIS XIV (1638-1715), King of France]. Medailles sur les principaux evenements du regne de Louis le Grand avec explications historiques. Paris: de l'Imprimerie Royale, 1702.
2o (435 x 285 mm). Engraved title with vignette, engraved allegorical frontispiece after A. Coypel by Simonneau l'âiné, each page within an engraved border by Simonneau, most containing engraved medals by Cochin and vignettes by Leclerc (some occasional light browning and spotting). Contemporary French red morocco gilt, covers gilt-ruled and centering THE ROYAL ARMS OF LOUIS XIV, spine gilt in seven compartments with crowned monogram in six, gilt-lettered in one, edges gilt (minor rubbing at extemities).
FIRST EDITION, with 11-leaf manuscript preface. In all but a few copies the printed preface was surpressed because of its criticisms of Louis XIV. Cohen-de Ricci 695.
2o (435 x 285 mm). Engraved title with vignette, engraved allegorical frontispiece after A. Coypel by Simonneau l'âiné, each page within an engraved border by Simonneau, most containing engraved medals by Cochin and vignettes by Leclerc (some occasional light browning and spotting). Contemporary French red morocco gilt, covers gilt-ruled and centering THE ROYAL ARMS OF LOUIS XIV, spine gilt in seven compartments with crowned monogram in six, gilt-lettered in one, edges gilt (minor rubbing at extemities).
FIRST EDITION, with 11-leaf manuscript preface. In all but a few copies the printed preface was surpressed because of its criticisms of Louis XIV. Cohen-de Ricci 695.
Provenance
Robert Schumann (according to pencilled note at front)
John F. Fleming, sold Christie's New York, 18 November 1988, lot 219.
John F. Fleming, sold Christie's New York, 18 November 1988, lot 219.