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Please join Orlando Rock for a gallery talk about
the Wildenstein Collection >
On entering the Wildenstein's hôtel particulier, the hôtel de Wailly in the rue de la Boetie, one was instantly transported to the munificence of a bygone era. Therein lay the world of Sir Richard Wallace at Hertford House, London, Henry Clay Frick in New York, Comte Moïse de Camondo in Paris and Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
The remarkable ensemble of magnificent French furniture and objets d'art is largely the creation of one man—Nathan Wildenstein (1851-1934). A leviathan in the history of taste, he was the founder of the Wildenstein dynasty that has now become synonymous with so many of the world's greatest artistic treasures. From humble beginnings, Nathan's brilliant and incisive mind seized upon the opportunities unfolding at the turn of the 20th century.
A passionate devotee of 18th Century French culture - that age of intense intellectual curiosity and burgeoning social conscience that was reflected in the literature and philosophy of the Enlightenment - Nathan was in large part responsible for reigniting enthusiasm in the sublime cultural legacy of the French ancien régime.
Based initially in Paris, he expanded his operations to embrace both New York in 1902 and, subsequently London.
The legendary townhouse on East 64th Street—where the headquarters of the business moved in 1931 and remains to this day—was designed by Horace Trumbauer in true Parisian taste. It was here that the first dispersal from the Wildenstein Collections—sold in 1979—originally stood, and many of those chefs d'oeuvres now form the backbone of museum collections, including that of the Getty.
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