The collection of Jeanne-Marie de Broglie: the Parisian princess who became Christie’s first Chairwoman, Europe

When the late Jeanne-Marie de Broglie looked back on her childhood, she described it as one of ‘well-bred boredom’. The Polish-French aristocrat grew up on her father’s estate at Châteauneuf-sur-Cher in the Loire region, where elegant formal gardens and rusticated stonework did little to dispel what the Gilded Age novelist Edith Wharton might have described as ‘a death in life’.

As the daughter of the Duc de Maillé and his wife, Princess Anna Maria Radziwiłł, de Broglie was expected to marry well and become a society hostess. But, having ‘a certain degree of impatience’ with the prospect, the perennially restless young woman teamed up with Resistance fighter Daniel Cordier to open a gallery in Paris’s 8th arrondissement. ‘She had a daredevil side I liked,’ said Cordier, who mentored her in modern art and then gave her free rein.

They were a good double act: Cordier, an unconventional showman, was fully immersed in the avant-garde, while de Broglie brought in the beau monde. Their dinners were legendary. Museum curators expecting an evening with Jean Dubuffet or Roland Penrose might be startled to find themselves sitting next to a spy, or a novelist they had spent years trying to meet.

In many respects, de Broglie’s family had form in this regard. Her grandmother was Dolly Radziwiłł, the eccentric society hostess of the interwar years who counted Marcel Proust, Sergei Diaghilev, Jean Cocteau and the pianist Misia Sert among her friends.

Dolly was a keen supporter of the loosely termed Ecole de Paris, the immigrant artists, such as Chaïm Soutine and Amedeo Modigliani, who congregated around Montparnasse. De Broglie was similarly courageous in her artistic choices. ‘She reminded me of her Polish ancestors, galloping forward, sabres in hand, unstoppable,’ said the art historian Clémentine Gustin-Gomez.

In 1968, de Broglie’s life took an unexpected turn when she met Christie’s chairman Peter Chance. Impressed by her knowledge, her spirit of adventure — she often travelled to far-flung places, from Siberia to Togo — and her intellectual curiosity, he suggested she consider becoming Christie’s representative in Paris. ‘I accepted with some trepidation,’ she admitted, having considered the auction world too much of a boys’ club, with few prospects for women.

The qualities that had made her such a natural presence in Parisian high society, however, proved invaluable. For the next 40 years, de Broglie skilfully translated British auction norms for a French audience, seamlessly integrating Christie’s into the social fabric of the city and, in the process, becoming its first Chairwoman, Europe. As the businessman and art dealer Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand recalls, ‘the value of her presence was a sign of approval recognised by everyone’.

Parties were often held in de Broglie’s art-filled apartment on Rue Washington, where her beloved Jack Russell, Séraphine, held court. The animal was immortalised in a coffee table designed by Diego Giacometti, one of the many artefacts offered in Collection Jeanne-Marie de Broglie on 30 September 2026 at Christie’s in Paris.

The sale brings together paintings, furniture and jewellery from the princess’s Parisian apartment and her summer home, La Vignerme, in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue — described by Charles Cator, Christie’s deputy chairman, Europe, as ‘a paradise — an ancient place with an intriguing history, where she conjured up a setting to give infinite pleasure to her friends’.

Many of the works offered for sale are by artists she also considered friends, including Dubuffet, Georg Baselitz and Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, alongside works by earlier masters such as Edgar Degas and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She had an ability to spot talent well before it was recognised by the market. She bought paintings by the Belgian Symbolist Léon Spilliaert and works by Dado. A highlight of her jewellery collection is a beautiful diamond Maltese cross given to her by her children.

When she died last September at the age of 96, there were many tributes. The Louvre curator Victor Hundsbuckler described her as a pioneer: ‘She was of that generation of women who fought to extract themselves from the demands of their era to live freely.’

Collection Jeanne-Marie de Broglie is on view 25-30 September 2026 at Christie’s in Paris