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拍品專文
Pierre-Émile Legrain loved learning on his own, and his literary, artistic, and political curiosity knew no bounds after his father allowed him to leave school and attend classes at the Germain Pilon school, where he studied alongside the painters Robert Delaunay and Robert Bonfils. From an early age, drawing, whether satirical or commercial, opened doors for him, notably to the magazine Le Témoin, directed by Paul Iribe in 1909. The following year, the trunk-maker Louis Vuitton enlisted his services to illustrate the company’s commercial catalogs and advertising inserts, even going so far as to produce a dressing table and perfume bottles of his design, which were presented at the 1921 Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris.
But after the war, Pierre-Émile Legrain found himself without work or resources. Discharged from military service in 1917 because of chronic nephritis, he turned to Jacques Doucet, the couturier of fashionable Paris, patron of the arts, and major supporter of Paul Iribe, with whom Legrain had worked as an assistant several years earlier. Doucet invited him to set up in the dining room of his mansion on Avenue du Bois to create bindings for his extensive library. Though a novice, Pierre-Émile Legrain accepted the challenge. Despite difficult beginnings during which he had to learn and absorb the techniques of traditional bookbinders, Legrain succeeded in creating works that delighted Jacques Doucet with their originality: “Bookbinding is sinking into pastiche and imitation. It must be rescued.” This is precisely what Legrain accomplished brilliantly, overturning all established conventions. From then on, he spent every afternoon at Doucet’s home and produced more than 378 designs for the couturier, who found in this cultivated and curious young artist the ideal collaborator to whom he could entrust the realization and arrangement of his new showcase for contemporary art, the Studio, in Neuilly. But this was not the only field revolutionized by the thirty-year-old artist. Drawing on his experience as a bookbinder, he also applied his art to the framing of works acquired by Jacques Doucet. In the same spirit as his bindings, he established a dialogue between the frame and the painting, adorning them with precious materials, unprecedented asymmetry, and perforated metal.
Following Jacques Doucet’s example, Jeanne Tachard, the celebrated Parisian milliner, and Pierre Meyer, an important music-hall artist, dancer, and singer, gave Legrain free rein to decorate their interiors in the early 1920s.
When Maurice Martin du Gard called upon Pierre-Émile Legrain, he was not merely seeking an interior designer but a scholar. A pioneer of popular journalism, Martin du Gard had launched his magazine Les Nouvelles Littéraires in 1922 and also directed L’Art Vivant. Who better than the craftsman who had produced more than 370 bookbindings could understand the necessity of integrating 2,000 volumes into a refined and uncluttered environment conducive to both work and the reception of major artistic figures?
Thus, in 1927, Pierre-Émile Legrain completed four rooms for the apartment at 64 Avenue de la Bourdonnais in Paris: the entrance hall, the study, the dining room, and a bedroom. As a true interior designer, he handled the wall coverings himself; here he covered walls with cork or plain silver wallpaper, there he incorporated indirect lighting systems, and he designed furniture with clean lines reminiscent of the interwoven forms and materials of his bookbindings.
The study presents a severe atmosphere: the furniture is made of black-stained oak with a ceruse finish. The imposing desk, composed of multiple asymmetrical trapezoids, corresponds to the large armchair upholstered in black leather with an off-center front base, while the visitor chairs are equally intimidating.
In contrast to this dark, camphor-scented cocoon where literary criticism and articles would come into being, the dining room is a place for gathering and entertaining. Pierre-Émile Legrain therefore chose a very light wood, sycamore, which he combined with large mirrored surfaces and mahogany. The futuristic construction of this room as early as 1927 foreshadows the modernist works of the Union des Artistes Modernes, perfectly aligned with the principles advocated by the “Groupe des Cinq” - founded the previous year alongside Pierre Chareau, Jean Puiforcat, Raymond Templier, and Dominique - in opposition to the classicism of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs.
The console is a remarkable example: slender projecting rectangles animate the two shelves entirely veneered in this light and warm sycamore, while the two triangular mirrored legs rest on nickel-plated metal feet with conical bodies and are supported at the back by mahogany uprights.
However, the most innovative element of this piece lies in the treatment of its top surface. Pierre-Émile Legrain chose to leave the upper portions of the two triangular legs visible, thereby creating two mirrored surfaces within the sycamore, once again recalling the interplay of materials and forms found in his bindings and breaking with the convention of a tabletop made from a single wood species. In the preparatory drawings, like designs for book covers, the lines are bold and strongly Cubist. The triangular forms of the legs and feet echo one another, reflecting light through different materials, while the warmth of the sycamore and the multiplication of mirrors lighten the appearance of the piece.
Recalling a palmwood console created for Jeanne Tachard around 1920, Martin du Gard’s sideboard is a unique work within Pierre-Émile Legrain’s oeuvre. It represents both a futuristic statement perfectly in harmony with the wishes of the patron and a tour de force by the young designer-bookbinder, who died two years later at the age of 39, leaving a sense of incompletion on the Parisian Art Deco scene.
—Amélie Marcilhac
Expert in 20th-century decorative arts.
But after the war, Pierre-Émile Legrain found himself without work or resources. Discharged from military service in 1917 because of chronic nephritis, he turned to Jacques Doucet, the couturier of fashionable Paris, patron of the arts, and major supporter of Paul Iribe, with whom Legrain had worked as an assistant several years earlier. Doucet invited him to set up in the dining room of his mansion on Avenue du Bois to create bindings for his extensive library. Though a novice, Pierre-Émile Legrain accepted the challenge. Despite difficult beginnings during which he had to learn and absorb the techniques of traditional bookbinders, Legrain succeeded in creating works that delighted Jacques Doucet with their originality: “Bookbinding is sinking into pastiche and imitation. It must be rescued.” This is precisely what Legrain accomplished brilliantly, overturning all established conventions. From then on, he spent every afternoon at Doucet’s home and produced more than 378 designs for the couturier, who found in this cultivated and curious young artist the ideal collaborator to whom he could entrust the realization and arrangement of his new showcase for contemporary art, the Studio, in Neuilly. But this was not the only field revolutionized by the thirty-year-old artist. Drawing on his experience as a bookbinder, he also applied his art to the framing of works acquired by Jacques Doucet. In the same spirit as his bindings, he established a dialogue between the frame and the painting, adorning them with precious materials, unprecedented asymmetry, and perforated metal.
Following Jacques Doucet’s example, Jeanne Tachard, the celebrated Parisian milliner, and Pierre Meyer, an important music-hall artist, dancer, and singer, gave Legrain free rein to decorate their interiors in the early 1920s.
When Maurice Martin du Gard called upon Pierre-Émile Legrain, he was not merely seeking an interior designer but a scholar. A pioneer of popular journalism, Martin du Gard had launched his magazine Les Nouvelles Littéraires in 1922 and also directed L’Art Vivant. Who better than the craftsman who had produced more than 370 bookbindings could understand the necessity of integrating 2,000 volumes into a refined and uncluttered environment conducive to both work and the reception of major artistic figures?
Thus, in 1927, Pierre-Émile Legrain completed four rooms for the apartment at 64 Avenue de la Bourdonnais in Paris: the entrance hall, the study, the dining room, and a bedroom. As a true interior designer, he handled the wall coverings himself; here he covered walls with cork or plain silver wallpaper, there he incorporated indirect lighting systems, and he designed furniture with clean lines reminiscent of the interwoven forms and materials of his bookbindings.
The study presents a severe atmosphere: the furniture is made of black-stained oak with a ceruse finish. The imposing desk, composed of multiple asymmetrical trapezoids, corresponds to the large armchair upholstered in black leather with an off-center front base, while the visitor chairs are equally intimidating.
In contrast to this dark, camphor-scented cocoon where literary criticism and articles would come into being, the dining room is a place for gathering and entertaining. Pierre-Émile Legrain therefore chose a very light wood, sycamore, which he combined with large mirrored surfaces and mahogany. The futuristic construction of this room as early as 1927 foreshadows the modernist works of the Union des Artistes Modernes, perfectly aligned with the principles advocated by the “Groupe des Cinq” - founded the previous year alongside Pierre Chareau, Jean Puiforcat, Raymond Templier, and Dominique - in opposition to the classicism of the Société des Artistes Décorateurs.
The console is a remarkable example: slender projecting rectangles animate the two shelves entirely veneered in this light and warm sycamore, while the two triangular mirrored legs rest on nickel-plated metal feet with conical bodies and are supported at the back by mahogany uprights.
However, the most innovative element of this piece lies in the treatment of its top surface. Pierre-Émile Legrain chose to leave the upper portions of the two triangular legs visible, thereby creating two mirrored surfaces within the sycamore, once again recalling the interplay of materials and forms found in his bindings and breaking with the convention of a tabletop made from a single wood species. In the preparatory drawings, like designs for book covers, the lines are bold and strongly Cubist. The triangular forms of the legs and feet echo one another, reflecting light through different materials, while the warmth of the sycamore and the multiplication of mirrors lighten the appearance of the piece.
Recalling a palmwood console created for Jeanne Tachard around 1920, Martin du Gard’s sideboard is a unique work within Pierre-Émile Legrain’s oeuvre. It represents both a futuristic statement perfectly in harmony with the wishes of the patron and a tour de force by the young designer-bookbinder, who died two years later at the age of 39, leaving a sense of incompletion on the Parisian Art Deco scene.
—Amélie Marcilhac
Expert in 20th-century decorative arts.