Antiques Trade Gazette 61
a top Spring destination
Above: from the Art Nouveau era of the Château de Gourdon collections comes this Nénuphars bedroom suite and side tables by Louis Majorelle c.1905 estimated at €1m-1.5m.
Below: Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann’s black lacquer and chrome desk from 1939 estimated at €2m-3m in the Château de Gourdon Sale.
Above: this 18th century Russian silver-mounted and ivory-inlaid commode bearing the cipher of Catherine the Great and the arms of Novgorod is estimated at €500,000-700,000 in Gros & Delettrez’s sale of the former collection of Paul-Louis Weiller.
WEILLER COLLECTION
FIVE days after Christie’s bring down the gavel on the Château de Gourdon Collections, Drouot étude Gros & Delettrez will be offering an ensemble formed in an earlier era of collecting. Some 750 lots from the collections
of aviation pioneer, First World War hero, industrialist and arts patron Commandant Paul-Louis Weiller (1893- 1993) will go under the hammer from April 5 to 8. Amongst his many other interests,
President du Conseil. There is also the chaise longue on lacquer ‘skis’ created in the same year for the Maharaja of Indore, a major patron of the decorative arts. Each is estimated at €2m-3m. The Château’s haul from Jean Dunand,
master of lacquer and metalwork in the Deco period, includes the lacquered panelling for an entire smoking room commissioned c.1928-29 for Colette Aboucaya’s Rue Monceau apartment and designed around a cubist interpretation of the palm tree motif (estimate at €3m-4m) and a games table made for the couturier Madeleine Vionnet, with a set of chairs (€3m-5m). There are no fewer than 15 pieces
made by Eileen Gray, including several made for her own use like her ‘Brick’ screen and the floor light from her apartment on Rue Bonaparte (estimate €400,000-600,000). The Chateau’s modernist collections are just as significant in their field
with works by a roster of names from the Union des Artistes Modernes, the group responsible for promulgating the modernist aesthetic in France in the years between the wars. An entire catalogue and session is devoted to UAM designs and Modernism that includes 30 pieces by UAM chairman Robert Mallet-Stevens, light fittings and drawings by Pierre Chareau, and groups by René Herbst and Eckart Muthesius. To complete the picture, Laurent
Négro also assembled a reference library of journals and photographs devoted to the Modernist era which have their own separate catalogue and session in Christie’s auction. In addition to this decorative arts
odyssey, the sale also includes a separate session of some 260 lots of arms and armour, Old Masters, and objets d’art from the Château collection assembled in an earlier era by the collector’s father.
www.christies.com
both business and aesthetic, Commandant Weiller bought houses that he liked to furnish and this sale features material from three of his residences including the Hotel des
Ambassadeurs de Hollande in the Rue Vieille du Temple where he set up his foundation. The sale at Drouot Richelieu is
estimated to make €8m-10m. The consignment has three main
thematic areas. The first two days are devoted to period furniture, objets d’art, Old Masters and Asian art, while the third day is devoted to silver and jewellery and the fourth to books and manuscripts. The latter is a collecting area where
the Commandant was well known in the trade and which will include letters from Emma Hamilton to Nelson’s sister Susan and other family members; a letter from Napoleon to Josephine and an illuminated book of hours of c.1500 by Jean Poyet estimated at €400,000- 500,000. Another interest was Imperial
Russian works from the era of Catherine the Great which is represented in the Weiller collections in silver, literature and furniture, as pictured here.
www.gros-delettrez.com
Left: one of the highlights of the Weiller collection at Gros & Delettrez is this Imperial rhyton-shaped jade vase engraved with a poem by the Qianlong Emperor, two of the Emperor’s seals and an inscription for the year 1785. Estimate on request.
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