BLONDEL de GAGNY Augustin (EN)

Biographical article

Augustin Blondel (1695-1776) belonged to a family from the province of Dauphiné. Born in Lyon, he was the son of Joseph Blondel (1661-1726), commissioner general of the Navy, and of Madeleine de Ferriol, whose brother Augustin was the receiver general of finances of the Dauphiné. In 1600, Blondel’s father had acquired the position of advisor to the king, serving as “triennial treasurer of the buildings, gardens and factories of His Majesty”, and then in 1706 the seigneury of Gagny, but from 1716 his financial situation began to deteriorate and in 1720 he went bankrupt. Thus Augustin Blondel's fortune did not originate with his own family. He had already settled in Paris in 1720 when he married Marguerite Barbier, who brought in assets estimated at 50,000 pounds. Of the three children resulting from this union, only the eldest, Barthélémy-Augustin Blondel d'Azaincourt (1719-1794), was to become a collector (Léonard, the second son, died in 1754 and their sister Anne-Henriette was placed under guardianship in 1759). Originally living in the quarter of the Louvre, he bought a house in rue d'Anjou in 1723, which he had Pierre Contant d´Ivry (1698-1777) rebuild in 1733-1734 . Meanwhile, at the time of his wife's death in 1730, he was reported to have been  living in rue Saint-Honoré, and to have moved to the Marais district in the early 1740s, first to rue Saint-Louis, then place Royale in the hotel de Châtillon, which he bought in 1741 and occupied from 1742 to 1758. Even if his fortune undoubtedly stemmed from his interests in the management of the Poudres et Salpêtres (from 1730 to 1775), it owed its success primarily to the protection of Minister Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville (1701-1794, comptroller general of finances in 1745), of whom he was a close confidant. The position of treasurer of the Caisse des amortissements (which became the Caisse des arréragesin 1764), which he obtained in 1749 through this contact, considerably increased his fortune and income, and enabled him to collect on a grand scale. Like many financiers, he then invested heavily in land and acquired the seigneury of Bonneuil, adjacent to his property in Garges - as well as near to Machault, who resided in Arnouville – where he built an Italian pavilion, which he furnished richly. In 1752, thanks to Machault, he also obtained one of the duties of intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs in accordance with his artistic tastes, as a lover of music.

In 1758, he left the Marais district to settle in a hôtel particulier at 15 place Vendôme (now the Hotel Ritz), which he rented from another financier, Pierre-Charles de Villette (1700-1765), treasurer of the Extraordinaire des guerres. He lived there for twenty years, until his death in 1776, where he occupied the first floor and shared the hotel with his first clerk, Claude Darras (1717-1788), who succeeded him. As his son, Barthélémy-Augustin Blondel d´Azaincourt, showed no inclination for finance, Darras inherited his office. Augustin Blondel had stipulated in his will that upon his death his entire collection was to be sold for the benefit of his two heirs (including his daughter Anne-Henriette). The expert Remy was in charge of the sale which took place over several weeks between December 1776 and January 1777. (For the sources of this biography, see the author's article, “L’hôtel de Blondel de Gagny (1695-1776), place Vendôme, décor intérieur, ameublement et objets d’art”, Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, forthcoming).

Augustin Blondel’s Collection

The collection’s fame is largely due to the Parisian guides of the time, primarily to the long descriptions by Hébert in 1766, whichoccupied 43 pages of the Dictionnaire pittoresque et historique de Paris, a veritable inventory provided to the author by Blondel de Gagny himself (taken up by Courajaud in the preface to Livre Journal de Lazare Duvaux), and by Dezallier d'Argenville (Voyage Pittoresque de Paris) in the 1757 and 1770 editions. Added to this is the catalog of the posthumous sale that took place in his house during the winter 1776-1777. In addition, the collection was largely open upon request to visitors, which greatly contributed to its fame. The most important part of his collection, the one that connoisseurs and tourists alike prioritised visiting, was the collection of paintings.

This collection included more than 470 works from the three schools, in addition to some fifty gouaches and miniatures. The northern schools, which were in the majority (238 paintings) and constituted the collection’s crowing glory, were represented by paintings by Gabriel Metsu, Philips Wouverman, Jan Wynants, Adriaen van Ostade, Gérard Dou, Gerard Ter Borch, Nicolaes Berchem, Jan van der Heyden, Rembrandt and David Téniers, by whom there were many. The French school included 8 pastels and 127 paintings, mostly modern (Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater, François Boucher, Louis-Michel van Loo, Pierre-Antoine De Machy, Joseph Vernet and Francesco Casanova) with some beautiful 17th century paintings by Nicolas Poussin (Jupiter enfant nourri par la chèvre Amalthée), Claude Gelée (Vues d’un port et du Campo Vaccino), Laurent de la Hyre and Pierre Patel.The Italian school, the least well represented, included 51 paintings, mostly landscapes or architectural pairs, painted by Canaletto, Gaspare Vanvitelli, Giovanni-Paolo Panini, Andrea Locatelli and others. The guidebooks of the time also drew attention to the collection of “the rarest and best restored bronzes” including groups of baroque abductions (by François Girardon and Jean Bologne), Bacchantes attributed to Michel Anguier, l'Air by Étienne Le Hongre,groups of animal combat or bronzes after the antique (Laocoon, Dying Gladiator, the Capitoline lions, the Nile and the Tiber), groups by Corneille van Clève (1645-1732) and several bronzes by Robert Le Lorrain (1666-1743)): Venus and Adonis, Vertumnus and Pomona, Andromeda, a faun and a dryad. Among the marbles l’Amour by Jacques-François Saly (1717-1766; musée du Louvre) and a small, precious Venus by Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert (1727-1788) were noted.

Yet collecting was a vocation that Blondel de Gagny came to later in life. At his wife’s death in 1730, the inventory described modest furniture along with some poor paintings, all of which was sold soon thereafter, and no porcelain or artefacts. Blondel began his collection when he was a widower in his early forties. His first purchases of paintings took place at the sale of the Comtesse de Verrue (1670-1737) in 1737. In the 1740s, he was advised by the dealer Edmé-François Gersaint (1694-1750), who was buying in the auctions over which he presided as an expert (La Roque sale in 1745, Angran de Fonspertuis in 1747, where he purchased various porcelains and lacquered furniture). The only known links with the great merchants-merciers of the time are some references to purchases of furniture and objects entered into the accounting books of the dealer Lazare Duvaux (1703-1758) between 1748 and 1756. It is likely that for the purchase of porcelain he had called upon the second-rate dealerJean-Louis Beroin-Villercy (named merchant-mercier in 1751). Indeed, it is this unknown figure who, during the posthumous inventory of 1776, was put in charge of appraising the porcelains, which was his expertise according to the Almanach Dauphin of 1772: “VILLERCY, rue Saint-Honoré, near rue de Roule, a shop with porcelain from India, China, Japan, & Saxony, mounted in various fashions, fireplaces, overmantels, mirrors, cabinetry, gilded lamps, furniture, paintings, bronzes, busts, etc.” In 1749, his collection was already remarkable enough to warrant mention in a Parisian guide, Mémorial de Paris et de ses environs. It refers above all to his porcelains from Saxony and the quality of the gilt bronze mounts: “[The curious will notice] the old and modern porcelains and, especially from Saxony, the finest selection, where the pleasantness and taste of the mounts seem to rival that of the pieces they accompany.” He was then living in Place des Vosges in the hôtel de Châtillon. A comparison of editions of Dezallier's guide from 1757, when he lived at Place des Vosges, and from 1770, when he was at Place Vendôme, demonstrates how much the collection had grown during the intervening decade. The 1757 guide indicates that “nearly 60 paintings have been engraved from this fine collection”, while that of 1770 mentions nearly 200 such engravings. In 1758 Blondel signed the rental lease for a hôtel in Place Vendôme (now the Hotel Ritz), which he kept until the end of his life. He set up his offices on the ground floor and mezzanine, while he reserved the first floor for his collections. The whole collection was housed on one level, in the three salons on the place Vendôme, the bedroom, the two small mezzanine rooms of the service apartment at the back, and the three cabinets along the courtyard. It was prodigiously crowded. Paintings covered all vertical surfaces, hanging in three rows against a backdrop of green or crimson damask, sometimes even on doors, cupboards, tapestries or in place of a mirror over the fireplace. Below, the space was occupied by rows of dark furniture in Japanese lacquer or tortoiseshell marquetry. Almost all the furniture was part of the collection, the only useable furnishings being a few chairs. Among the major works of André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) or his followers we can note two chests of drawers with double drawers of the type found in the Louvre, a pair of consoles decorated with masks of rams, a pair of quiver sheaths, a rack for medals and several three-leaf armoires. More recent furniture included pieces by Charles Cressent (1685-1767) in the rococo style: a desk with serre-papiers, a console and cartel depicting amor chased by time; or by Bernard II Vanrisamburgh (after 1696-1766): a chest of drawers in marquetry, corner decorations, a small table with a porcelain top — associated with neoclassical furniture, such as an ebony display case based on drawings by Charles de Wailly (1730-1798).

Laquer Furniture and Objects

Like his contemporaries, Blondel collected lacquerware from the Far East, in the form of cutout panels veneered onto French furniture or small objects. His sale included a dozen small objects in lacquer, mainly boxes or cassettes of “old lacquer” (Japanese lacquer) with “two oval potpourris of Coromandel lacquer” and a small shelf of black, red and gold lacquer. The most valuable boxes came from the sale of Madame de Pompadour in 1764 and were mounted in gold. The others were mounted in gilt bronze with circles, chains or pine cones in gilt bronze. Among the lacquer furniture from Japan, two pieces featured neoclassical gilt bronze decoration dating from around 1760-1770: a pair of cabinets by Joseph Baumhauer (sold in Paris, M^o Couturier on 12-12-1984, no. 108), as well as a drop-leaf secretary “with terraces, houses & animals in gold”. The others, a “chest in the shape of a lacquered hutch” and a pair of corner elements by Bernard II Van Risamburgh (Talleyrand sale, Paris,29-05-1899, n^o 276), had been acquired at the La Roque sale in 1745 and at Lazare Duvaux in 1756 respectively. Other pieces of furniture were veneered in Chinese lacquer, such as the small table with porcelain plate n^o 953 or the three library cabinets in satinwood adorned with embossed lacquer. These lacquer panels featured reliefs in soapstone, which were described as showing “figures, birds, flowers and vases.” Blondel seems to have had a predilection for this very rare type of lacquer since he also had three Indian wood cassettes adorned with the same kind of soapstone slabs, as well as a “pagoda”, a “Chinese observatory”, and four small pictures in soapstone. The preference of the amateurs of the time for Japanese lacquer is clearly reflected in the prices obtained by these different objects in 1776: £680 for Joseph Baumhauer’s cabinets, £751 for the secretary and £1,041 for the corner elements; compared with £317 and £360 for each of the Chinese lacquer cabinets.

The accumulation was so great that quantities of porcelain and marble vases were placed on the floor, along the walls, between the legs of the consoles or to the sides of the chests of drawers, which must have made circulation difficult within the three salons along the place Vendome. Other objects, porcelain or small sculptures, invaded the fireplaces and numerous small consoles in gilded wood hung from the woodwork.

Porcelain

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The quantity of porcelain was prodigious, comparable to the inventories of Paris’s wealthiest marchands-merciers. The auction catalog included no less than 439 lots of porcelain, from China, Japan, and Saxony, valued at nearly £60,000, mixing shaped pieces, tableware and animals. Of these, oriental porcelain made up more than 330 lots (including from Garges) or nearly a third of the 1,136 lots in the auction. The approximate terminology of the time and the vague terminology in the catalog do not allow us to identify with certainty the types of porcelain described (“ancients porcelains… of the first kind and of first quality, from ancient China, etc.”), and frequently confuses porcelain from Japan and China. Nevertheless, we can identify, thanks to Sylvia Vriz ("Le duc d’Aumont et les porcelaines d’Extrême-Orient de la collection de Jean de Jullienne,Revue de la société des Amis du musée national de la Céramique, no 22, 2013, p. 91-92) two large Lisbets from Japan from the 1767 sale of Jean de Julienne (1686-1766), or two marbled red porcelain vases with handles in the shape of children (ill . 2). If the porcelains with Kakiemon decoration (described in the catalogs as “porcelain of first quality and first kind”) were numerous, what clearly becomes evident is a marked taste for sky blue porcelain. These represented 29 lots, grouping together 65 individual pieces, many of which were small unassembled objects of low value: crabs, peacocks, carp, chimaeras, parrots, cats, lions, pagodas and “laughers”.

The most beautiful pieces had been given a gilt-bronze mount, such as bottles n^o 699 (28 cm) with handles of satyr mascarons, the parrots n^o 694; or the crouching cats n^o 683. The most valuable were the mounted pot-pourris shell supported by two chimeras, n^o 701, which sold for £1597 to the financier Nicolas Beaujon (1718-1786; ill.); and n^o 702, two 19 cm high nacelles topped with small shells, sold for £2,400 to Pierre Gouthière (1732-1813) who modified the gilt bronze mount and sold them to Jean-Baptiste Clermont d'Amboise (1728-1792), and which are to be found today in the collection of the Louvre. Fewer in number (17 lots comprising 27 pieces), the celadon porcelain consisted primarily of valuable pieces richly mounted in gilt bronze and often fitted with precious marble plinths. There were in particular three pairs of mounted "dolphin" vases and other beautiful vases in embossed or ribbed porcelain. A vase of “celadon background with bouquets” contained a rotating clock, and was sold for £750 to the singer Sophie Arnoult (1740-1802) — a very large vase. Unlike in the paintings section, the expert did not bother to mention the provenances of the porcelain, except for lot 642, three Japanese porcelain pot-pourris bought at Madame de Pompadour's sale. Some pieces were forgeries or imitations, such as two bottles (lot n^o 523), of which the expert notes: “They are suspected to have been made in Saxony.”

Gilt-Bronze Mounts and Marble Pedestals

Even if much of the porcelain was simply placed on gilded wooden bases, many contemporaries noticed the richness of the gilt-bronze mounts adorning the most beautiful pieces. Blondel de Gagny had begun to form his collection in the late 1730s and continued making purchases until the 1770s, for some 40 years of collecting. Such was the span that the style of these mounts ranged from Regency to neoclassicism. Some mounts, probably dating from the years 1720 to 1740, had a circle and silver foot (n^o 526, 534, 645, 665), while others were made “with six consoles of gilt bronze” (n^o  511, 515 ).

Mounts with “fruit on the lid” (n^o 510), with handles “composed of leaves and fruit” or with “a Chinese hat on the gilt-bronze lid” (n^o 511) can be noted in the rococo style. There were mounts with gilt bronze reeds for trouts (n^o 626) or, on the base of the large celadon vase n^o  680, with dolphin motifs. The shells of lot n^o 584 were “garnished with reeds and foliage, on a base with gilt bronze rocks”. The potpourris of lot n^o 634 were “decorated with handles with hunting attributes.” In the neoclassical style, there are mounted pieces with pine cones on the lids (no.512, 562, 565), others adorned with “chains, rings and open necks” (no 535), or others with handles in the form of snakes (n^o 672,725). For some exceptional pieces, thanks to Hébert's guide, we know the bronziers who created the gilt-bronze mounts: François-Nicolas Vassoult (1704-1793), who also made the exceptional mounts for several vases of marble and porphyry for de Gagny; or even Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain (1719-1791) and Gallien (undoubtedly Edme-Jean, 1720 - apr. 1782).

Occasionally, certain porcelains were mounted on Boulle pedestals originally intended for small bronzes, such as n^o 554, a “whale-bearing pagoda of old porcelain treated on a marquetry tripod garnished with gilt bronze of Boule” or bottles no. 762 placed on “Boule tripods”. Many pieces were mounted or simply placed on marble plinths sometimes embellished with gilt-bronze moulding or decoration. This peculiarity, rare among eighteenth-century enthusiasts, can be explained by Gagny’s placement of many of his porcelain pieces on the salon floor, against paneling and between the legs of the furniture; these marble plinths would have ensured their stability.