CAHEN D'ANVERS Hugo (EN)

A Franco-Italian Life

Hugo Cahen d'Anvers (1879?-1956) grew up in a privileged environment, as he moved between Paris and Rome and enjoyed extensive social ties through his family. He frequented the young people of the aristocracy, the Italian Royal Court and the Jewish bourgeoisie of which his family was a member. His grandfather, Meyer Joseph (1804-1881), who had adopted “d'Anvers” upon establishing himself in Paris (1849), was one of the founders of the banking network, which evolved into the BNP Paribas group. His father Edward (1832-1894) had been one of the major authorities in Rome’s urban planning after the fall of the papacy. The income from this career had enabled Edwardto buy a huge estate between Umbria, Tuscany and Lazio that was dominated by the castle of Torre Alfina, to which he had linked his title of marquis (Legé A. S., 2022). The childhood of Hugo and his older brother Rodolfo (1869-1955) was marked by the premature loss of their mother Christina Spartali (1846-1884), of Greek Orthodox origin and muse of Pre-Raphaelite painters, who had served notably as model for The Princess from the Land of Porcelain by James McNeill Whistler (Freer Gallery of Art, Washington; see Tsui A., 2010). Having fallen into a severe depression, she did not survive the era’s treatments: morphine, chloral hydrate and electroshock.

Hugo Cahen d’Anvers attended the Military School of Orvieto from 1890 and continued to participate in the army periodically until 1918. While his brother continued the development of the castle at Torre Alfina, Hugo inherited the slope of the estate facing Umbria upon his father’s death. He built a villa near the village of Allerona, the Villa della Selva, and attempted to transform his land into a flourishing agroforestry operation (Rome, Arch. Not., Reg. 2935-431, rep. 1451). He invested in agriculture, animal husbandry and timber. Alongside a family of local notables, the Bernardini, he founded a cooperative cellar and exported Umbrian wine and olive oil (Rome, Cassa di Risparmio, Sez. XVI 1 , b. 23, fasc. 143). Hugo was strongly attached to the local community and was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit for Work in 1900 (Il Comune, 1910, p. 3). At the same time, he married Ida Bertinoro, an Italian, likely Catholicwho was born in Naples in 1879 (Urbani C., 2002, p. 186). The couple, who had no descendants, settled in their new villa in 1905 and unofficially adopted two children: Gino Raffaele Valentino Sezzi (b.1904) and Egle Carletti. Five years later, Hugo Cahen d'Anvers joined the city council of Allerona. In 1915, although enlisted in Verona in the 6th Alpine Regiment, he obtained and enthusiastically accepted his first mandate as mayor. Nevertheless, perhaps without his knowing it, the village notables had trapped him in a maelstrom of responsibilities which, in the post-war period, would turn into a cascade of debts. In his institutional role, Hugo Cahen d’Anvers found himself representing the state alongside the local community and his own interests. He had to respond to requisitions carried out by the military authorities, the expenses linked to the subsistence of veterans, and the debts of his sharecroppers (Legé A.S., 2022, p. 510-512).

A wave of strikes that broke out in the summer of 1919 only worsened his situation. In this period, which was later dubbed the Biennio rosso, the Orvieto region was upset by the actions of several unions, sometimes bringing together four or five thousand peasants. Facing a precarious economic situation, Hugo Cahen d'Anvers preferred to abandon his domain and return to France. The Villa della Selva was sold on July 23, 1920 (Rome, Arch. Not., Reg. 4363-187 / 273, n. 87018). He settled with his wife at number 10, avenue Alphand. Paris seemed full of promise. Appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1928 (Paris, Arch. Lég. d’hon., dossier étrangers, s.c.), he continued to inhabit an Italophile milieu, close to the embassy where his brother Rodolfo then worked. His wife Ida, who hosted a salon, regularly welcomed the wife of the future ambassador Emmanuel Peretti della Rocca (1870-1958). Also among their guests were the American Ambassador Myron T. Herrick (1854-1929) and the Marquise de Casa Maury (1898-1986), mistress of the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII of England.

These splendours came to an abrupt end in the 1940s. Endangered by the horrors of the war and by his Jewish origins, Hugo Cahen d’Anvers found refuge in the free zone of Nice wherehe passed away on January 24, 1956 (Nice, État civil, Acte de décès, n. 302). His ashes were placed in the cemetery of Saint-Georges in Geneva, next to those of his brother and, later, those of the latter's adopted son (and companion), Urbain Papilloud (1895-1987).

The Taste for Travel

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Hugo Cahen d´Anvers took advantage of the fortune that he had inherited from his father to devote himself to his passion for travel. In 1900, he took his wife aboard the Empress of Japan, a steamer also known as the Queen of the Pacific which regularly linked the coast of Vancouver to Japan. The following years brought more transatlantic trips, as well as extended stays: in 1952, he lived in Shanghai (Legé A.S., 2020, p. 500). His interests were also reflected in his early enrolment in the Touring Club de France and in participation in some unique expeditions. On April 27, 1911, the aeronaut Jules Dubois (1862-1928) won the Robert-Denoncin Cup of the Aero-Club de France after completing a hot-air balloon flight of 1,010 kilometres. During his first test, on June 20, 1910, Dubois was not alone: ​​he was accompanied by Hugo Cahen d’Anvers on this dizzying mission, which started at the Lamotte-Breuil hydrogen gas plant in the Oise region (L'Aérophile, 1911, p. 373). Hugo was admitted to the Aero-Club of France in 1909, so he had already made at least one trip in 1910. On July 20, he flew in a balloon, with Dubois and their respective wives, on a course covering the 64 kilometers separating the Parisian suburbs from the village of Morville-en-Beauce in the department of the Loiret (L'Aréophile, 1909, p. 381). In 1910, he became associated with the Automobile Club de France. A few years later, in 1935, he went to Algeria and Morocco, where he worked as a photographer. Accompanied by Edmond Chaix (1866-1960), president of the Touring Club from 1927 to 1938, Hugo Cahen d’Anvers and the rest of the group were welcomed by the colonial authorities of the two countries and completed a route of 6,000 kilometres, crossing the Sahara. An article published in La Revue du Touring Club de France, which is illustrated by several photographs taken by Hugo, offers a beautiful record of this stay in the Maghreb (Chaix E., 1935, p. 261-267). Two years later, in 1937, he was even bolder. With a caravan of twelve tourists, primarily of Belgian origin, he departed for the Congo. His group disembarked at the port of Oran, Algeria, and crossed Africa by land. Theyreached the towns of Gao, Mali, Niamey, Niger, and again Fort-Lamy, i.e. N'Djamena, the current capital of Chad. The journey continued through what was French Equatorial Africa, and they reached the city of Bangui, today the capital of the Central African Republic (Les Annales coloniales, 1937, p. 2). Two prominent figures from the time were close to Hugo Cahen d’Anvers: Martin Birnbaum (1878-1970), an art dealer and associate patron of Scott & Fowles, and American artist Carl Werntz (1874-1944). The latter, a pupil of Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), shared Hugo's passions for Asia and for travel. Much of Hugo’s cultural enrichment was owed to the people that he met abroad and the contacts that he established. Back in Paris or earlier in Allerona, Hugo combined the practical realities of the built environment with his fantasies of the Orient. In Italy, his multiple inspirations are reflected in the work of landscape artist Achille Duchêne (1866-1947), as well as in the collections of art dispersed throughout the villa. If his gardens, orchids and objects allowed him to remain close to his passions, the rationality of the spaces offered him an environment conducive to work.

The World in a Garden: Villa della Selva and the Orient

Rather than the severe and imposing volumes of the castle that his brother inherited in Torre Alfina, Hugo Cahen d’Anvers preferred the refined design of a villa surrounded by forest: the Villa della Selva. He lived there beginning on January 1, 1905, but construction work continued until 1912, with the addition of several outbuildings and service rooms. Its park, probably designed by Achille Duchêne, brought the charms of Japan to this corner of Umbria, through the installation of a garden in the Tsukiyama style. The miniaturised universe of hills, rivers and waterfalls brought together Hugo Cahen d’Anvers's passions for the Far East and for nature. Stone pools, crossed by a bridge and decorated with lanterns, extended along a drop that began near the villa’s entrance and extended to the level of the orangery. Fully consistent with his interest in Asia, this space was likely one of the first Japanese gardens realised in Italy: Marco Maovaz identifies its only antecedent in the garden of Villa Melzi, in Bellagio, on the shores of Lake Como (Maovaz M. & Romano B., 2002).

An aerial photograph preserved at the Aerofototeca della Regione Umbria gives an appreciation of the park’s complexity (Perugia, AR08 1977, STR.43). Its surface, nine-tenths of which was occupied by oak groves, was separated from the rest of the estate by hedges. Four distinct areas lent various allusions and suggestions to the villa. The regular garden was developed on the terrace. Two English-style areas allowed visitors to enjoy the supposedly wild nature and served as transitional elements between the villa and its woods. To the west lay the Japanese garden. On the opposite side lay an area devoted to tropical plants, with four large greenhouses; Hugo Cahen d’Anvers’s attention to in vivo specimens equalled his devotion to the arts of the Far East.

The taste for Japan, which had already hit Europe since the 1850s, also influenced the layout of parks at the beginning of the 20th century. Across the Channel, many Japanese gardens had sprouted up, such as those of Tully (Ireland), Exbury (England) and Cowden (Scotland). Others were created in France for Hugues Krafft (1853-1935) and the Duchess of Persigny (1832-1890) or by families of the financial bourgeoisie such as the Rothschilds and the Kahns. Hugo Cahen d'Anvers did not limit himself to the reproduction of environments from the Far East: his aesthetic reconstruction also encompasses the search for a certain botanical coherence. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, he participated in several horticultural exhibitions in France and Italy, presenting specimens of araceae Platyceryum, Anthurium scherzerianum Schott, and palm trees Phoenix roebelenii O'Brien. In Allerona, actively participating in the design of the green spaces, he planted several species of the Rhododendrum, Hydrangea, Paeonia, and Viburnum. Native to the mountainous areas of Central Asia, these plants gave his garden an oriental allure, while holding up in the climatic conditions of the Umbrian hills.

Two Sales, One Collection

In his father's Roman apartments at Palazzo Nunez-Torlonia, several porcelains generically identified as "Chinese" or "Japanese" anticipated the taste for the Far East that Hugo Cahen d’Anvers later developed. The passion for Asia evident in his projects of botany and travel was also reflected in his collections of art. In the years of japonisme and the great return of the Chinese arts which had already fascinated eighteenth-century Europe, Hugo's tastes developed in parallel with those of other family members. The collections of his aunt Louise Cahen d’Anvers, née Morpurgo,(1845-1926) were widely known. Another important collection was located with Emma Cahen d'Anvers (1833-1901) and her husband Édouard Levi Montefiore (1826-1907), in their hôtel particulier on avenue Marceau (Montefiore R., 1957, p. 22, 76 -77).

Apart from the few items that were excluded from the sale of the Villa della Selva in 1920, the exact nature of the collections that Hugo Cahen d'Anvers kept in Allerona seems destined to remain unknown. In 1934, his art works were dispersed in two auctions; catalogs from the Galerie Jean Charpentier (June 7-8, 249 lots) and the Hôtel Drouot (June 11-13, 417 lots) keep track of the objects’ provenance and suggest that the core of these collections was formed around 1925. The two sales collected 965,000 and 183,000 francs respectively.

Generally speaking, the two auction catalogs show Hugo Cahen d’Anvers’s predilection for Chinese objects, which retain a clear quantitative primacy over Japanese artefacts, or a small group of statuettes from Tibet and Burma. The set sold to the Jean Charpentier Gallery consisted of an abundance ofporcelain, cloisonné enamels, fabrics, furniture and precious stones. Alongside a large number of 19-century works is a set of particularly remarkable objects. Joining the Cahen d'Anvers collections in 1925, a large screen in cloisonné enamel, a perfume burner, a porcelain basin decorated with polychrome enamels and a large wooden psyche inlaid with mother-of-pearl had left China around 1900 (Catalogue des objets d’art 1934a, cat. 212, 246, 190, 248). Looted from the imperial collections, these objects were brought back to France by General Cluzeau, aide-de-camp to Régis Voyron (1838-1921), who had commanded the French expeditionary force during the Boxer uprising (1899-1901). At that time, the imperial palaces of Beijing were heavily despoiled by European troops. The journal of the French writer and naval officer Pierre Loti (1850-1923) offers us valuable testimony of the methods in which these objects were collected (Zurich, Asien-Orient-Institut, Journal de Pierre Loti). In 1900, sent with General Cluzeau "to one of the Empress's palaces", Loti prepared the ground for the arrival of his superiors, "in the midst of a disarray of wonderful things", where he knew he could "do some looting”. His memories offer us a chilling glimpse of the conditions that brought so many collections of Chinese art to Europe.

Other objects which share a first-order provenance joined the collection of Hugo Cahen d’Anvers from Adolphe Worch (1843-1915), the Italian banker Camillo Castiglioni (1879-1957), the marquis Frederick Oliver Robinson de Ripon (1852-1923) and Aloys Revilliod de Muralt (1839-1921).

Hugo also assembled an interesting body of paintings (Catalogue des objets d’art, 1934a, cat. 226-235). Among them is a painting on silk showing the servants of the imperial stables walking horses. Coming from the Sevadjian collection, it bears the signature of "Tchao Mong Fou". Another painting, passed through Louis Gonse, is a Japanese work from the 17th century. Painted on silk, it represents a falcon perched on the trunk of a willow tree: in a seal we read the name of Kano Sanraku (1559-1635), painter and protégé of the daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi ( 1537-1598).

Almost encyclopaedic in nature, the collection of Hugo Cahen d’Anvers also included a variety of fabrics and cloth. Nineteen lots of Far Eastern furniture attest to the consistency that Hugo sought in his living spaces. The structure of the Villa della Selva already demonstrated an intellectual quest to link its owner's European culture to his interest in Asia. Once again, the furniture sold at the Hôtel Drouot shows the collector's sensitivity to the relationship linking the container to the contents, the home to the collection. The dispersal of a collection of books devoted to the arts of the Far East also suggests a certain intellectual quest. However, with the exception of the most important pieces, the collection of Hugo Cahen d’Anvers was presented as more of a "furniture collection" than a "showcase collection". It appears to be the work of a passionate amateur, but not that of a scholar. This is evidenced for example by the absence of any Chinese specimen of archaeological provenance. The "academic" interest which after 1918 pushed many collectors towards this type of artefacts - more expensive and less conspicuous - did not find purchase with the younger son of the marquis de Torre Alfina. On the contrary, Hugo aligned himself with the "aesthetic" practices of the great collectors of the 19th century: with their brilliant colours, Chinese porcelains perfectly met the needs of well-established taste, linking the impression of China to a sinuous abundance of decor.

As with his botanical collections, the art objects collected by Hugo Cahen d’Anvers reflected his desire to fit the beauties of distant worlds into the spaces of his home. In Allerona, a unifying design linked the gardens to the collections, including the reception areas of the villa. Thus, by the design of its perspectives, through its exteriors and interiors, the Villa della Selva presented itself as the mirror of a man of the 20th century who had known the Orient. A similar construction of identity was reflected in the furnishings of Hugo's apartment on avenue Alphand. In Italy, objects and flowers originating from settlement and from looting found their place peacefully in the beautiful rooms of a house inspired by the Italian Renaissance, while opening up to the world. Stripped of all sacredness, the artefacts from the Far East sat alongside the distant cultures by which they were treasured, alongside the rational and taxonomic understanding of Europe. The often illusory pursuit of understanding the other commingled with a desire to dominate reality by constructing one's public image.