VIGNIER Charles (EN)
Biographical Article
Youth
Charles Antoine Vignier was born on May 8, 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland (AN, BB/34/466). The circumstances of his arrival in France, estimated to have taken place in 1881 (Hug de Larauze C., 2016), are poorly understood.
As early as 1886, his presence in Paris was attested to by an event reported by the press: during a sword fight on February 15, Vignier killed the poet Robert Caze (1853-1886) who had challenged him to a duel because of a review in La Revue moderniste of December 1885 (Ajalbert J., 1939, p. 132-136).
Then in his twenties, Charles Vignier first distinguished himself in poetry, publishing two collections of symbolist poems: Centon, a “volume of verse” published in 1886, and Album de vers et de prose, published by the Messageries de la Presse in Brussels in 1888. Vignier's verses encountered, like most Symbolist texts, a relatively lukewarm, if not downright hostile, critical reception. Later, Vignier's assumption towards the antiques trade provided another occasion to dismiss his poetic practice: the former writer was thus referred to by the Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France as a “pseudo-Rimbaud from Geneva who suddenly renounced symbolist poetry for a business selling Japanese works of art, which flourished” (January 1977, p. 109).
Professional life
This antiques business was opened by Vignier on December 24, 1904 (Nasiri-Moghaddam N., 1997, p. 23). Located at 34 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, it advertised a specialty in "Orient. Far East. Works of Art” (Nigro A., 2015, p. 136-168). In 1912, as Vignier wound up a series of exhibitions of Japanese prints, the establishment's specialisation was further refined: "JAPAN. Ancient works of art, prints” (Nigro A., 2015, p. 136-168). Finally, on June 18, 1914, Vignier inaugurated his new gallery, “Arts d’Asie,” at 4 rue Lamennais, in Paris. However, the outbreak of the First World War quickly threw him into serious financial difficulties.
Personal life
In his personal sphere, the birth of Charles Vignier's daughter, Irène Andrée Jacqueline Leila Vignier, was recorded on August 16, 1907 in the 9th arrondissement of Paris (AP, 1927, marriage certificates of the 8th arrondissement). The child’s mother was Honorine Juliette Vary, born in Meurthe-et-Moselle on June 25, 1873. They were married on July 5, 1929, a second marriage for Vignier, with his brother Émile Vignier, antiques dealer, and the writer Abel Bonnard as witnesses (AP, 1927, marriage certificates from the 8th district). The same year, 1929, Vignier was naturalised French (AP, 1929, décrets de naturalisation).
During the interval between the birth of his daughter Irène and his marriage to Honorine, Vignier married and then divorced, on undetermined dates, Janthe Densmore, a woman whose precise identity could not be identified. Her surname, however, suggests that Janthe Densmore was related to Marianne Densmore, the sister of Charles and Émile Vignier, perhaps as a sister-in-law. The dealer also befriended the painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954) (Grammont C., 2018, n.p.), a relationship that the two men maintained throughout their lives.
Death
In early 1931, Vignier underwent an operation from which he struggled to recover (Penn Museum Archives, 0001.04, Horace H.F. Jayne Director’s Office Records. 1929-1940). Three years later, on February 6, 1934, the dealer died at his home, at 4 rue Lamennais in Paris (8th arrondissement) (AP, 1934, actes de décès du 8e arr.). The curator Georges Salles (1889-1966) paid a vibrant tribute, in an obituary published in the Revue des arts asiatiques (1934), to this atypical major figure in the Asian art market and to his “gusty life.”
Geographical Provenances of the Collection
A recognised expert in the history of Asian art, thanks to his sales catalogues and scientific work, Charles Vignier was also renowned for his collection of Near Eastern and Japanese objects.
With 117 works currently conserved and inventoried in museums, the corpus around Charles Vignier's collection is relatively small in numerical terms (Robin J., 2020). However, this number should be qualified: many pieces of the Vignier collection are collections of prints, counted as unique works but actually containing dozens, even hundreds, of individual pieces.
Because of Vignier's marked taste for prints, Japan constitutes an important part of the collection, constituting a third (41 pieces, or 35%) of the works listed. Chinese pieces are also particularly represented and correspond to almost a third of the collection (31 works, or 27%).
Also interested in Near Eastern works, Charles Vignier distinguished himself in the collection of Iranian pieces, particularly ceramic tiles. Several tiles (inv. no. 27.194.2) and dishes (inv. no. 27.194.3, 28.72, 28.82 and 34.151) are currently kept at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Works from Iran correspond to 7% of the collection (eight pieces), a percentage which increases slightly if we take into account all the Near Eastern works present in the collection.
In parallel, several pieces from the African continent (at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, several sculptures, inv. AF5118, AF5114, AF5122, AF5119, AF5116, AF5117 and AF5121) and American (at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, two photographic portfolios, inv. No. PA000188 and PA000189) are present in the corpus (nine and six works respectively) as well as a Polynesian work and an Indian work, a Mughal miniature kept at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (inv. 07.883).
This variety of origins testifies to Charles Vignier's taste for all non-Western arts and the diversity of the works in his collection. In any case, the dates of entry into the Vignier collection are rarely known for pieces that are now inventoried. It is therefore complex to determine whether or not the collector acquired these works locally. In the absence of any trace of one or more trips on his part, we can presume that these pieces were mainly acquired from intermediaries and not from their original sites of production.
Dating
Within this corpus, graphic works make up the vast majority of items collected, with 54 works concerned, or 46% of the collection. The dating confirms the importance of the prints in the collection, with 40 works (i.e. 36% of the pieces listed) dating from the Edo period (1615-1868). The British Museum holds several of these prints or volumes of prints (inv. n° 1929.0731.0.11.1, 1929.0731.0.11.2 and 1929.0731.0.11.3). The second major specialisation in the collection is ceramics, with 19 pieces (i.e. 17%) corresponding half to relatively recent Chinese works, from the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and half to works relating to the arts of Islam, mostly from the medieval period. These ceramic works mainly correspond to pieces of tableware (12% of the total corpus, i.e. 13 works) as well as architectural elements, such as decorative tiles (3% of the total corpus, i.e. three pieces).
Reception and Expertise
The reception of the contemporary press to the exhibitions in which Vignier participated was commensurate with the quality and rarity of the works presented. Among the pieces exhibited by Vignier, whether African, Chinese, or Korean, many appear never to have been previously seen in Europe in terms of quality or origin (Bulletin de la Société franco-japonaise de Paris, July 1913).
The expertise of the collector was regularly highlighted, as well as his qualities as an epigraphist and archaeologist as well as a promoter (Le Bulletin de la vie artistique, July 1925, p. 288-289). The many catalogues of sales or collections that he produced or he contributed to were thus frequently hailed as innovative and important contributions to the discipline (Bulletin de la Société franco-japonaise de Paris, July 1913).
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