GRANGIER Henri and Sophie (EN)

Major benefactors of the city of Dijon at the dawn of the 20th century, Henri Grangier (1842-1902) and his wife Sophie (1851-1905), née Villeneuve, were key figures in the circles of local collectors and enlightened amateurs who determined the destiny of the Musée de Dijon.

The Affiliation of Academic and Artistic Circles in Dijon

Born in Dijon on February 8, 1842 (AD Côte-d'Or, FRAD021EC 239/300), Henri Grangier was the only son of Augustin Grangier (1802-1869), a native of Besançon and forge master in the Jura (Gaitet, L., 1917, p. XI). Through his mother, Pauline Corbabon (1815-1867), he was a descendant ofthe Dijon parliamentarian François Vivant Corbabon (1756-1822), his great-grandfather, who was himself linked by his marriage to one of the most eminent antique dealers and scholars of Dijon, the magistrate Louis Bénigne Baudot (1764-1844). When his parents died at the end of the 1860s, Henri Grangier inherited houses and a hotel in Dijon, and above all an immense fortune made up of properties and income from numerous estates, notably in Vichy, Gilly-les- Citeaux, and Vougeot (Gras, C., 2000, p. 273).

Sophie Grangier, née Villeneuve, was born on August 22, 1851 (AD 21, FRAD021EC 239/319), at the Hôtel Saint-Louis, 18 rue Bossuet in Dijon. She was the only daughter of Marie-Rosalie Moret and the Fourierist Paul-Emile Villeneuve (1813-1897), an alienist doctor from Dijon, who was the director of the asylum of the departmental of Côte d'Or from 1846 to 1847, before ceasing his activity in 1854 to retire to the château of his parents-in-law in Villecomte, near Is-sur-Tille (Côte d'Or). A biographical notice devoted to the Grangier benefactors in 1917 points out how much Sophie's father, Paul-Emile Villeneuve, "liked to surround himself with thinkers, writers, and artists" (Gaitet, L., 1917, p. X), starting with the sculptor François Rude (1784-1855) and his wife the painter Sophie Fremiet (1797-1867),who in 1838 made a portrait of the young medical student, whom the artist couple hosted in Paris (painting conserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, inv. 2481).

A Passion for Collecting

On October 17, 1871, Sophie Villeneuve, then 20 years old, and Henri Grangier, landlord, 29 years old, living in Vougeot (Côte d'Or), married in Villecomte (AD 21, FRAD021EC 692/006). Childless, the Grangier couple dedicated their fortune to philanthropy and to building up an eclectic collection of art works. It was mainly in Vougeot (where Henri Grangier served several terms as mayor between 1870 and 1884) that this collection was brought together by the couple in a large gallery that they had specifically fitted out on the first floor of the Château des Gaillots, the large neo-classical style residence that Henri's father had built in 1862 (destroyed in 1938, see Bezault, F., 2021). In his Portrait de Mme Sophie Grangier (1910, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, inv. 2248), the painter and curator Louis Gaitet (1836-1919) restored the neo-Gothic decor of this Vougeot gallery, in which (as well as can be shown in the painting) an ebony cabinet from Flanders from the 17th century, German stoneware, a sculpture from the Burgundian school, and pieces of liturgical goldsmithery are arranged pell-mell not far from a carved tusk from Africa. A smaller part of the Grangier collection (furniture and ceramics) decorated the Dijon property at 20 rue Chabot-Charny where the couple stayed during the unfavourable season.

This passion for the arts led the Grangier couple to establish strong and regular relations with the Dijon museum and its curator Albert Joliet (1839-1928). Henri Grangier was thus a member of the commission of the Dijon museum from 1900 to 1902 (Archives du musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, C1) and sat at the meetings as much as his fragile health allowed him. Promoting the links of the museum institution with the world of artists, scholars and local notables, the Dijon museum commission also undoubtedly aimed to inspire the generosity of collectors — particularly those without direct heirs — by attracting personalities such as Henri Grangier. The Grangiers, however, did not wait for their bequest project to contribute to the enrichment of the Dijon collections: in 1902, the year of the sudden disappearance of Henri Grangier during a stay spa in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains (August 5, 1902, AD 74, 4 E 4311), the couple had thus financed the acquisition of the statue of Antoinette de Fontette (inv. 1635), thus allowing the city of Dijon to prevail over the Louvre, which also coveted the remarkable Burgundian sculpture of the 16th century (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, Aa 15).

Philanthropists of the City of Dijon

Through testamentary dispositions drawn up the year after her husband's death, Sophie Grangier strongly affirmed the couple's attachment to their hometown museum: her will of July 15, 1903 (followed by the codicils of the same year, then of 1904 and 1905) made the General Hospital of Dijon their universal legatee, giving it the responsibility to deliver legacies to several municipalities and hospitals of the Côte d'Or, to many assistance companies and cultural associations, and also to the university and the museum of Dijon. The latter was to receive "in full ownership the paintings, objets d'art, furniture in the gallery of [his] residence in Vougeot, as well as the paintings in the smoking room and the living room of this residence", a gift that added to the furniture and works of art precisely described and located in the hotel on rue Chabot-Charny, as well as "the old stained glass windows in [his] various residences" (AM Dijon, 4 R1/146). This legacy of the collection was accompanied by a sum of 30,000 francs intended for its maintenance costs and especially for its installation in thevisitor’s path through the museum.

Sophie Grangier died in Dijon on December 28, 1905 (AD 21, FRAD021EC 239/471). By deliberation of the municipal council on June 1, 1906, the city of Dijon accepted her exceptional legacy without delay. But it was necessary to wait for the decree of the Council of State dated January 29, 1908 (AM Dijon, 4 R1/146), authorising the municipality to definitively accept the widow’s generosity, for theacceptanceby Dijon to become actualised in two important projects: the opening to the public of a "Salle Grangier" at the Dijon museum and the launch in 1912 of a competition for a monument in homage to benefactors, a fountain-basin ultimately entrusted to the Dijon sculptor Paul Gasq (1860-1944), inaugurated in 1916 on the Place de l'Hôtel des Postes and named after the Grangier family in 1911.

The Bequest and the "Grangier Room"

The Grangier collection was inventoried in 1906 at the time of the succession of Sophie, widow of Henri Grangier (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, Aa 15, Inventaire des objets mobiliers dépendant de la succession de Mad^me veuve Grangier et composant le legs fait au Musée de Dijon by Maître Misserey, notary in Nuits-Saint-Georges). Even before the deliberation of the municipal council of June 1, 1906, by which the city of Dijon accepted the benefactor's bequest in full, the collection was swiftly transferred and deposited in the museum (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, C2, session of February 24, 1906). This was an opportunity for Albert Joliet (1839-1928), curator of the museum, to resume the estimate of the 492 numbers of the posthumous inventory, which ultimately amounted to the total sum of 140,036 Francs (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, Aa 15, Estimation des objets légués par Madame Grangier, notebook with the annotated date of 1906). The remarkable quality of the bequest was further confirmed by the relatively marginal number of objects removed from the initial set, only 35 pieces, some of which were mistakenly sent to the museum and returned to the family, and the few others refused by the museum commission in 1908 (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, Aa 15, discharge relating to refused objects signed by Armand Corbabon, dated May 19, 1908).

In parallel with this selection of works "worthy of appearing in the municipal collections", the Museum Commission (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, C2) was working on the development of a "Salle Grangier" in memory of its donors: because it clearly lent itself to the spirit of a cabinet of curiosities and to the pronounced taste of collectors for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the first floor of the medieval tower known as "de Bar" (previously usedas the library of the Antiquities Commission of the Côte d'Or) was obtained in 1906, its restoration entrusted to the city architect Paul Deshérault, who undertook major work to restore a French-style ceiling, restore its Gothic fireplace, even equipping it with mullioned windows (Archives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, Aa 15 and AM Dijon, 4 R1/146). On April 16, 1908, during the inauguration of this display, saturated with objects of such varied geographical origins, typologies, and techniques, some suggested a kinship between the Grangier bequest and that of another couple of donors to the museum, the Lyonnais artists Edma and Anthelme Trimolet (bequest of 1878). The “Musée Trimolet" and the Grangier display, whose "appearance is not of a scientifically arranged museum room, but of an eclectic cabinet d'amateur" (Chabeuf, H., 1909),would experience comparable fatesin the aftermath of World War II. The redesign of the museum itinerary resulted in 1946 in a "happy transformation of the Grangier room" (Mauerhan, M., 1946), which regained "its primitive purity" by exhibiting in "a clear and harmonious vision" the sculptures in wood from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance which included, in a larger ensemble, some masterpieces from the collection of Dijon benefactors.

Publication of the Collection

Established in 1917 by former professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and assistant curator Louis Gaitet (1836-1919), theCatalogue de la collection Henri et Sophie Grangier(Gaitet, L., 1917) lists 516 numbers ranging from Antiquity to the 19th century, opening with the collection of paintings (46 works from the Italian school [Sienna panels], Flemish and Dutch, German, French, as well as 16 miniatures from the 18th century) which nevertheless has a place smaller in a set dominated by sculpture (113 numbers), furniture (38 pieces), and other objets d'art numbering 292 entries (stained glass, earthenware, porcelain, enamels, glassware, goldsmithery, clocks, jewellery, cutlery, "métaux d'art", and "objects of Oriental manufacture"). The catalogue reflects in particular the donors' predilection for medieval sculpture (stone, marble, alabaster and painted wood, bronzes including antiques, medals, ivories) and Renaissance furniture, areas in which their attachment to the Burgundian heritage is so precisely indicated (furniture attributed to Hugues Sambin and his school). The sculpture collection included an important set of 42 reliefs and statuettes in polychrome wood from Burgundian, Flemish (Antwerp and Mechelen), and even Germanic altarpieces, completed in the same narrative spirit, by reliefs in painted alabaster produced in the 15th century English workshops. It also included a remarkable corpus of 51 ivories, made up of a fine set of devotional diptychs from the 14th and 15th centuries, busts and statuettes (17th and 18th centuries), and sculpted ornamentation (16th- to 18th century) for various decorative objects,such as knife handles and tobacco rasp plates. The Grangiers’ interest in ivories and more generally for sculpture in rare and precious materials was undoubtedly related to the particular physiognomy of the Asian objets d'art (45 numbers) in their collection, clearly predominated by Japanese ivories (netsuke, carved and polychromed buttons, opium pipe cases, tablets), alongside small Chinese carved jade vases and Far Eastern ceramics, in particular the ceramics of Satsuma, certainly appreciated for its shimmering polychromatic ornamentation enhanced with gold.

The introductory notice of this catalogue only provides cursory information about the origin of the Grangier collection, which was built up through travels in Europe, notably “in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, etc., [from which] they brought back many objects” (Gaitet, L., 1917, p. XII). A few rare mentions in the will of Sophie Grangier in 1903 (AM Dijon, 4 R1/146) and in press articles relating to the inauguration of the Salle Grangier in 1908 (Le Bien public, April 17, 1908) make itpossible to trace purchases at public auctions, mainly in the 1890s and around 1900. Thus nearly fifty works (half paintings, half ivories, as well as the sculpted high reliefs from England) come from the collection of the Dijon archaeologist Henri Baudot (1799-1880), who was related to the Grangier-Corbabon family, and whose sale took place in Dijon in 1894. Some pieces came from other private collections of Burgundy, such as that of the Dijon scholar Frédéric Lépine (1824-1893), at auction in Dijon the same year, or that of Baron du Mesnil, at auction at the Château de Brazey-en-Plaine in 1902. In Paris, Sophie and Henri Grangier acquired works during sales by Franco-Austrian merchant Frédéric Spitzer (1815-1890) in 1893, the amateur A. Tollin in 1897, and the art collector and chronicler Paul Eudel (1837-1911) in 1898. Finally, the sale of the Florentine collection Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), which took place in London in 1902, was the source of the allegory of L’Abondance (tin-glazed terracotta, inv. G 257) by Benedetto Buglioni (1461-1521). After the death of her husband, Sophie Grangier continued to add to the collection, in particular through acquisitions from Dijon merchants, guided by the sage advice of curator Albert Joliet for the purchase of a Burgundian statue of St. Véronique from the antique sculptor Moretti in 1904 (AM Dijon, 4 R1/146, letter from Albert Joliet addressed to Sophie Grangier dated September 22, 1904).