MARQUIS François-Philibert (EN)

Biographical article

Son of François Marquis (died in 1857) and Marie Madeleine Philiberte Guéland, François Philibert Marquis was born on June 24, 1821 into a family of three children: his older sister Madeleine Pélagie Laure (born March 3, 1820) and his younger sister Louise Désirée (born September 21, 1824) (AP, V3E/N 1547). Following his father, he took over the management of an extremely prosperous chocolate and tea shop and amassed a rich collection of works of art, prominently featuring Chinese porcelain.

Paternal Inheritance

François Philibert's paternal uncle, Louis Marquis (died in 1848?), founded a grocery business in 1806, selling and manufacturing chocolate at 41 rue Helvétius (present-day rue Sainte-Anne), a business which his brother joined from 1813 (Dufraisse R. et al., 1888, p. 331). The company of the two brothers was finally dissolved and each set up his own: Louis married a certain Marie Guéland, herself the head of a confectionery house at 38 rue des Lombard, while maintaining a chocolate manufacturing house at 41 rue Sainte-Anne, while François founded in 1818 the house "F. Marquis" specialising in the trade of tea and chocolate, in the passage des Panoramas, no 59. The couple François Marquis and Marie Madeleine Guéland acquired in 1831 a property rue Vivienne at no. 44, consisting of "a high house of several floors and its outbuildings […] also overlooking the Passage des Panoramas" which they rebuilt almost entirely and enlarged by the successive acquisition of land and adjoining houses (AN, MC/ET/LXXXVII/1605). In 1854, the couple owned, in addition to no. 44, no. 57, 58 and 59 of the Passage des Panoramas. François Philibert Marquis took over the management of the business from his father in 1857.

Querrel of chocolate sellers

The division of the chocolate houses of the time of François and Louis Marquis caused a long series of lawsuits regarding the use of the Marquis name. In 1876, François Philibert Marquis brought a first lawsuit against the successor of his uncle's house, Mr. Percheron, for the alleged misuse of the name "Marquis" resulting in unfair competition. Asking that the use of the patronymic be purely and simply withdrawn from the successor, François Philibert wasultimately dismissed in a judgment of the commercial court of July 6, 1876, which nevertheless recommended that the complete mention of "old house L. Marquis. Successor Percheron" be clearly indicated on all products and invoices of said Percheron so as to avoid any confusion (Anonymous, January 16, 1887, n.p.). As a result of this decision, the former L. Marquis house derived an advertising profit from this opportunity: there were many newspaper inserts from 1876 promoting its chocolates, as well as comments on the lawsuit it has just won, ranging from proverbs such as "if you play with fire, you get burned" ("qui s'y frotte s'y pique") (Anonymous, December 23, 1876) to paraphrases of El Cid ("De t’attaquer à moi, qui t’a rendu si vain ", Anonymous, 16 December 1876, p. 390). The lawsuit was re-launched almost ten years later, when François Philibert Marquis had L. Marquis products seized in Nantes that did not meet the obligations of the 1876 judgment. A few months after this seizure, Percheron sold his business to Clarke et Cie, which owns luxury stores on Boulevard des Capucines, selling "L. Marquis" chocolates. The civil court of Seine finally ruled in favour of François Philibert Marquis in a judgment of January 13, 1887: thereafterthe competing house had to remove from all its signs, invoices and boxes of products the mention of "L. Marquis". But the company Clarke et Cie appealed and, on May 27, 1887, the Paris Court of Appeals returned the right to use the name to the company, on the condition that all wordings indicate in letters of equal size "former house Louis Marquis, Clake et Cie, successors", and in return for damages for unfair competition to François Philibert Marquis, to which is added the authorisation for the latter to publish the result of the judgment in six newspapers at the expense of his opponents (see among others: Anonymous, June 13, 1887, n.p.). The case, having become a matter of commercial jurisprudence, is recounted in the Journal des tribunals de commerce (Dufraisse R. et al., 1888, pp. 330-340). The story does not end there: the daughter of François Philibert Marquis, who succeeded him after his death, took legal action in 1896 against the new successor of the former Louis Marquis house, a certain Mr. Dufrêne. However, it was dismissed by the Civil Court of Seine (3rd chamber, Anonymous, April 3, 1896, n.p.).

Despite these quarrels, the F. Marquis house remained extremely prosperous throughout the 19th century. The banker and collector Henri Cernuschi underscored the exceptional character of this prosperity in 19th century Paris: "[Cernuschi] also says, as the Goncourt brothers tell us, that in commerce, the Boissiers and the Marquises are separate houses and that all the rest, more or less, of the commerce of Paris lives its entire existence with the greatest difficulty in not going bankrupt” (Goncourt E., February 5, 1876, ed. of 2014, vol. II., p. 687).

Family & Inheritance

François Marquis married three times. His first wife, Eugénie Bertin (?-1855), was the daughter of a merchant and an annuitant at the time of her marriage in 1853 (AN, MC/ET/LXXXVII/1576). She died only two years later on September 11, 1855, aged 24 (AP, V3E/D 106 and 5Mil 1499) barely a month after giving birth to their daughter Hélène (August 18, 1855, AN, MC/ ET/LXXXVII/1592). He remarried in 1858 with Marie Claire Chambolle (deceased May 14, 1859, AN MC/ET/LXXXVII/1607), daughter of Michel Auguste Chambolle, man of letters deputy of Vendée, Mayenne and Seine (1802-1883 ), and Anne Geneviève Henrion, whose grandfather was a confectioner at 21 rue Vivienne (AN, LH/473/17). From their short union was born a daughter: Philiberte Marie Marquis (April 22, 1859). Widowed again in 1859, he remarried on July 3, 1860 to the sister of his second wife, Blanche Delphine Chambolle (deceased May 9, 1881), during a discreet ceremony at Saint-Quentin-sur-le-Homme in the Manche department where he owned the Château de l'Isles Manière, or Lillemanière (Anonymous, 1860, n.p.). They had three children: Anne Claire, Jeanne Edmée, and Georges Michel Philibert (born February 8, 1872). He also had a natural daughter, whom he recognised by the name of Berthe Rosalie (Mayence 23/07/1844). She married Étienne Alphonse Deffosse on August 9, 1864.

On November 28, 1887, he formed a company with his daughter Philiberte Marie, so that at his death she could enjoy "exclusive and absolute ownership of the name and brand of F. Marquis, of the equipment industrial, utensils, fittings, and other movable objects used in the operation of the house, of all the buildings, in Paris, rue Vivienne, no. 44, passage des Panoramas, no. 59, and rue Martel, no. 14, materials first and goods then in store, any claims and value of the company" (Garnier M. D., 1891, art. 7590, p. 288). When François Philibert Marquis died on May 8, 1889, the management of the F. Marquis business was entrusted to a certain Gustave Guesnu.

The collection

François Philibert Marquis's interest in art was probably passed on to him by his father, who in 1856 had insured in his residence at 33 rue Courcelles in Paris more than 15,000 Francs worth of paintings, engravings, albums, and no less than 14,000Francs of "mounted and unmounted" China porcelain and other curiosities (AN, MC/ET/LXXXVII/1605). Traces of these objects can be found in his father’s posthumous inventory, which mentions, among other things, porcelain, but also lacquerware, gouaches and Chinese oil paintings (AN, MC/ET/LXXXVII/1607 ).

A Chocolate Maker and his Chinese Porcelain

A chocolatier's interest in Chinese porcelain may come as a surprise; however, it would seem that the association of the manufacture of chocolate with works of art from China or Japan was a relatively widespread practice in the great Parisian houses of the 19th century. Indeed, several testimonies indicate that porcelain from China and Japan were sometimes used as containers for the chocolates on sale, and sometimes used for shop window displays. We can observe this practice in two of the competitors of the house of F. Marquis: the house L. Marquis, which “by flattering the fine gluttony, […] charms the artistic taste of its customers; it is for this purpose that it has formed a rich collection of fancy candy boxes and objects from China and Japan, 8, 9, 10 and 11 gallery of the Théâtre-Français" (Cérigny, I. de, 1873, p. 827); and the Caravane chocolate factory at 191, rue Saint-Honoré, which "for its pearls of fine delicacy […] prepares rich cases in the form of elegant cardboard boxes, lacquer boxes, cups in Chinese and Japanese porcelain” (Boretty, Comtesse A. de, 1872, p. 387). From 1855, we find, in the posthumous inventory of François Philibert Marquis’s first wife, Chinese and Japanese porcelain included in the prized merchandise of his trade (AN, MC/ET/LXXXVII/1592). The collector Ernest Grandidier also points out that "the sale of this superfine edible [chocolate] allowed the collector of the Passage des Panoramas to enrich his showcases and garnish them royally with the spoils of China and Japan" (Grandidier E. , 1894, p. 53). Even if we note that in the 1870s, the association of chocolate houses with Far Eastern products was totally original, François-Philibert Marquis nonetheless occupies a special place among lovers of Chinese porcelain. According to Charles Gillot, Chinese porcelains were not a simple decoration for this "serious collector, who applied himself to the constant study of the art of the Far East" (Gillot C., 1883, n.p.). Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896) repeatedly reports in his diary the real passion that animated him at the sight of these objects, whether it was the "little nervous tremor in the fingers touching the object" (Goncourt E. de, November 29, 1875, ed. of 2014, p. 667) or his “drunken steps" into the Japanese galleries of the 1878 Exposition Universelle (Goncourt E. de, May 2, 1878, ed. 2014, p.777). His collection was also known and recognised by other enthusiasts of Chinese porcelain: Octave Frémin du Sartel had, in the monograph he wrote on Chinese porcelain in 1881, illustrated some of the works from the Marquis collection (Du Sartel O., 1881, Fig. 60 p. 115).

Marquis Sale

In February 1883, François Philibert Marquis decided to put his collection up for sale: it was undoubtedly one of the most important sales of Chinese and Japanese porcelain made in Paris in the 1880s, both in terms of quality and quantity of exhibits. Charles Gillot (1853-1903) underlines the extreme variety of the pieces included in the sale to the point that: “To describe them would be almost impossible, so abundant in this gallery are the remarkable products of exotic art. White, covered in yellow, red or black, green, blue-turquoise, aubergine violet, celadon, crackled, flambé, marbled, puffed, reticulated, whipped blue, families green, pink, tangerine, gilded enamels and silver, etc., etc. Without forgetting the factories of Japan: Fizen [sic], Imari, Kaga, Kioto [sic], Satzuma, and the curious works in jade” (1883, n.p.). In all, some 555 lots of ceramics were on sale, in addition to a few cloisonné enamels (9 lots), tobacco flasks, and other jade or glass objects (4 lots). The sale had all the ingredients for success: the catalogue of its collections had been written by the Musée des arts décoratifs curator and ceramics specialist Paul Gasnault (1828-1898) and the public knew his collection well: “is there not,” insists Paul Gasnault, “an art lover in Paris, […] who does not know what to think about the value of the treasures it contains, and more than one, we are sure, has already set his sights on some rare, exquisite, unique piece, which he dreams of to enrich his collection”. The catalogue, originally intended as a simple collection inventory, features lengthy descriptions, including transcriptions of Chinese marks; the pieces were measured and classified according to the main categories established a few decades earlier by Albert Jacquemart (1808-1875), taken up and modified by his disciple Paul Gasnault (cf. notices Albert Jacquemart and Paul Gasnault). Added to the objects’ exceptional character was their pedigree, that is to say the accumulated value of works from illustrious collectors (Saint-Raymond L., 2021, p. 436). As predicted by Paul Gasnault in his preface, the greatest collectors and dealers of curiosities are there: Charles Gillot notes the presence of the famous collector of Chinese ceramics Ernest Grandidier (1833-1912), the historian of art Georges Duplessis (1834-1899), Baron Gustave de Rothschild (1829-1911), bankers and collectors, Isaac de Camondo (1851-1911), Jules Ephrussi (1846-1915), the merchant Nicolas Joseph Malinet (1805- 1886), the art critic Théodore Duret (1838-1927), etc.

Comparing this sale to one that the collector Octave du Sartel made the previous year (see notice on Octave du Sartel), a journalistobserved: “M. du Sartel had particularly applied himself to collecting well-defined materials, viewpoints of history and manufacture, for his Histoire de la porcelaine orientale [sic]. All the centuries and all the manufacturing centres of the empire of the Sons of Heaven were represented there, and many of these samples could be found in our ceramic museums in Sèvres or Limoges. Mr. Marquis aimed above all at the amiable, the charm of the paste, the shape, the decoration.” (Anonymous, 1883, n.p.).

This sale marked a turning point in the taste of François Philibert Marquis, who, according to Charles Gillot, was getting rid of his "very curious oriental pieces", "for the benefit of his new enthusiasm" for European art "and in particular that characterising the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (Gillot C., 1883, n. p.).

The sale he organised three years later was in fact much more varied; it still included Chinese porcelains (mainly polychrome glazed porcelains of the famille verte and famille rose type), but also a large number of works of art, mainly furniture goldsmithery and 18th century European porcelain, in keeping with the taste of its time. The sale, with its 237 lots, was much smaller than the first.

François Philibert Marquis' last sale was his estate sale, which spanned eight days from February 10 to 18, 1890 (Lugt 48763), conducted for the benefit of his heirs: Philiberte Marie Marquis, Anne Claire Marquis (wife Machart), Jeanne Edmée Marquis, Georges Michel Philibert Marquis, and Berte Rosalie Marquis. The catalogue accompanying the sale was published with illustrations of the most important lots for each category of objects (see the copy of the Rijksbureau voor kunsthistorische en ikonografische Documentatie, The Hague, available on the Art Sales Catalogs Online database, URL: http://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/art-sales-catalogues-online/48763-18900210-marquis;asc448468l48763 accessed 2022-04-17). On these eight occasions, nearly 850 lots were sold for a total value of 778,707 F. Here again, Western works of art occupied a large part of the lots, in particular Italian bronzes from the 16th and 17th centuries. We can also note the presence of two busts Chinois and Chinoise by Charles Cordier (1827-1905), works by Francisque Duret (1804-1865), and several works by André-Charles Boulle brought remarkable prices. Goldsmithery and furniture from the 18th century in France occupied a considerable place, alongside works from the great houses of the 19th century: a girandole and jardiniere from the Maison Barbedienne, lamps from the Maison Gagneau. Among the more atypical sets is a collection of Swiss and German stained glass, as well as Japanese albums painted on silk and richly bound. But the porcelains of China and Japan keep a dominating place in the sale. A journalist who was anxious to find out about the adjudications obtained inquired with "one of the most competent men as regards objects from the Far East in particular", who affirmed that "the prices of porcelain from China and Japan were so high that it seemed to him impossible that M. Marquis had bought them at even higher ones” (Oudart C., 1890, n.p.).

Chinese Porcelain from the Marquis Collection in French Public Collections

Today, part of the porcelain collections brought together by François-Philibert Marquis has joined the collections of the Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, thanks to its acquisition by the collector Ernest Grandidier, who in 1894 donated his entire collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain to the Musée du Louvre (which was then transferred to the Guimet in 1945). Lucie Chopard traced the presence of these objects in a remarkable study of the Grandidier collection (Chopard L., 2021). Among the exceptional pieces that entered museum collections in this way, we can mention the pair of Kangxi period porcelain made in imitation of Limoges enamels in the style of Jacques I Laudin (inv. G4551a and G4551b).

Others were purchased by the Musée Céramique de Sèvres, either directly during the various sales or through the intermediary of the dealer Charles Mannheim. Thus, in a letter dated February 20, 1890, the administrator expressed his regrets to the dealer, saying that he had missed "a large pale green celadon-style ovoid basin" which would have been of great interest to the manufactory (SMMN, 4W454). The successful bidder for the said piece being Charles Mannheim himself, the latter proposed reselling the piece at cost price to the museum (inv. MNC 8828). As François Philibert Marquis usually put a label with his name on the objects in his collection, it will no doubt be possible in the future to find his works in other museums in France or elsewhere in Europe.