EPHRUSSI Béatrice (EN)

Béatrice de Rothschild, granddaughter of "Grand Baron" James de Rothschild (1792-1868), founder of the family’s French branch, and daughter of Alphonse and Leonora de Rothschild, of the English branch, was born in Paris on September 14, 1864 and isa perfect example of her family’s cosmopolitanism. Her youth wasdivided between her parents' hôtel particulier on rue Saint-Florentin (former residence of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), the Château de Ferrières, built by her grandfather James de Rothschild (1860, Joseph Paxton), and the villa in Cannes built by her grandmother Betty in 1880 (Charles Baron) — three residences emblematic of the Rothschild taste, characteristic of theirzest for building and their interest in heritage. These examples doubtless helped inspire this daughter of Alphonse de Rothschild who in 1933 bequeathed to the Institut de France and the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in memory of her parents, the villa "Ile de France” in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat in order to turn it into a museum, as well as her collections scattered between Paris and her residences on the Riviera (mainly in Monte-Carlo, Villa Soleil, Blume, and Rose de France).

Her father Alphonse de Rothschild, regent of the Banque de France, was one of the most prominent personalities of the 19th century, famous for his art collections, particularly from the 18th century, and his role as a patron of contemporary artists. Her mother Leonora belonged to the most influential branch of the Rothschild family; her father Lionel de Rothschild played a decisive role in the recognition of Jews in England: a politician, elected to the Commons in 1846, he was the first Jew to enter Parliament English.

In 1883, at the age of 19, Béatrice de Rothschild married Maurice Ephrussi, 15 years her senior, from a family of bankers and wheat exporters, who were Jewish and originally from Odessa. She separated from him in 1904. Described by Elizabeth de Clermont Tonnerre as "a rather ugly and vulgar being", Maurice Ephrussi was more passionate about his racehorses, which he bred on his property in Reux in Normandy, than about acquiring works of art. Director of the Société Le Nickel, stronghold of the Rothschild banks, he was nevertheless related to Charles Ephrussi, one of the great art aficionados of the time, director of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and friend of the Impressionists, and also to the Hellenist and Institut member Théodore Reinach, owner of the villa Kerylos in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.

A few years after their marriage (1887), the couple moved to the Hôtel de Monpelas, 19 avenue Foch, built by the architect Thierry for the Duke of Nemours (now the Angolan embassy). Despite the absence of archives or biographical notes on her early years, Béatrice Ephrussi stands out; the newspapers testify to her beauty, and her frequent participation in social receptions, although little is known about herearly artistic tastes. Her interest in dance, music, exoticism, and travel, however, were salient features of her personality. While Béatrice Ephrussi did not seem to show a particular interest in museums, unlike other members of her family, or collectors of her time, she nevertheless made several visits to the exceptional collections of her cousin Ferdinand de Rothschild, another 18th century art enthusiast (Waddesdon Manor 1880), in England, or those of her grandfather Lionel de Rothschild in London, one of the most talented collectors of his generation, whose collection of French decorative art was internationally renowned. Her favourite country was Italy: there she would make many trips, bringing back rare works of art; there were also more distant trips to Russia (1884) or to Cairo, where she would acquire the series of moucharabiehs exhibited in the villa’s patio. Benefitting from the arrival of the Ballets Russes in Paris, Béatrice and Maurice Ephrussi organised the company’s last performance directed by Serge Diaghilev (Le Ballet, Les Sylphides) in their Parisian home on June 20, 1909, a rare testimony to their support for avant-garde art.

Following some risky investments, Maurice Ephrussi was forced to borrow funds from his father-in-law, Alphonse de Rothschild, and to reimburse him by turning over 907,950 Francs worth of furniture and works of art in 1904; the summary and non-exhaustive inventory of avenue Foch gives a first indication of his tastes. These were mainly works of decorative art from the 18th century (furniture, tapestries), relatively few paintings (three works by Boucher, however), and above all a large collection of Sèvres porcelain, vases, services, and porcelain plated furniture, which wouldlater partly join the collections of the villa of Saint Jean Cap Ferrat (Séret G., 2016).

The separation in 1904 of Beatrice Ephrussi and her husband Maurice and the death of her father Alphonse de Rothschild a year later (1905) marked a turning point in her life. Now at the head of a significant financial inheritance, Béatrice Ephrussi embarked in 1905 on major architectural projects and considerably increased her collection, particularly in the realm of decorative arts, the analysis of which cannot be understood without mentioning the role she played in the construction of the Ile de France villa, "her true work". It was the same creative approach that drove her to compose, dissimulate, and ultimately create a timeless villa bringing together wide Mediterranean characteristics, Spanish Renaissance, and Piedmontese Rococo, in an 18th century interior rendered contemporary by the abundance of woodwork from Parisian hotels.

No less than eleven architects succeeded one another in the running, including several laureates of the Prix de Rome (Marcel Auburtin, A. Demerlé, Charles Girault, Henri Paul Nénot, Edouard Niermans), but none was actually selected. It was finally a local architect Gaston Messiah, (on plans by Auburtin) who obtained the commission, complying with the client's wishes (1905-1912). The result was, to say the least, unexpected and disparate: Béatrice Ephrussi, the true and only sponsor, adhered to a policy of fragment and collage, each of the facades functioning as a painting separated from the others but in relation to the landscape. If the general model remained the Italian Renaissance (Florentine or Venetian), other references were unexpectedly evoked; the medieval period, for example, in the portal of the Saint-Médard church in Paris on the north facade. For the gardens, the landscape designers Achille Duchene and then Harold Peto proceeded similarly, juxtaposing contrasting spaces that would also form a unique ensemble of a collection of seven gardens (Spanish, English, Exotic, Regular, Florentine, Italian, and Lapidary). One of the most unexpected elements is the presence in the lapidary garden of numerous dismantled Spanish sculptures (for example, altarpieces or fragments of funerary tombs,such as that of Don Garcia Osirio and his wife Maria de Perea, fragments of which today can be foundin Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum) and New York (Metropolitan Museum and Hispanic Society) (Malgouyres P., 2016).

The interior design of the villa and the collections followed from the same spirit. Contrary to the family tradition favouring works of high quality, often of royal provenance, Béatrice Ephrussi made purchases without preconceived notions, and pieces of exception sit alongside more modest ones from both European and Far Eastern traditions. Paradoxically, while the residence was rarely inhabited by its patron, its layout was more reminiscent of that of a Parisian hôtel particulier than that of a second home on the Riviera. Unlike the Hôtel Saint-Florentin, where Alphonse de Rothschild sought unity between decor and collections, the works chosen by Béatrice Ephrussi are decontextualised. With a free and fanciful approach, she accommodated eclectic artistic reconstructions and made collages of stylistic elements that were accurate, but modified according to the particular requirements of the interior. All details participated in the staging, the overall effect prevailing and justifying the presence of numerous copies or modifications. Thus the woodwork, from the Louis XVI salon of Pierre Adrien Pâris and likely originating from the Hôtel Crillon, dismantled by Walter André Destailleur in 1907, are complemented by old fragments from the small apartments of the Palais Bourbon, or the Hôtel Hosten de Ledoux (Rousseau de La Rottiere); those in the large Louis XVI bedroom belonged to the merchant collector Georges Hoentschel, while those from the Directoire period in the boudoir in the bathroom, attributed to Leriche, were from a Parisian hotel. The few Beaujon folly panels donated by her cousin Baroness Salomon de Rothschild adorned the smoking room (Pons B., 1995; Steve M., 2002 and Leben U., 2016).

As emphasised by recent research (2016), it was in her taste for porcelain, kept in her Parisian home on avenue Foch and now exhibited at the villa Île-de-France, that Béatrice Ephrussi showed herself to be a true collector, an emulator of her father, Alphonse de Rothschild, or her cousins ​​Ferdinand and Alfred de Rothschild. From the inheritance from her father, who died in 1905, she kept a few major pieces of furniture as well as the porcelain collection (notably the "Worms de Romilly" and the "Mannheim" services). She increased this collection considerably with pieces of German production, or biscuits, and she preferred to part with the Dutch works, which she had inherited in 1920. Her passion for form led her to create series (chamber pots, lunch items, square trays). We can also note her predilection for the carmine colour and the cornflower pattern. This exceptional set is undoubtedly the most important porcelain collection kept in a French institution (Séret G., 2016). Faithful to her favourite period, Béatrice Ephrussi privileged the 18th century in all its components. Like other collectors (for example Isabella Stewart Gardner), she showed an interest in old textiles often collected for decorative purposes. Here again, the diversity of fabrics (costumes from the Age of Enlightenment, interest in late 15th-16th century tapestry, or for liturgical textiles) testifies to the eclecticism of her taste (Privat-Savigny M., 2016). In the field of furniture, the pieces inherited from his father Alphonse remain the flagship of the collection (barometer clock by André Charles Boulle, the chest of drawers by Joseph Baumhauer, even the game table by René Dubois), but the salons also have a large quantity of French Louis XV chairs or small cabinet-making furniture (Leben U., 2016). We should also add an exceptional collection of Piedmontese furniture, attributed today to Francesco Bolgié and Pietro Piffetti, that testifyies to an original taste, rare among collectors of the Riviera (Leben U., 2016 and Mézin L., 2020). The quality of the paintings is more uneven; the collection of drawings by Fragonard acquired primarily at public auction is an exception.

English through her mother, Béatrice Ephrussi evokes a very open cosmopolitan cultural model through her collecting, testifying to an Anglo-Italian influence centred on the decorative arts. Her taste for painted furniture in the Renaissance style recalls Pre-Raphaelite homes in the 19th century, as does the variety of her collection of applied art, which is reminiscent of the layout of London's South Kensington Museum; we also see this syncretism, with no separation between major arts and minor arts, sacred and profane works, in the Italian palaces refurbished by the great antique dealers of the time (Elia Volpi at the Palazzo Davanzatti, or Bardini at the PalazzoMozzi in Florence).

The entire collection is turned towards the 18th century, but Béatrice Ephrussi associated with it works belonging to arts from more distant places (China, Japan), and a collection of Italian and Spanish works. She was in direct contact with antique restorers from northern Italy (Attilio Simonetti, Giuseppe Sangiorgi, and Antonio Salvadori, a famous Venetian antique dealer). This was also a matter of staging, since certain Italian paintings were integrated into the architecture and diverted for decorative purposes (the most notable example being the altarpiece by the master of Cesi, dismantled at Béatrice Ephrussi’s request in 1920, whose panelswere transformed into the leaves of the "Porte de Siena" (Moench E., 2016).

While it might be difficult to find evolution in this collection, we can nonetheless perceiveacontinuous taste for the 18th century until the end of her life, most certainly maintained by the great dealers (Henri Stettiner, Auguste Vandermeersh, Jules Dennery, Seligmann, Wildenstein) who continued offeringher works until 1934.

In 1933, Béatrice Ephrussi bequeathed to the Institut, for the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the villa of Ile-de-France as well as all of its collections "provided that this Museum retains the current appearance of a living room". There is no doubt that the daughter of Alphonse de Rothschild participated in the policy of artistic philanthropy carried out by her family for more than half a century, but also exemplified the model of the many museum houses developing in that era (Édouard and Nellie Jacquemart André, 1912, Cognacq Jay 1928 etc.).

It is difficult to determine Béatrice Ephrussi's place within the Rothschild family. Considered in her time as a whimsical spirit and rarely as a collector, it should however be emphasised that the extent of her collections and the generosity of her bequest to the Académie des Beaux-Arts qualify her as a personality representative of the Rothschild taste, like the Grand Baron, her father Alphonse, or her uncle Edmond de Rothschild; a perspective that allows us to conclude that like them she staked her place in the history of taste and played an important role with her appreciation of the extra-European.