Lucie Chopard Chinese Porcelain Enters the Louvre: a Collector, His Dealers, and the Parisian Art Market (C

ISSN: 2511–7602 Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020) Lucie Chopard Chinese Porcelain enters the Louvre: A Collector, his Dealers, and the Parisian Art Market (c. 1870-1912) ABSTRACT in which Grandidier recorded details for each piece in his collection. The Grandidi- This study focuses on the relationship er collection helps to define the Parisian between Ernest Grandidier and the art art market and its actors by providing an dealers who helped him to build the most ensemble of over 6,000 pieces, gathered important collection of Chinese ceramics between the late 1860s and 1912. Leaving in France. The history of this incredible apart the question of the collector’s taste, collection – today considered as the larg- the close study of the purchases helps us to est one of Chinese ceramics in France and identify new dealers, enhances our under- kept at the Guimet museum in Paris - is rel- standing of others and provides the quan- atively unknown. Often underestimated by tity and typology of the pieces they supply. the Louvre administration during the nine- Progress in the field of the study of the teenth and twentieth centuries, the Grandi- Parisian art market will provide more data dier collection continues to be absent from and allow for a better comprehension of the major studies dedicated to the history the complex interaction between scholars, of the Louvre museum. From 1894 to 1912, collectors, art dealers and museums which Grandidier was the sole keeper of his col- facilitated a meeting between the French lection and the only one to preside over his cultural milieu and Asian art in the second collection’s display and acquisitions. The half of the nineteenth century. collection archives contain two notebooks Nowadays, research on Asian collections in France during the nineteenth century focuses on the major figures of Henri Cernuschi (1821-1896) and Emile Guimet (1836-1918), who founded their own Parisian museums, now devoted to Asian art.1 At the end of the 1 For the current status, see Ting Chang, Travel, collecting, and museums of Asian art in the nineteenth-century (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Ting Chang, Emile Guimet’s Network for Research and Collecting Asian https://www.fokum-jams.org; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/; DOI 10.23690/jams.v4i2.124 Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020) Lucie Chopard Chinese Porcelain enters the Louvre: A Collector, his Dealers, and the Parisian Art Market (c. 1870-1912) nineteenth century, other collections of East Asian art were displayed in Paris: private collections, such as Edmond de Goncourt’s2 (1822-1896), as well as public ones3 such as the Louvre. Regarded as the preeminent French museum, the Louvre officially started to collect Asian art in 1893.4 In the process, an important group of Chinese porcelain was donated to the French State: the collection of Ernest Grandidier (1833-1912). Born and raised in a wealthy Parisian family, he had started to collect Chinese porcelain in the 1860s and continued to accumulate pieces until his death in 1912. The history of this incredible collection – today considered as the largest one of Chinese ceramics in France and kept at the Guimet museum in Paris - is relatively unknown.5 Often underestimated by the Louvre administration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Grandidier collection continues to be absent from the major studies dedicated to the history of the Louvre museum.6 Moreover, the study of the history of collecting Chinese ceramics in Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century has been affected by the predominance of Japonism in France, which favours the study of the history of collections of Japanese works of art.7 In this slightly biased context, the study of the provenance of the items collected by Ernest Grandidier, more than 6,000 pieces, deserves a meticulous investigation of the collector and his interactions with deal- Art (ca. 1877-1918), in Charlotte Guichard, Christine Howald and Bénédicte Savoy, eds., Acquiring cultures. Histories of World Art on Western Markets (Boston, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 209-222; and Silvia Davoli, Comparing East and West: Enrico Cernuschi’s Collections of Art Reconsidered, in Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Gáldy and Adriana Turpin, eds., Collecting East and West (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 41-59. This paper derives from a conference paper I presented on 7 November 2019 in Berlin as part of the workshop “‘Pillage is formally prohibited...’’ Provenance Research on East Asian Art #3”, organised by the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, the Technische Universität Berlin and the University of Glasgow. I am grateful to Mrs. Deléry, curator at the Musée Guimet, for her assistance with the photographs presented here. 2 See Chang, Travel, collecting and museums, and Dominique Pety, Les Goncourt et la collection: de l’objet d’art à l’art d’écrire (Genève: Droz, 2003). 3 Few studies deal with Asian collections in museums outside of Paris. See Musée national de céramique, Sèvres, L’odyssée de la porcelaine chinoise (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2003); and Pauline D’Abrigeon, La collection extrême-orientale du musée Adrien Dubouché de Limoges, in Cahiers de l’Ecole du Louvre, 6, (2015), 43-52. 4 The collection of East-Asian art created in the Department of Decorative Arts in 1893 mainly consisted, during the first years, of Japanese prints and objects. 5 Jean-François Jarrige, Du Musée du Louvre au Musée Guimet, in Les donateurs du Louvre (Paris: éditions de la RMN, 1989); Xavier Besse, La Chine des porcelaines (Paris: Edition de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004); and Wan-Chen Chang, The Chinese Ceramic Collection of Ernest Grandidier, in Marie-Cathe- rine Rey, ed., Paris 1730-1930: A taste for China (Hong Kong: Kangle ji weshua shiwushu, 2008), 110-115. 6 Recently, see: Jacques Giès, Les arts asiatiques au Louvre, in Geneviève Bresc-Bautier, Yannick Lintz, Françoise Mardrus and Guillaume Fonkenell, eds., Histoire du Louvre (Paris: Louvre éditions, Fayard, 2016), vol. II, 460-461. 7 For an up-to-date bibliography, see Béatrice Quette, ed., Japon japonismes (Paris: MAD, 2018) and Ge- neviève Lacambre, A l’aube du japonisme. Premiers contacts entre la France et le Japon au XIXe siècle (Paris: Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris, 2018). 2 Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020) Lucie Chopard Chinese Porcelain enters the Louvre: A Collector, his Dealers, and the Parisian Art Market (c. 1870-1912) ers.8 This field of research involves reflection about the location, the date, the people and the mechanisms involved in the acquisitions, highlighting links between the Parisian art market and the Louvre. It is a good example of the “entangled histories of museums and art markets” noted by Bénédicte Savoy and Charlotte Guichard.9 A Collection admitted to the Louvre Ernest Grandidier started collecting during the late 1860s, first taking an interest in books, then gradually moving on to Japanese ceramics and Chinese porcelain.10 He gave up collecting Japanese ceramics in 1899, instead concentrating his interest on Chinese objects which represent the biggest part of the collections.11 This paper focuses precisely on this latter collection: consisting primarily of porcelain from the Qing dynasty (1644- 1912), together with a few examples from the Ming (1368-1644), Yuan (1279-1368) and Song (960-1279) dynasties (fig. 1). Some of them are now recognized as masterpieces,12 while others are of lesser quality. Identification of the pieces according to Number of acquisitions (nb. of inventory Grandidier (1912) numbers) China, Qing, Kangxi 1776 China, Qing, Yongzheng 459 China, Qing, Qianlong 1839 China, Qing, Jiaqing 79 China, Qing, Daoguang 127 China, Qing, other periods 8 China, Ming 493 China, Yuan 8 China, Song or Yuan 16 China, Song 84 8 As noted in Christine Howald and Alexander Hofmann, Introduction, in Journal for Art Market Studies 3 (2018), 3. 9 Charlotte Guichard and Bénédicte Savoy, Acquiring Cultures and Trading Value in a Global World. An Introduction, in Charlotte Guichard, Christine Howald and Bénédicte Savoy, Acquiring Cultures, 4. 10 For an overview and bibliography, see Lucie Chopard, Ernest Grandidier, in Collectionneurs, collecteurs et marchands d’art asiatique en France 1700-1939, Paris, INHA, forthcoming (online). 11 According to my comparison of the old inventories of the collection (kept at the Musée Guimet) and two notebooks where Grandidier recorded his ceramics (now in the Archives nationales, 20144787/13), I pre- sume the collection consisted of 4,919 inventory numbers for Chinese ceramics and only 698 for Japanese ones. There might actually be more pieces in the collection (no more than ten or twenty), but I have not found concrete evidence of their existence yet and it is known that moving and renumbering was under- taken after the collector’s death. I plan to provide an extensive study of the Japanese acquisitions in my PhD thesis. 12 An online database presents the masterpieces of the collection: https://www.guimet-grandidier.fr/html/4/ index/index.htm (accessed on 28 April 2020). 3 Journal for Art Market Studies 2 (2020) Lucie Chopard Chinese Porcelain enters the Louvre: A Collector, his Dealers, and the Parisian Art Market (c. 1870-1912) Identification of the pieces according to Number of acquisitions (nb. of inventory Grandidier (1912) numbers) China, Han 1 China, unknown 29 Japan 698 Unknown 172 Other provenance 4 Total 5,793 Fig.1: Chart presenting the repartition of the pieces of the collection depending on designa- tions given by Ernest Grandidier (1912) ©Lucie Chopard In 1894, Grandidier donated his entire collection of Chinese porcelain to the Louvre.13 The sheer volume of items, over three thousand pieces, made the donation a considera- ble enrichment of the decorative arts collection.

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