Books As Art Objects: Baron Ferdinand De Rothschild's Library At
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Books as art objects: Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild’s library at Waddesdon Manor Figure 1 : The south facade of Waddesdon Manor, overlooking the garden Waddesdon Manor, a fantasy 19th-century château embedded in a county once nicknamed “Rothschildshire” because of the number of properties owned by the family in such a limited geographical area, is an excellent representation of what may be known as the goût Rothschild. The manor, whose architectural style is an association of decorative elements taken from various French Renaissance Loire Valley castles, was designed to host Ferdinand de Rothschild’s art collection and accommodate it for week-end enjoyment and guests’ entertainment. The visual identity of the site, common to many Rothschild’s possessions, originates from the juxtaposition of French 18th=century decorative art and English 18th-century portraits. Figure 2 : The grey drawing room, on the ground floor is representative of the Rothschild taste. It allies 18th century British portraits and 18th century French decorative arts. The fortune of the Rothschild family can be traced back to the career of Ferdinand’s great- grandfather Mayer Amschel Rothschild, born in 1743 or 1744 in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt am Main, an independent imperial city. His family, who derived their name from the house of a 16th century ancestor, Zum roten Schield – “At the Red Schield” – had been involved in the textile trade, but Mayer specialised in antique dealing, and ran a mail-order business of coins and other antiquities. The capital he accumulated from this enterprise and the links it gave him with princely collectors enabled him to branch into banking. Having five sons, he was assisted by one of them who remained in Frankfurt and sent four others to important European cities and trade knots, making the family business international: Vienna, Manchester, Naples, and Paris. From those five brothers in five European cities comes the Rothschild’s insignia of the five arrows pointing in different directions. The main reason for the Rothschilds’ eclipse of their rivals, beyond their commercial acumen and energy, was their belief in ploughing back profits into the firm, a policy that was reinforced by endogamy: Rothschilds tended to marry their cousins, keeping the money in the family. They were not known as great spenders, but the family tradition of antique dealing, together with the need to ease their way with attractive and expensive gifts, began to turn their attention to collecting, just at the time that the benefits of cultivating the politically powerful, both as clients and as suppliers of commercially useful information, were encouraging the family to invest in expensive houses and estates where they could entertain. The narrative of this family history is still very present in Waddesdon Manor today, and a room is dedicated to it. The core of the collection displayed today reflects the taste of the first master of the place, art amateur and collector Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, who decided to build the castle and tailored the building to his collection. Belonging to the Austrian branch of the family, Ferdinand de Rothschild moved to England after the early death of his mother in 1859, at the age of only 52, when he was still 19. He married one of his English cousins, Evelina, in 1865, but she tragically died 18 months later, and Ferdinand was to never marry again. Waddesdon would become his life’s work: having visited the site of the future house in 1874, the empty landscape was turned into the setting for a great house within five years. Ferdinand’s aesthetic outlook was undoubtedly shaped by his childhood homes, and, even as a child, he shared his mother’s interest in interior decoration and gardening. At only 21, Ferdinand de Rothschild bought a rare Sèvres turquoise pot pouri vase in the form of a ship, and had to pay for it in instalments. He had indeed great interest in art, shaped by early experiences: helping to pack his father’s art collection, and “learning under [his] mother’s tuition to distinguish a Teniers from an Ostade or a Wouwermans from a Both”. In this extent, Ferdinand’s taste was characteristic of what by the 1850s had become a clearly defined Rothschild tradition of collecting, distinguished by an interest in precious materials and excellence of craftsmanship: to a certain extent Rothschilds always considered their collecting as an investement and so tended to limit themselves to works with a clearly ascertainable market value. By the time Ferdinand came to build Waddesdon, educated taste favoured interiors that were authentic, in the sense of being composed of genuine fittings and furniture of the past, instead of modern imitations: he was part of a generation that was making a cult of what would soon be called “antiques”. A preference for the authentic furniture and fittings of the past narrowed the field for interior decoration considerably, for there was insufficient material available to equip a whole house with genuine furnishings of a medieval or Renaissance date; the chosen style tended, therefore, to be 18th century, since there was a flourishing market for furniture and decorative arts of the period and because, in Ferdinand’s words, it possessed “that adaptability which more ancient art lacks”. As Lord Hertford sardonically remarked about the optimistic descriptions of works of art he was offered by dealers, “bronzes, pendules et meubles, tout est de Riesener, ou de Boulle,ou de Gouthière et tout a appartenu à Marie-Antoinette, à Madame du Barry, ou à Madame de Pompadour”. That makes it all the more remarkable that Ferdinand secured so many pieces with a royal provenance. Thanks to his eye for quality, Waddesdon possesses treasures by J-H. Riesener such as the secrétaire made for Louis XVI’s study and Marie-Antoinette’s writing table, both from the Petit Trianon, and the rolltop desk made in 1763 for the comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII. On the contrary, book collecting is a rather late passion in Ferdinand’s life, though books themselves had an important role in his childhood and teenage years. He regretted having never been to university, and had a strong urge to tutor himself, and frequently asked friends for advice about the books he should read in order to make up for the deficiencies of his education. He envied his English cousins the social ease which he believed had been granted by their public-school and university education, contrasting it with his own solitary bookishness as a child: “romances and novels […] increased the dreaminess of my disposition, which lasted until I was well into my teens”. His library at Waddesdon, nowadays enriched by the James A. de Rothschild’s bequest, is relatively small in size and was formed at a series of great English and French sales from Beckford (1882) to Pichon (1892). An incomplete catalogue was printed in a limited edition in 1897, and the words Tome Premier on the title page suggest that the intention was to enlarge the collection; the Baron’s death in 1898 prevented this. To a certain extent, Ferdinand de Rothschild sought in his bibliophilic activity the same criterions as in his art collecting: rarity, provenance, curiosity, and the feeling of a rather exclusive link with a past period or iconic persona. How is this reflected in his library? Figure 3 : The Morning Room hosts the library in its original 19th-century bookcases Baron Ferdinand de Rotschild’s bibliophilic collection in Waddesdon Manor mostly consists of late 17th and 18th century publications, from 1516 (W.Cat.137) to 1843 (W. Cat. 137). Chronologically, the collection could be said to start with Beaujoyeulx’s Balet comique de la Royne (1582, fig. 4). The 27 intaglio plates are ascribed to Jacques Patin (Nancy, c. 1540-c.1610), a friend of François Clouet and an artist who worked on the Louvre and on Fontainebleau, and are his only known engraved work. This plate (fig.4) shows the Grande Salle du Petit Bourbon, here still used without a proper stage, and the audience. The Balet comique de la royne was danced on October 15th 1581 to mark the marriage of the duc de Joyeuse, the king’s favourite, with the queen’s half-sister, Marguerite de Vaudémont. The theme of the ballet is based on the story of Circe. The music was composed by Lambert Beaulieu and Jacques Salomon, the costumes were by Jacques Patin, and the whole organised by Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx. This occasion was an important one in the history of ballet and has been called the first in which dance and music were arranged together for the display of coherent dramatic ideas. Figure 4 : Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx, Balet comique de la Royne faict aux nopces de Monsieur le duc de Joyeuse & Madamoyselle de Vaudemont sa soeur, 1582, W. Cat. 35, Acc. Num. 4588. 20% of the collection are published before 1700, and books after 1789 only represent 9% of the total: this library is truly one of an 18th-century connoisseur, and 70% of it was published during this time period. The library is also one of a Francophile: more than half of the works are Parisian imprints and though one third of the books are in English, the vast majority of them are in French. Most of the books were acquired for their visual appeal: Ferdinand de Rothschild’s collecting wasn’t led by classical bibliophilic criterions such as seeking first prints or different editions for textual reasons. He was rather attracted to books as art objects which could be appreciated for their beauty, which translates, in his library, in a large number of remarkable bindings.