Edouard André came from a very wealthy family of bankers active in Paris in the 19th century. Around 1869 he decided to build his residence on a 5,700 square meter plot on the elegant Boulevard Haussmann, newly created with the urban revolution of the Grands Boulevards. The villa was inaugurated in 1876 with a lavish reception attended by all the high society and Parisian celebrities. Meanwhile, in 1872, Edouard commissioned his portrait from Nélie Jacquemart, a young painter who had gained a good reputation as a portrait artist. In 1881, when Edouard was 48, he decided to marry Nélie.
A Couple of Art Collectors
Their marriage fueled gossip at the time, as they came from completely different families, both culturally (he was a Bonapartist Protestant and she a pro-monarchist Catholic) and economically. Furthermore, they had no children, which led people to think there was no particular romantic affection between them. What actually made the marriage work and made it unique was their shared passion for art collecting. The couple regularly traveled to the Near East and Europe, especially Italy, to acquire artworks.
Together they collected 207 sculptures and 97 paintings. Among these, the acquisition of Tiepolo frescoes from the Villa Contarini Pisani in Mira (near Venice) that adorn four rooms of the residence was almost epic. The frescoes were discovered by the couple during a trip to Italy in 1893. The main scene, which decorates the winter garden staircase, depicts the stopover of Henry III in Venice as he traveled from Poland to Paris to become King of France, and his visit to Doge Contarini right in the villa from which the paintings come. Transporting them from Venice to Paris and reinstalling them in the Jacquemart-André residence took eight months, partly due to necessary architectural adaptations. The main painting was also split into two sections, with the second part placed back on the dining room ceiling.
Edouard only enjoyed the Tiepolo frescoes for a few months because he died, just sixty years old, in July 1894. His family tried to claim the estate, but a prenuptial contract had protected Nélie, who was thus the sole heir. Nélie stipulated that, upon her death, the house with all its artworks was to pass to the state. She made it a condition that the artworks remain exactly as she had arranged them. Therefore, the visit route faithfully follows her conception.
Representative Rooms and Informal Apartments
The first rooms you visit are the representative rooms, where the couple’s social life took place. The stylistic theme is 18th-century art, well represented by the paintings and marble busts on display, but also echoed by the semicircular shape of the main room, the grand salon. Guests entered the painting gallery, which served as an antechamber, and were greeted by paintings by Canaletto, Boucher, Chardin, and Nattier. The grand salon was the heart of this area; on the occasion of more important receptions, it was joined with the adjoining painting gallery and music room through a hydraulic system that allowed its dividing walls to open. The resulting single space could accommodate up to a thousand people. The original dining room is now the museum’s restaurant and offers the unique opportunity to take a break surrounded by 18th-century Brussels tapestries and the ceiling frescoed by Tiepolo, with a view of the villa’s garden.
The informal apartments were rooms where the couple conducted their affairs. Although less lavish than the representative rooms, they are equally a treasure trove of artworks, arranged consistently with the function and style of the various spaces. Among the furniture, all from the finest 17th and 18th-century workshops, stands out an inlaid console commissioned directly by Louis XVI as a gift for Mademoiselle de Fontanges. The tapestry room was entirely built around three Beauvais manufacture tapestries that Edouard already owned before building the house. And of course, there are the paintings: the study houses a collection of 19th-century French artists, while the library is decorated with works by Dutch and Flemish painters including Van Dyck and Rembrandt. Don’t forget to look up to admire the ceilings, with frescoes by Tiepolo from Villa Contarini Pisani in the study and boudoir and by Tintoretto in the smoking room.
At the far end of the ground floor is the winter garden. Being adjacent to the music room, it allowed guests at receptions to relax in a bright environment decorated with Roman statues, plants, marbles, and mirrors. The main feature of the winter garden is the beautiful monumental double helix staircase, made light by a delicate wrought iron and bronze railing. The wall features the Villa Contarini fresco depicting Henry III’s visit.
The Italian Museum
A large part of the first floor was originally intended to be Nélie’s painting studio. However, she abandoned painting shortly after marriage. At the same time, the couple discovered their passion for Italian Renaissance art and adopted the custom of traveling to Italy once a year to purchase works from this period. This space thus became a treasure chest of Renaissance collections, with a proper museum setup. Unlike the representative rooms, only close friends had the privilege to visit this part of the house. In addition to the sculpture gallery, which includes a marvelous bronze plaque by Donatello depicting the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, the other two rooms are crucial to understanding the couple’s taste.
For Nélie, the finest art came from Florence. Therefore, she set up a room whose central theme is Florentine religious art. This room looks like a chapel because of the presence of altarpieces, funerary monuments, and choir stalls. The paintings, although small, are some of the most precious items in the entire collection. Among them is a Saint George and the Dragon, the emblematic and highly symbolic work of Paolo Uccello whom Nélie pursued for years after seeing it in the Florentine house of an antiquarian, but she was only able to buy it at a London auction in 1899 since she was forbidden to export it from Italy after controversies erupted over the acquisition of the Tiepolo frescoes. There is also a pair of Madonna and Child paintings, respectively by Botticelli and Perugino. The compositions are similar because the two painters came from the same school and were both inspired by Andrea Verrocchio, so much so that when Nélie bought the Botticelli, she initially thought it was a Verrocchio.
Edouard, on the other hand, preferred Venetian and Northern Italian art, a less common choice among collectors of his time. His Venetian gallery combines religious subjects (including a Bellini Madonna and Child and an Ecce Homo by Mantegna) with mythological subjects like the Visit of the Amazon Hippolyta to Theseus by Carpaccio. The visit concludes with the most intimate part of the house: the bedrooms of the two spouses.
The Domaine de Chaalis
There is another place connected to the history of Nélie Jacquemart, the Domaine de Chaalis, an estate 40 kilometers from Paris, in the heart of the Valois. Widowed and after resolving disputes related to her inheritance, Nélie undertook a world tour in 1901. Returning the following year, she purchased the Domaine and dedicated herself until her death to furnishing it and assembling a collection of marble busts and art objects that ideally tell the story of the royal abbey that is part of the complex.
In this arrangement, as in that of the Paris house, Nélie reveals her desire to share over time her passion with those who, like her, love art and history.
