* * *

Between 1870 and 1900, a period of great influx of Jews into France, you’d be unlikely to find a wealthy Jewish resident of Paris going into the Marais for kugel or gefilte fish, let alone a falafel. Leave that to the tourists and the working class schnooks, they’d say. Well, maybe not. Maybe they’d send a servant or two to Rue des Rosiers for some kishke and kreplach or stay for a meal when in the neighborhood for some philanthropic mitvah.

Otherwise, prosperous Jews in Paris in the latter decades of the 19th century likely felt more at home among the bankers, industrialists and aristocrats of the 8th or 9th arrondissements than in the Pletzl, the Little Place, as the heart of the then-significant Jewish Quarter around Rue des Rosiers was known. In any case, wealthy Sephardim, such as the de Camondo family, a Jewish banking family that had made its fortune in the Ottoman Empire and Italy, would have been more familiar with Turkish spanakopita and kaskarikas and yufka than with the Ashkenazi fare found in the Marais, where the vast majority of Jews were then Ahkenazim. Anyway, by the time the de Camondos established residence in Napoleon III’s France in 1869, they were probably well accustomed to the foodstuff of aristocracy.

The Camondo family’s rise in wealth originated through commerce at the end of the 18th century. By the early 19th century the fortune was sizable enough for Isaac Camondo, based in Istanbul, to open a bank in his own name. Isaac died without children and so his brother Abraham Salomon Camondo (1781-1873) inherited the bank and greatly developed. Having aided Italian unification through loans to the newly formed kingdom, Abraham and his grandsons (Abraham’s son died in 1866) were ennobled by Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel II. The parallel with the (de) Rothschilds led the (de) Camondos to be known as “the Rothschilds of the east.” (See this article about the Rothschilds in Paris.)

The Camondo family’s French story begins in 1869 when the elderly Abraham Salomon Camondo followed his two grandsons Abraham (1829-1889) and Nissim (1830-1889) to Paris to further grew their successful family.

Abraham and Nissim elected to live in what was then becoming one of the most exclusive quarters in the capital, the area around Parc Monceau. Through the 1860s and into the 1870s, members of the imperial aristocracy and of the haute bourgeoisie built stately mansions surrounding the park’s genteel greenery and theatrical décor. Here one could stroll by a colonnade of Corinthian columns in partial ruin, watch duck in the oval pond of a naumachia (the basin Romans used for mock naval battles), walk over a Chinese bridge and visit an Italian grotto and an Egyptian pyramid. The sight of well-dressed (faux) explorers visiting (faux) ancient ruins on an afternoon in Parc Monceau might have been reminiscent of paintings by 18th-century French painters Watteau, Fragonard, Lancret or Bouchet found in the Louvre—or on the walls of neighborhood residence since living with great wealth now required a backdrop of great art and perhaps some antique furnishings.

Soon after they arrived in Paris, brothers Abraham and Nissim de Camondo built mansions side by side overlooking the park. Several streets away, Edouard André, heir to a Protestant banking family, built an even more ostentatious home on the new and expansive Boulevard Haussmann. When, in 1881, André married Nélie Jacquemart, they formed a couple of the most devoted art collectors in Paris. Their home and collection are open to the public as the Jacquemart-André Museum, which gets the lion’s share of museum attention in the quarter, leaving relatively few visitors to the exceptional home and collection of Moïse de Camondo.

The collectors in the de Camondo family weren’t brothers Abraham and Nissim, who arrived in Paris as business-minded adults, but their respective sons, Isaac (1851-1911) and Moïse (1860-1935). The cousins continued to live side by side after their fathers died, both in 1889.

The Republic of France was the center of the art world between 1870 and WWI, and while Isaac had a taste for modern art, Moïse (Moses) was devoted to the styles of the pre-Revolutionary Kingdom of France. Having arrived in France as a child, Moïse developed a taste in decorative arts that was more French than the French. He considered the beauty of decorative art of the 18th century, particularly the period from 1750 to 1789 (the second half of Louis XV’s reign and Louis XVI’s full reign) as “one of the glories of France.”

Moïse de Camondo, like his cousin next door, grew up in a Napoleon III-style mansion bought by his father in 1870. After the death of his mother in 1910 he had the home demolished in order to build his dream home. Modeled after the Petit Trianon, that little jewel of a palace at Versailles that Marie-Antoinette used as her getaway house, Moïse’s new home combined the luxury of a modern mansion of the 1910s with a space that could ideally present his 18th-century decorative treasures. (The former home of his uncle Abraham and cousin Isaac, which would have had much in common with the home Moïse had demolished, can still be seen next door.)

The brothers would eventually bequeath their extensive art and decorative collections to French cultural institutions. Isaac, who never married, left his collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings to the Louvre (many of them are now in the Orsay), while Moïse bequeathed his home and collection of 18th-century decorative arts to the Union Central des Arts Decoratifs. The UCAD, an institution created in 1882, is now called Les Arts Decoratifs, and oversees the Museum of Decorative Arts and affiliated museums, including the Nissim de Camondo Museum, where Moïse’s home and collection are still largely presented as he wished.

Whether or not you’re greatly interested in 18th-century decorative arts, the museum is remarkable in its combination of three different points of interest: an extraordinary decorative arts collection, the technology and services of an ultra-modern home of the early 20th century, and the life and times of the de Camondo family as bankers, philanthropists, collectors and Jews. Use of the audio-guides (free with the entrance ticket) or a human guide is highly recommended.

Rooms specially designed to receive Moïse de Camondo’s growing collection are fitted with antique wood paneling and present marquetry, inlaid tables and other furnishings by great names of French cabinetmaking in the latter decades of the 18th century, such as Oeben, Riesener and Jacob, along with paintings, bronze clocks, vases and chandeliers. Methodical in his purchases and with a sense of symmetry in his home, he often purchased items in pairs. The pieces often have a known history relative to high aristocracy or royalty, such as Marie-Antoinette’s chiffonier, a table for her needlepoint work. A room off the dining room was built to showcase Moïse’s porcelain collection, including two Sèvres dinner services (“Service Buffon”), each piece of which is illustrated by a different bird.

Advised by curators at the Louvre and the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs and in contact with major antique dealers, Moïse continued to enrich his collection until the end of his life. He sold pieces to buy better pieces.

While wishing to present the art de vivre of the ancient regime, Moïse de Camondo had also instructed the architect René Sergent to provide all of the high-luxury comforts of his own time, complete with an ultra-modern kitchen, heating, bathrooms and car park.

In an alliance of two powerful banking families, Moïse married Irène Cahen d’Anvers in 1891. Irène had been painted by Renoir as a child, her curly long brown hair falling down her back and wrapped around her shoulder like a fur cape. They were married at the Grande Synagogue de Paris on Rue de la Victoire. Five years and two children later she fell in love with an Italian count who was a racehorse trainer, the era’s equivalent of running off with the pool boy. In the divorce, Moïse was granted custody of the children.

Their son Nissim (named for Moïse’s father) was the intended heir to the home and his collection, as well as of the bank, but he predeceased has father, dying in air combat during WWI in 1917. Moïse then closed the bank and eventually bequeathed the mansion and its furnishings to the Union Central des Arts Décoratifs in Nissim’s memory.

Their daughter Béatrice showed no interest in her father’s passion for 18th-century decorative arts. She nevertheless inherited a sizable fortune. Horses were her passion, and in any case she had a family and home of her own. During the German occupation of WWII, she felt protected from expanding anti-Jewish policies by her wealth, assimilation and position in French society. By then, her late father’s Paris home and collection had become a museum. If she had inherited them the collection would undoubtedly have been dispersed since her own possessions were eventually seized when she, her husband Léon Reinach, and their children Fanny (born in 1920) and Bertrand (born in 1923) were arrested in 1942 for being Jewish and deported (Léon, Fanny and Bertrand in Nov. 1943, Béatrice in 1944) to the death camp at Auschwitz. They did not return.

This is one of the most beautiful of lesser-known museums of Paris enlivened by a fascinating family history, ideally followed up by peaceable stroll through Parc Monceau.

© 2013, Gary Lee Kraut

Musée Nisim de Camondo, 63 rue de Monceau, 8th arr. Metro Villiers or Monceau. Tel 01 53 89 06 40 or 01 53 89 06 50. Open Wed.-Sun. 10am-5:30pm. Entrance: 7€50, includes audio-guide. Joint tickets including entrance to the Museums of Decorative Arts, Fashion and Textile and Advertising, all on Rue de Rivoli, are available for 12€.

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The public spaces

Before seeing whether or not he deserved applause in the bedrooms and suites, the press was able to get acquainted with his work in the hotel’s main dining room, La Cuisine, where we were also invited to partake of a sumptuous array of brunch offerings and graciously served coffee, tea and the occasional hot chocolate. Altogether, the room and the breakfast were a clear sign that the Royal Monceau intends to assume its role as a palace, as high luxury hotels are called in France.

La Cuisine, which proposes classic non-gastronomic French fare for lunch and dinner, is also the most successful of the Royal Monceau’s public spaces for the way in which it allows for either intimacy and publicity, for its insouciant play of materials (cotton, leather, metals, glass), and for the backlit array of wine bottles along the walk. The room isn’t particularly unique, but even at a breakfast reception the opening felt grand indeed.

The hotel also has an Italian restaurant, Il Carpaccio, a more intimate setting, with an attractive coastal atmosphere thanks to seashell motifs leading in and out, the airiness of the space beside the hotel courtyard, and its encrusted, octopus-like chandelier.

By law, smoking isn’t allowed in the public spaces, so the hotel has created the Fumoir Rouge, a red speakeasy of a cigar-smoking room. Fans of fine cigars might wish to take note whether lodging at the Royal Monceau or not.

The reception area, bar, lobby, concierge desk mostly feel busy and crowded, and that’s even before the guests arrive. There are some surprising touches—whether amusing (e.g. the troop of wooden elk at the bottom of the brick-walled staircase), photogenic (e.g. the gathering old chandeliers by the stairs off the lounge), or annoying (e.g. the fun-house restrooms beyond those chandeliers)—but on first glance the lobby area and bar are not places that call for one to linger.

The bedrooms and suites

More importantly, does one want to linger in the bedrooms and suite?

Philippe Starck gave an impassioned explanation at the press opening as to how he tried to emulate in decorative and in design terms the way in which a writer (André Malraux was his example) might use a chair for a nightstand, or tape a drawing to a lampshade, or draw an itinerary on a city map on the desk. Those are nice images of the creative spirit or at least of a certain kind of decorative nonchalance. But once inside the rooms and suites it was clear Mr. Starck had translated those images of the creative spirit a bit too literally. Or could it be that Mr. Starck had only been speaking of himself all along?

In dominantly white rooms of decent size, lampshades are tagged with black brushstrokes or words and desktops take the form of maps “personalized” with “handwritten” remarks. The intent, of course, is to declare that a creative person once occupied this room, and for added emphasis every room has a guitar in it. It was the guitars that got me thinking of the décor of the Royal Monceau as a cross between 1930s Art Deco and The Beatles’ White Album. It would be a stretch to call Philippe Starck’s work here inspiring. Drole would better describe it.

It was therefore surprising to hear Mr. Starck say that he intended for his work here to intellectually and artistically inspire visitors, because guitar or no guitar, however comfortably one may feel at the Royal Monceau—and there is indeed comfort here—I don’t imagine that a stay in the Royal Monceau would be any more stimulating than a stay at, say, the Meurice or the George V or the Bristol or the Ritz, and there are large suites in lesser hotels with plenty of character to stimulate one’s creativity.

The idea, naturally, isn’t simply to appeal to visits from the creative set but to invite the well-to-do visitor to think of him- or herself as an artiste or as hob-nobbing with well-accomplished artistes. In a further effort to demonstrate its artfulness, the Royal Monceau also has an art bookshop, an art concierge, and a very comfortable cinema.

Qatari Diar and Raffles

After being invited to consider the artfulness of the hotel, the press heard from a representative of Qatari Diar, the real estate arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, and hence of the State of Qatar, which owns the Royal Monceau. He didn’t give a clue as to whether the Emir of Qatar ever felt the need to be creative or play the guitar, but he did say that he thought the Royal Monceau was a good investment.

The Royal is managed by the Raffles Hotels & Resorts, making this Raffles’ point of entry in Europe following its development of properties in Asia starting in the 1990s and in the Middle East beginning in 2007.

The location

The Royal Monceau is situated between the Arc de Triomphe and Parc Monceau, within a 10-minute walking radius of the Champs-Elysées, the Jacquemart-André Museum, Salle Pleyel, a number of stellar restaurants, and a variety of high-end galleries and fine boutiques. The so-called Golden Triangle of Paris lies on the opposite side of the Champs-Elysées and has a higher density of restaurants and luxury than the Monceau zone, so the Royal Monceau can feel askew with respect to that, which may be part of the appeal for the return traveler seeking out a neighborhood of residential/international business loveliness. Ternes and Charles de Gaulle Etoile are the nearest metro stations.

Le Royal Monceau, 37 avenue Hoche, 8th arrondissement, Paris. Tel 01 42 99 88 00. www.leroyalmonceau.com.

The palaces of Paris

France awards a special “palace” designation to high luxury hotels of the 5-star category. Subsequent to the initial publication of this article the Royal Monceau joined that elite group alongside the Meurice, the Four Seasons George V, the Bristol, the Ritz, the Crillon, the Plaza Athénée and others.

© 2010, Gary Lee Kraut

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If I keep reading up I might begin to hear the dialogue between the spirits of deco past: the triangulation of fashion, craftsmanship, and technique, the coquetry between economics and power, the courtship between industry and design, tales of art de vivre à la française, and further reflections on lifestyle and beauty.

But my attention is waning, quickly. And I’ve the nagging conviction that precious furniture is better seen in context rather an ad nauseam in museum.

This confusingly laid out museum sets out to seriously present furnishings from the Gothic styles of the late Middle Ages to the Art Deco lines of the 1930s, followed by a cursory examination of more recent decades*. Despite the beauty of individual objects, even the evocative decorative vocabularies of the reigns of Francis I, Henry IV, Louis XIV, the Regency, Louis XV, Louis XVI, the Directory, and the Empire elicit little more than an occasional “Oh, isn’t that pretty.” Beyond that, highly crafted objects do not add up to a highly crafted museum. I even suspect that there’s some kind of curatorial sadism at work in a museum where one is invited to admire hundreds of armchairs without ever having an occasion to sit.

This is a museum without context, without narrative, without life. Before long, I realized that I was witnessing nothing more than the chronology of fashion, accentuated by the eventual shift from artisanship to industry to mass production.

I suppose that the emphasis on decorative fashion is appropriate considering that this museum belongs to a family of museums that includes those dedicated to fashion and textiles and advertising. But the Museum of Decorative Arts fails to attain the union of “the beautiful and the useful” that it promises (that union is actually found at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, the National Museum of Technical Innovation). In fact, it appears that the moment a designer starts to admire an object’s utility he’s already falling behind the times.

Specialists, antique dealers, and deco fans will recognize the voice of a decoratively challenged journalist, insensitive to the objects of their passion. They may nevertheless benefit from a sincere bit of travel advice: Wait a few months before visiting this museum—because once the opening-season hype has died down you’re likely to have the place all to yourselves.

But why go at all when the interplay of power, economics, art, and décor can be found in more vital museums, mansions, and chateaux elsewhere in and around Paris? There’s the 17th century purity of Vaux-le-Vicomte, the Louis this and Louis that at Versailles, the tremendous collection of 18th century decorative works in de Camondo mansion (a museum under the same organizational umbrella as this), the collectors’ view of decorative arts at the Jacquemart-André mansion, the Renaissance and First Empire rooms at Fontainebleau, the Art Nouveau pieces in the Orsay Museum, and even the Second Empire velvet luxury in the neighboring section of the Louvre itself.

While those evocative examples of decorative arts don’t individually reveal the evolutions of decorative fashion over time, they speak far more about the life of the objects, of their owners, of nobility and power, and of the sculptors and architects and visual artists at work at the time.

The Carnavalet Museum in the Marais, may be comparatively poor in furniture, but it does a far better job of revealing the development of the noble salon from the 16th through 18th centuries. Various period rooms encountered in the Museum of Decorative Arts do indeed manage to present a pretty snapshots of various periods, but they aren’t enough to rattle the chains of the spirits of deco past.

Ghosts in the Attic
Yet those spirits are here. I’ve seen them. They’re under the eves of the pavilion at the far tip of this wing of the Louvre (levels 4 to 9) in the cursory part of the museum that displays furnishings from the 1940s to the present.

And those eves also turn out to be the most worthwhile part of the museum—not for what’s inside but for what’s out: the imperial view of Paris.

This is the view from the Tuileries Palace, which once stretched from what are now the tips of the wings of the Louvre. (The Tuileries Garden was that of the Tuileries Palace rather than that of the Louvre, as it now appears). The Tuileries Palace, begun in the 1560s, was occupied on and off by French kings and emperors until the last of them, Napoleon III, who was deposed in 1870. The body of the palace was then burned down in 1871.

The wide view from the 5th level offers an eyeful of the Tuileries Garden, the Eiffel Tower, the arcaded facades along rue de Rivoli, the Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Palais, the Défense. The view itself is astounding, and it takes on an additional, historical dimension with the knowledge that this is as close as one can get to the last royal and imperial views of Paris.

Louis XIV looked this way while dreaming of Versailles, as did young Louis XV when wanting to play outside, and Louis XVI must have looked out over the trees of the Tuileries Garden when dreaming of rescue before being sent to prison during his trial. Napoleon I lived here, Louis XVIII died here, and Napoleon III called it home as he completed the connection of the Louvre with the Tuileries.

This is above all the view of the last emperor and empress, Napoleon III and Eugenia. Looking through their back windows they wouldn’t have seen the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, or the Défense business zone in the distance, all later additions, but what we see now is still more or less their mid-19th-century view toward the wealth of the imperial capital.

The imperial view continues on the 7th level which offers peeks through bull’s eye windows of the courtyard of the Louvre, the Invalides, the Orsay Museum, the grey rooftops Paris, the bronze statue of Napoleon I (set in place by Napoleon III) on the column rising above Place Vendôme, and finally the crown jewel of Napoleon III’s reign, the Garnier Opera, which the emperor never saw completed: the imperial city—unlike the museum furniture—in context.

Turning back, there on the 7th level, I came across the spirits of deco past. They were sitting in period posture in a room of 60s and 70s chairs watching a montage of film extracts showing the icons of contemporary furniture. Yes, right there, in the emperor’s attic, they idle away the day having grown bored with taste-makers and their decorative fashion statements.

At night, I imagine, they descend into the period rooms of the museum, where they wind bronze pendulums, drape themselves over Louis XV armchairs, write letters from the beyond on Louis XVI secretaries, lounge on Art Deco leather, and lie on a Louis-Philippe bed, longing as I did during my visit, to leave the museum to have a walk in the Tuileries Garden.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs
107 rue de Rivoli
75001 Paris
Tel. 01 44 55 57 50
www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr
Open Tues.-Fri. 11am-6pm, Sat. and Sun. 10am-6pm. Closed Mon.
Audio-guides available.

*One of the most notable rooms in his museum is that which has nothing to do with furniture at all but instead presents an astonishing collection of unbeautiful paintings of Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985). Though the collection is clearly out of place in this museum, it’s here because the works were a gift from the artist himself.

© 2006, Gary Lee Kraut

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