Claudius Popelin back at the Musée des Arts décoratifs

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1. Gabriel Ferrier (1847-1914)
Portrait of Claudius Popelin, 1881
Oil on canvas - 110.6 x 112.7 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo : Christophe Dellière
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29/4/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs - Largely unknown nowadays but very famous in his time, Claudius Popelin had all the makings of a Renaissance humanist scholar lost in the 19th century: both a theorist and a practitioner, a painter and a poet, he was one of the masterminds of the revival of the art of enamel under the Second Empire. He passed through the workshops of Picot and Scheffer, and spent time in Italy, but soon abandoned portraits and history paintings in favour of enamel painting, after having trained with Alfred Meyer. A key figure in the Parisian artistic landscape, he was immortalised by Eugène Giraud in 1871 and by Gabriel Ferrier ten years later. First sold at Beaussant-Lefèvre at the Hôtel Drouot in spring 2017, this beautiful portrait (ill. 1) had joined the stock of the Talabardon & Gautier gallery which lent it to the rich exhibition "Un soir chez la Princesse Mathilde. Une Bonaparte et les arts" organised at the Palais Fesch in Ajaccio in summer 2019 (see article). Offered at Ader Nordmann & Dominique on 21 March, this one was sold for €33,280 with fees and offered by Mrs Krystyna Campbell-Pretty and her family to the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris.

2. Claudius Popelin (1825-1892)
Gallia, vers 1867
Grisaille enamel, translucent coloured enamels, paillons, blackened and carved wood - 68.5 x 53 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo : RMN-GP/P. Schmidt
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Claudius Marcel Popelin-Ducarre was somewhat at home on rue de Rivoli, even though the museum did not move there until 1905: a fellow traveller with the Union centrale des arts décoratifs, he took part in the exhibitions held at the Palais de l’Industrie and gave a lecture on the art of enamel on 6 March 1868 at the library then installed on Place des Vosges. The same year, Philippe Burty published a major work in the form of a plea for a French revival of the cloisonné enamel technique: Les Émaux cloisonnés anciens et modernes. Thanks to Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, the author’s splendid copy was able to join the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs three years ago (see news item of 3/4/20). Drawing on the past, a specialist of the Renaissance, Claudius Popelin himself published L’Émail des peintres in 1866, L’Art de l’émail in 1868 or Les Vieux Arts du feu in 1869 while continuing his creations: Gallia was thus presented at the 1867 Salon (ill. 2). A friend of poets - Théophile Gautier prefaced L’Émail des peintres and José Maria de Heredia dedicated a sonnet - and artists, Claudius Popelin willingly collaborated with goldsmiths and cabinetmakers, as evidenced by the neo-Renaissance credence at the 1867 Universal Exhibition.

3. Claudius Popelin (1825-1892)
Napoléon III, 1865
Painted enamel frame on copper and blackened wood - 95 x 74.3 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo : RMN-GP/P. Schmidt
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Nourished by patriotic and moral values, as Yves Badetz writes in his essay on him in the exhibition catalogue "Un soir chez la Princesse Mathilde. Une Bonaparte et les arts", Popelin was happy to represent great figures from French history, as shown by his Henry IV on Horseback, acquired by the Duc d’Aumale. A fervent republican, he nevertheless produced an antique-style bust of Napoleon III surrounded by profiles of Clovis, Charlemagne, Hugues Capet and Napoleon I, which has been loaned by the Fondation Dosne-Thiers at the Musée d’Orsay since 1983 (ill. 3) Initiated at the end of the 1860s, his affair with Princess Mathilde was well known: separated from her former lover Emilien de Nieuwerkeke, the Emperor’s cousin made him an essential figure in her famous salon on the rue de Courcelles as well as in her country residence, the château de Saint-Gratien. It was there that he posed for his son Gustave, both painter and photographer, painting a screen for Princess Mathilde (ill. 4), whose artistic and social connections he certainly benefited from. Appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1869, he did not escape the malice of the Goncourts: "The enameller of fake antique enamels has just been decorated, thanks to a thousand small basenesses, those I know give me an idea of those I suspect".


4. Gustave Popelin (1859-1937)
Claudius Popelin, seated, painting a screen, between 1885 and 1890
Silver print from a gelatin silver bromide negative - 15.7 x 20.5 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo : RMN-GP/P. Schmidt
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5. Eugène Giraud (1806-1881)
Portrait of Claudius Popelin, 1871
Oil on panel - 45 x 29 cm
Compiègne, Musées du Second Empire
Photo : RMN-GP/R.-G. Ojéda
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A loyal king to the princess until the end of his days, even at the fall of the Second Empire and while his home was ransacked during the Commune, Popelin was portrayed by Eugène Giraud in 1871, ten years before Gabriel Ferrier’s painting (ill. 5). Now kept at the Palais de Compiègne, this panel bears witness to the place occupied by the enameller in the intimate circle of the princess, whose drawing teacher Giraud had been. On her return from exile, the two artists organised Mathilde Bonaparte’s return to Paris, where she moved into a new private mansion on rue de Berri. Gabriel Ferrier, a former pupil of her friend Ernest Hébert, became her drawing teacher when Eugène Giraud died in 1881. He had also studied with Isidore Pils, a fellow student of Claudius Popelin, whose portrait he was ideally suited to paint. Presented under the number 871 at the 1881 Salon, it was variously appreciated: one judged sometimes that "Mr Gabriel Ferrier has dried up and cooled the intelligent and sympathetic head of the master enameller Claudius Popelin" while others saw in it "style and allure". In the note he devoted to the painting in the catalogue of the exhibition "Un soir chez la Princesse Mathilde. Une Bonaparte et les arts", Paul Perrin quoted Eugène Guillaume, who judged in the Revue des Deux Mondes that "The only portrait composed at the Salon is that of Mr C. Popelin, by Mr Ferrier. It is certainly a fair idea to show us in the middle of the multiple instruments of the work of his mind the sympathetic master of the arts of fire". The elegant historian of the decorative arts is depicted as a scholar with a neatly combed white beard, posing in his cabinet, surrounded by his books. Only the two plaques on his desk - one of which shows an unfortunately unidentified 16th-century horseman - subtly recall his achievements as well as the influence of the Renaissance.

6. Claudius Popelin (1825-1892)
The Genius of Enamel, 1866
Enamel on copper
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo : Jean Tholance
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Sick, Claudius Popelin died in May 1892, to the great despair of Princess Mathilde, who orchestrated the funeral of his companion who had just been named a life member of the Central Union of Decorative Arts. It was therefore to this institution that she turned to organise a retrospective exhibition the following year, which lasted only one month - from 18 to 15 June 1893 - but which brought together seventy-seven numbers and was a real success, as Yves Badetz and Audrey Gay-Mazuel recount in the exhibition catalogue "Un soir chez la Princesse Mathilde. A Bonaparte and the Arts". Thirty-three enamel plates were on display, as well as eleven others inserted in books, a refined practice that Claudius Popelin loved: the binding plate of the copy of L’Art de l’émail intended for Princess Mathilde and dedicated to Eugène Giraud is decorated with a gold cameo plate representing a love in armour, while that (ill. 6) of L’Émail des peintres is decorated with an irresistible Génie de l’émail operating his muffle furnace. Ten years later, a codicil to Mathilde Bonaparte’s will bequeathed to the museum a collection of seven enamels, ten watercolour fan designs and a large screen painted on silk. Although the princess knew the institution well, she was not a member but remembered the 1893 exhibition, which remains the last retrospective of Claudius Popelin’s work.


7. Claudius Popelin (1825-1892)
Artemis, 1868
Opaque and translucent enamel with blue background on copper - 25.9 x 14.7 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo : Jean Tholance
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8. Claudius Popelin (1825-1892)
Artemis, 1868
Opaque and translucent enamel with blue background on copper - 25,9 x 14,7 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo : Jean Tholance
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In 1917, Emile Huard’s bequest brought two attractive plates (ill. 7 and 8) with mythological subjects into the museums: originating from a piece of furniture executed by the Guéret brothers, as Catherine Cardinal points out in the fascinating article published in L’Objet d’art in December 2019, which constitutes the most recent source on the artist, they take pride of place in the room devoted to the neo-Renaissance, at the entrance of which the portrait of Gabriel Ferrier was hung just a few days ago. A few steps away, the famous painting by Charles Giraud, representing the veranda of Mathilde Bonaparte’s Parisian hotel, seems to be waiting for the companion of this princess, friend of the arts, collector and well-informed patron of the arts, as is Krystyna Campbell-Pretty today, on the other side of the world, to whom the Musée des Arts Décoratifs already owed an amusing snail teapot (see article), a basket by Odiot (see news item of 18/10/21) and a tea and coffee service by Jean-Valentin Morel (see news item of 27/10/22), not to mention the famous Prud’hon Marcille pre-sold at Christie’s (see news item of 22/11/21) two years ago: Let’s be happy to see some good fairies still supporting this temple of industrial arts more than a century and a half after its foundation[[We thank Mrs. Audrey Gay-Mazuel and Mr. Mathurin Jonchères for all the information they provided during the writing of this news item].

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