The Chardins of the Marcille Family. An Orléans Passion

While one might have seen it as the tail of a fairly improbable national tour, leading The Basket of Wild Strawberries (ill. 1) by Chardin from the Louvre-Lens to the Musée d’Art Roger Quilliot in Clermont-Ferrand, via a Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest sadly notorious for its infestations [1], it is ultimately the most enriching stop for art history that concludes this Tour de France. The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Orléans indeed took the opportunity to highlight its time in the legendary Marcille collection, a well-known reservoir of Chardin paintings, but also of Prud’hon and so many other artists then overlooked. It is difficult today to grasp what the entire collection assembled by François Marcille (1790-1856), the patriarch of the family, looked like, with its some five thousand paintings, the details of which would be dizzying if ever precisely known: it included forty Bouchers, eighteen De La Tours, fifteen Perronneaus, twenty-five Fragonards, and about thirty Chardins.

1. View of the exhibition “The Chardins of the Marcille Family” at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans
Photo: Alexandre Lafore

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Unlike the Rothschild dynasty, which was the subject of an INHA program, the Marcille family (and its descendants) has managed to remain very discreet to this day, and one can hope for an exhibition similar to the one the Louvre devoted in 2007 to its most important donor, Dr. Louis La Caze (see the article). Yet three of the protagonists are presented in Orléans (ill. 1), alongside an unfortunately anonymous but highly amusing quotation: « One must dispose of the old faded word ‘patron’. When speaking in front of us about a true friend of the arts, let’s say: it is a Marcille ».

2. View of the exhibition “The Chardins of the Marcille Family” at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans
Photo: Ludovic Letot

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3. View of the exhibition “The Chardins of the Marcille…