13/6/23 - Acquisition - Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs - A symbolist painter and follower of the Rosicrucians, Armand Point was an atypical creator whose objets d’art are much more appreciated today than his paintings. After beginning his career as an Orientalist painter, this native of Algiers adopted the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic while turning to the applied arts. His enamels are highly sought-after and extremely rare on the market, making it all the more remarkable that the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris - which until now had not kept any work by the artist - has acquired La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan ; ill. 1 and 2) from the young gallery owner Oscar Graf [1].
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- 1. Armand Point (1861-1932)
La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan), 1904
Gilded bronze, champlevé and cloisonné enamel, ivory and semi-precious stones - H. 33 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Yann Girault - See the image in its page
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- 2. Armand Point (1861-1932)
La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan), 1904
Gilded bronze, champlevé and cloisonné enamel, ivory and semi-precious stones - 33 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Yann Girault - See the image in its page
Opened in 2010, his gallery has been taking part in the Maastricht Tefaf since 2018 and regularly supplies the leading international museums, but this attractive relief will not have had time to join any fair as it has gone straight to the Paris museum - thanks to the generous bequest of M. Jean-Paul Teytaud, who had already made it possible to acquire Eugène Gaillard’s large bench for Siegfried Bing (see news item of 9/12/21) - where it has been on display since this morning, with its own display case at the heart of the recently refurbished Art Nouveau section (see news item). Proudly signed and dated by Armant Point, the reverse of the plaque features a vase from which emerge opulent vine pampers embellished with three shields incised with the artist’s name, the year 1904 and two surprising words: Haute-Claire and Florence. As Audrey Gay-Mazuel suggests in the rich note she devoted to the object with a view to its acquisition, we should certainly see a kind of artistic filiation here, with the Tuscan capital becoming the source of inspiration for the work subsequently carried out in Armand Point’s Bellifontan phalanstery.
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- 3. Armand Point (1861-1932)
La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan), 1904
Gilded bronze, champlevé and cloisonné enamel, ivory and semi-precious stones - H. 33 cm
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Yann Girault - See the image in its page
He had taken up residence in the charming village of Marlotte, in the forest of Fontainebleau, in a house - which still exists - renamed Haute-Claire after the knight Olivier’s sword in the Song of Roland. Drawing on both medieval art and the Florentine Quattrocento, Armand Point quickly made it a rallying point for local and foreign artists, as passionate as he was about rediscovering craft techniques and the sources of the Italian Renaissance (ill. 3). Reminiscent of the Arts & Crafts workshops developed across the Channel by William Morris, this utopian project for an artists’ colony also attracted writers: Sâr Péladan was a frequent visitor, as were Oscar Wilde, Camille Mauclair and Stéphane Mallarmé. Stuart Merrill, a French-speaking American poet, settled there and took care of the printing of the books into which these largely self-taught artists immersed themselves. As Stéphane Laurent explained in the essential article he devoted to Armand Point in the Revue de l’Art in 1997, the latter had begun working with enamel as early as 1895, helped by Félix Malleval, painter at the Boue et Petit earthenware factory based in Montigny-sur-Loing, not far from the village of Marlotte.
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- 4. Armand Point (1861-1932)
La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan), 1904
Gilded bronze, champlevé and cloisonné enamel, ivory and semi-precious stones - H. 33 cm (detail)
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Yann Girault - See the image in its page
In an article published in May 1903, Jacques Daurelle was already returning to the artist’s singularity: "One is astonished that he knows almost by heart passages from Pliny the Elder on painting, that he possesses in detail the treatises of Benvenuto Cellini, of the monk Théophile d’Alberti, of Lomazzo d’Armenino, that he plans to translate into French, with Léo Rouannet, the Life of Michelangelo by Condivi. It is from these latter authors, and from these authors alone, that Mr Armand Point has drawn the knowledge of all the crafts he applies in his goldsmith’s work. He does not want to know the Moderns. For him, they are nothing more than "industrialists". His only reference to them was Popelin, author of a treatise on enamelling and himself an excellent enameller". Let us disregard for a moment the female protagonist of the relief, an incongruous Botticellian figure lost on a Byzantine reliquary but most certainly inspired by Hélène Linder, embroiderer, pupil and teacher of Armand Point. Holding a double flute, this sixteenth-century Italian figure unfurls on the verdant shore of a lake over which floats an elegant swan with outstretched wings, which seems to stop to better listen to the aulos player (ill. 4).
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- 5. Armand Point (1861-1932)
La Dame au cygne (The Lady with the Swan), 1904
Gilded bronze, champlevé and cloisonné enamel, ivory and semi-precious stones - H. 33 cm (detail)
Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo: Yann Girault - See the image in its page
This idyllic scene unfolds in an arched gilded bronze bay, supported by two enamelled colonnettes, richly adorned with semi-precious stones (ill. 5). This decoration is reminiscent of Armand Point’s first enamels, which were exhibited in April 1899 at the Galerie Georges Petit and astonished connoisseurs. The public could discover reinterpretations of masterpieces of Limousin goldsmith’s art held in the Louvre or the Musée de Cluny, and neo-medieval reliquary shrine pieces such as the Coffret aux serpents (Snakes box) bought by the State and now held at the Musée d’Orsay or the Coffret aux paons (Peacocks box) in the Petit Palais. Criticised for these pieces, which were too strongly influenced by the past, Armand Point continued his work on enamel in favour of compositions that were both more complex and syncretic, presenting a new exhibition at Georges Petit in 1903. Here he presented the Coffret d’Ophélie (Ophelia’s box), which was immediately bought by the State for the Musée du Luxembourg, as well as his probable masterpiece in this technique, the Portique de la Musique(Portico of Music), which nevertheless had to wait until 2018 to join the national collections [2] (ill. 6)!
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- 6. Armand Point (1861-1932)
Portique de la musique (Portico of Music), 1903
Embossed gilt brass, gilt bronze, enamel and plique à jour enamel, semi-precious stones, ivory - 69 x 97 x 18 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: RMN-GP/P. Schmidt - See the image in its page
Preceding La Dame au cygne by a year, this imposing triptych undoubtedly marks the culmination of the artist’s technical and aesthetic research, who may have sought to decline this format in a single bay for the benefit of a specific commissioner. Present on both banks of the Seine thanks to the rich collections of the Petit Palais and the small collection patiently built up by the Musée d’Orsay, Armand Point was truly missing from the Musée des Arts décoratifs: this object belonged to Helge Jacobsen (1882-1946) - a member of the famous Danish brewing family [3] - is therefore a very welcome addition to the exhibition. Parisian visitors can already rush to the rue de Rivoli to admire it, a few rooms after the Portrait of Claudius Popelin by Gabriel Ferrier, another great name in the enamel revival recently added to the collections (see the news item of 29/4/23). The painting has been installed not far from a display case containing some of the pieces by Claudius Popelin already held by the institution, and close to a large display case containing creations by Barbedienne and Christofle, which will soon be the subject of an eagerly-awaited exhibition.