Pwt 35 2016 Changing Places: When Paris was a Garden

WEEKLY TRANSMISSION N°35 THURSDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER 2016

CHANGING PLACES : WHEN PARIS WAS TO BE THE GARDEN OF EDEN contents : The Rue de l’Oratoire des Champs Elysées The Odiot Family Business, the Laure Odiot Album Amicorum Lepaulle’s Drawing

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N°35 : THE GARDEN OF EDEN

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Rue de l’Oratoire — or rue de l’Oratoire des Champs-Élysées on a map by Girard, published

by Goujon and Andriveau, 1820-1830). All the arrondissement was then mostly gardens and plant nurseries (pépinières).

The Oratory street was opened in 1787, receiving its first constructions in 1812.

Mr Odiot’s mansion and gardens occupied a large portion of the space of the former Oratorians‘ gardens (Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri), between the Champs Élysées (called Avenue de Neuilly in 1830), the Rue de l’Oratoire (Now Champs-Élysées), rue Neuve de Berry (now rue de Berri) and the rue des Écuries d’Artois (rue de la Réforme, now rue d’Artois).

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«34 rue Washington (former rue de l’Oratoire des Champs-Élysées, opened 1787, first constructions 1812): Entrance to the Cité Odiot, created in 1848 and named in honor of the goldsmith Jean-Baptiste Odiot (1763-1850), one of the first residents, who owned a mansion with a park. This cité has another entrance at No. 26. It includes a square in the heart of the condominium. It was there that was living under the Second Empire, the famous fortune-teller Blanche de Kerastel». (From French Wikipedia)

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Jean-Baptiste Odiot (1763–1850) JBC Odiot was Napoleon's silversmith working in a neoclassical style.

Maison Odiot had been first established in 1690, during the reign of Louis XV by Jean-Baptiste Gaspard Odiot, considered a fine silversmith. The only surviving work by him dating from before the French Revolution (1789–95) is a coffee urn (Monticello, Virginia, Jefferson Foundation) designed and commissioned by Thomas Jefferson.

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte gave Jean-Baptiste Claude, grandson of Jean-Baptiste Gaspard, many prestigious commissions for himself and his family, such as the sacred scepter and sword and the King of Rome's cradle. A wood, bronze and silver gilt cradle given as a gift by the city of Paris to Napoleon and his wife Empress Marie-Louise, on the birth of their son Napoleon II. Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot (1763– 1850) contributed to its making along with silversmith Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751–1843) and is signed on two of the feet: Odiot et Thomire and Thomire et Odiot.

Immense dinner services were ordered by Pauline Borghèse, by her mother and by the Emperor himself. Jean-Baptiste Odiot was influenced by the return of the classical Greek and Egyptian motifs as expressed in the Directoire and Empire styles. Court commissions help further the reputation of Maison Odiot, and the firm provided vermeil services to courts across European. In 1802 he was awarded a gold medal in the third Exposition de l’Industrie in Paris.

He executed a travelling service (c. 1795–1809) for Napoleon and a large table service (1798– 1809; Munich, Residenz) for Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (1756–1825). Odiot’s most complex work was a set of dressing-table furniture made for Empress Marie Louise in 1810 (destr. 1832).

Charles Nicolas Odiot, who excelled in the rocaille style, succeeded his father in 1827 and became the purveyor by appointment to His Majesty the King Louis-Philippe and to the Royal Family of Orleans. He was later succeeded by his son Gustave who received the House of Odiot's most important commission ever, id est, 3,000 pieces of solid gold flatware for Saïd Pacha, the Viceroy of Egypt. He later became the purveyor by appointment to the court of His Imperial Majesty the Tsar. Gustave was also the last member of the Odiot family to preside over the company.

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Laure Odiot

Aimée-Laure Odiot (1805-1896), the eighth child of Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot, married Louis Benois on return from Rome. The wedding was extremely happy, despite Mr Benois having to face bankruptcy during the French railways crash of 1847. And ten years later, on March 1857, the Benois moved together with an old excentric French-Egyptian general, Noël Varin-Bey, to a comfortable house in Rueil Malmaison (formerly Bois-Préau): a mansion in a park than soon was filled by collections of drawings, paintings, archeology and Egyptian mummies, one of which became famous in 2001 (see the story of Ta-Iset at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/11)).

The gouache by Depaulle was included, alongside the portrait of Laure Odiot, in an album given to the young couple by their friends, the majority of whom were young French artists in residence at the French Academy in Rome and filled the album with their own drawings.

Among them François-Alexandre Villain (1820-1825), Antoine-Martin Garnaud (1817-1822), Jean Alaux (1816-1820), Jean-Baptiste Lesueur (1818-1824), Charles-François Lebuf (called Nanteuil, boarder in 1817-1822), Aimable-Paul Coutan (1820-1825), Bernard Gabriel Seurre (1818-1823), Louis-Nicolas Destouches (1816-1818), and also a drawing by Ingres.

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FRANÇOIS-GABRIEL LÉPAULLE (1804-1886). Vue du jardin de M. Odiot à Paris, rue de l’Oratoire du Roule, 1827. Gouache on paper, 195x175 mm. Provenance : Laure Odiot (Album Amicorum, leaf 32).

3.000 euros

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And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.Âť (Genesis 2:9, around 500 BC) Number Thirty-Five of the Weekly Transmission has been uploaded on Thursday 1st September 2016 at 15:15 (Paris time).

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