Monday, 20 January 2025

The Château de Haroué - heritage rescued


The Château de Haroué in Lorraine offers an illuminating case study of the issues surrounding recent heritage policy in France.

Sometimes known as the "Chambord lorrain", the Château was built by Germain Boffrand in the 1720s for Marc Beauvau-Craon, Prince de Craon, and has the indubitable distinction of having remained in his family ever since. It was first opened to the public in 1964.

The small village of Haroué (pop.500) is located just south of Nancy, near the border of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.  It is billed as within easy driving distance of Basel, Strasbourg and Karlsruhe -  though, more problematically in terms of the tourist map, it is a solid 2.5 hours from Paris.

The proprietor and châtelaine,  until her death in May 2023, was the splendid Princess Marie Isabelle ("Minnie") de Beauvau-Craon. We are reminded that in France "Princess" is only a courtesy title, but Minnie still boasted a direct line of descent from Duke Leopold's favourite.  Her father,  Marc - who died of a heart attack in 1982 - was the last Prince of Beauvau-Craon.  Minnie, who resided partly in the U.K. for 35 years and spoke fluent English, had just the right combination of blue blood and affability to inspire affection in the readers of Vogue and The Tatler.  In an interview with the New York Times in 2013 she expressed her deep commitment to the upkeep of the Château, "When you inherit something, you owe some respect to your forebearers"; "I'm determined to put life into Haroué.  I want to put it on the map, to make it a destination" (See Reading).  

Minnie de Beauvau-Craon, photographed for the New York Times in 2013
Fine words - but income from tourism proved insufficient to cover the costs of the ancestral pile.  During her period of stewardship, Mme de Beauvau-Craon tried to keep afloat by establishing the Haroué as a venue for the arts.  Beginning in 2007 Opéra en Plein Air, a Paris-based company, staged annual operas in the grounds for audiences as large as 2,000.  Haroué also became a venue for art exhibitions at  and in 2010 and 2012 Hubert de Givenchy - a personal friend -  curated two historical fashion shows there.  In 2012 Minnie was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution to the arts. In 2014 the Nonovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana invited Minnie to speak, with a view to using the château as an international conference venue and centre for graduate studies, though nothing seems to have come of this initiative.

The Auction of 2015

By 2015, however, desperate measures were required. Minnie decided to auction off some of the Château's furnishings. Forty-five lots, estimated at 2.5 million euros, were  to be sold by Drouot on 15th June 2015. Prior to the auction, the pieces were placed on public display at the Maison Turquin in Paris.

Didier Rykner in the Tribune d'Art lamented the lack of state control that allowed historic collections of this sort to be parcelled into separate lots and dispersed, reducing properties like Haroué to empty shells. He noted that it was not the first time that furniture from Haroué had been sold off, but this sale threatened to be particularly damaging.  Included were several important family portraits, two from the XVIth century attributed to  François Quesnel and,  from the 18th-century, Pierre Gobert's portrait of the Prince Marc Beauvau-Craon. Other historically significant 18th-century lots were Claude Jacquart 's painting of the marriage of Anne-Marguerite-Gabrielle de Beauvau-Craon to the Prince de Lixheim in 1721, and the sword of the Grand Écuyer of Lorraine, made for the Prince de Beauvau-Craon by the Parisian goldsmith Simon Gallien.  Still more regrettable in Didier Rykner's view was the inclusion of a  number of rare pieces of furniture by the Restoration cabinet-maker Pierre-Antoine Bellangé, which had been brought to Haroué from the Château de Saint-Ouen in the 19th-century by the daughter of Louis XVIII's mistress the Comtesse de Cayla, who had married into the Beauvau-Craon family.

 Portrait by François Gérard showing Zoé Victoire Talon,
 comtesse Baschi du Cayla in the Park at Saint-Ouen
with her children Ugolin and Valentine,
 later the Princess de Beauvau Craon
 (lot 31 in the sale)

The auctioneer Rémy Le Fur - another of Minnie's personal friends - confirmed to Didier Rykner that, with the exception of the sword, all the lots had possessed export licences for several years.  There was still a possibility of pre-emption for museum collections, though this did not resolve the issue of  "conservation sur place".(Tribune d'Art, 18.05.2015)


Then at the eleventh hour the State stepped in....   

Just ten days prior to the sale,  Mme de Beauvau-Craon received a phone call from Jean-Michel Loyer-Hascoet, the Deputy Director of Historic Monuments,  with the news that several of the most important lots had been declared "monuments historiques" and must remain in France,  export licences notwithstanding. Only two hours before the auction, amid cries of state spoliation, she dramatically withdrawn the items.  In an article in Le Figaro,  she complained that,  having lived for many years in England, she had chosen to sell her possessions through a Parisian auction house only "through patriotism".  To add insult to injury,  state support for renovation of the Château  had also recently been withdrawn ( Le Figaro, 10.06.2015).


Opinion over the State's action was divided.  Éric Turquin spoke against it, but Didier Rykner, a notorious critic of government cultural policy, thought the intervention was justified.  He pointed out that in 2007 the State had already bought items from the Chateau to the tune of  3.5 million euros and allowed them to stay in situ to prevent their dispersal - a  highly exceptional, even unique measure.  As to restoration work, 90% of the funding had been provided by a combination of  central and regional government bodies, leaving Minnie to find only 10%. Rykner was informed  that between 1998 and 2008 the Regional Council had devoted 524,000€  to the Château; it now asked, quite reasonably, to be given a definite programme  for future development and a public inventory of cultural assets - neither of which were forthcoming.  Minnie's protestations of patriotism were  "simply grotesque": local organisations or museums were not even informed of the sale until the application for an export licence for the sword of the Grand Écuyer.

The official conservation order covered principally the furniture from the Château de Saint-Ouen. Didier Rykner tells us that this assemblage is of some cultural significance since so little Restoration furniture survives; the only comparable example is the set designed by Bellangé for the Tuileries, today in the Louvre.  Mme de Beauvau-Craon had intended to sell the chairs and other items from the Comtesse de Cayla's "Chambre jaune" as separate lots, whilst the bed and the mirror (psyché) would have remained at Haroué.  In Didier Rykner's view, she was within her legal rights to disperse the pieces in this way, but could be considered morally reprehensible.(Tribune d'Art, 11.06.2015)


The withdrawn lots comprised:

  • A portrait by Gérard of the Comtesse du Cayla and her children (lot 31)
  • A porcelain plaque by Adèle Hoguer, dated 1819, also showing the Comtesse du Cayla (lot 32),
  • Furniture from the"Chambre jaune" at Saint-Quen designed by Bellangé (lot 35 and 36)
  • A chandelier attributed to Antoine-André Ravrio (lot 37),
  • Three pairs of candelabras and a pair of torchères by Thomire (lot 41 and 44) 
  • Furnishing for a mantlepiece comprising a clock and two malachite vases (lots 45 and 46).


Despite the reduction in scale, the sale was very successful: the remaining lots realised 984,635€.  Happily, some of the more important works found their way into state collections:  the Claude Jacquart was preempted for the Château de Lunéville for 81 250€  (65,000€ plus tax). The sword of the Grand Écuyer, which was also classified as a "monument historique" and omitted from the sale, was acquired by the Musée Lorrain at the beginning of 2017 and is now on display in the Palais des ducs de Lorraine in Nancy.



The fate of the Restoration furniture remained more problematic. In October 2016, amid some initial secrecy, the Centre des Monuments Nationaux negotiated the purchase (for 665 000€) of the withdrawn pieces.  With its original 2007 acquisitions, the State now owned a coherent collection: 

Acquired in 2007: Paintings by Gérard (Louis XVIII in his cabinet de travail at the Tuileries; allegories of the Four Seasons)  and a set of chairs by Bellangé  made for the "Chambre gothique" at Saint-Ouen. 

From 2016:  Bellangé's furniture from the Chambre jaune", plus candelabras and torchères by Thomire  and a bust of Madame du Cayla by Pigalle.

The ultimate location for the collection remained undecided but, as an interim measure,  it was moved from Haroué and placed on show at the Château de Maisons-Laffitte (Yvelines), where it could be properly studied and restored. 


On 18th October 2017 - no doubt to Mme de Beauvau-Craon's chagrin - the CMN signed a preliminary agreement with the municipality of Saint-Ouen, with a view to returning the furniture to its original home in the Château of Saint-Ouen, which is publicly owned. The Wikipedia page for the Château cites this project as current,  though I do not think any of the pieces have yet been transferred.



New initiatives

We are not privy to the exact sequence of negotiations which followed the sale of 2015.  We learn that, unsurprisingly,  there was considerable tension between the Princess and the representatives of the French government. In 2017 the Beauvau-Craon patrimony was further dispersed when the Paris collection of the late Prince was auctioned on the death of his widow, Laure de Beauvau, formerly the head of Sotheby’s in France. There were also hints of disagreements over the future of Haroué between Minnie and her two children Victoria and Sebastian Marc (from her second marriage to Javier Botana). 

 In 2020 COVID locked down the world... Then in March 2021 it was officially - and unexpectedly - announced that the Minister for Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, had agreed to a partnership between the Beauvau-Craon family and the Centre des Monuments Nationaux. The CMN was now to take over the day-to-day running of Haroué. 

This move represents a considerable departure, since it is the first time that the French cultural authorities have extended their remit to a privately-owned property which is still in part inhabited.  The President of the CMN Philippe Bélaval, the prime mover behind the initiative, emphasised the wider ramifications:  "The concept of private property must evolve; private owners must open up to new possibilities and change their outlook."  The model promised a constructive way forward to safeguard the integrity of historically significant  private collections.

For Haroué, there was confirmation of the property's cultural worth as "an emblematic monument from the period of Lorraine's reunification with France".

Jean-Marc Bouré pictured in Le Point, 15.09.2021

The Château was now set to benefit from all the expertise and resources of the official heritage machine:  "The CMN will develop the château's tourist potential, exploit its cultural and pedagogic potential, and contribute to its re-evalution, whilst respecting the family setting."

Jean-Marc Bouré, administrator for the Château from March to October 2021, envisaged "un programmation culturelle très dense", which aimed to reach 10,000 to 12,000 visitors a year. In June 2021, following COVID, the CMN was able to open the ground floor and first floor of the central wing to guided tour parties.  Part of the park, set out as a formal garden in the 1950s,  was also made accessible. 

By the start of the second summer season in April 2022, the new administrator Jocelyn Bouraly was able to announce the embellishment of the Château with additional pieces from the CMN reserves, aimed to create a more appealing, lived-in atmosphere.  On the first floor, the remaining Louis XVIII furniture had been rearranged, and further items introduced  - a table by Henri-Léonard Wassmus,  a Second Empire Gobelin tapestry of Don Quixote, and, in the tower, some choice pieces of Louis XVIII Sèvres porcelain.  Portraits of Stanislas and Catherine Opalinska, by  Jean-Baptiste Van Loo from Versailles were on temporary exhibition for several months. 

The new pages for Haroué on the CMN website testify to a full programme of visits, educational offerings, plus music concert and cultural events. The bank of past temporary art exhibitions is already beginning to accumulate impressively, with Michael Kenna in Summer 2023 and Alicia Paz last Autumn.

Minnie de Beauvau-Craon and her daughter Victoria, photographed for Le Figaro in September 2021.

The family continues to take  centre stage in the new presentation.  In public at least, Mme de Beauvau-Craon welcomed the injection of professionalism.  In 2022 Victoria Botana de Beauvau-Craon published a smart coffee table book on Haroué with photographs by Miguel Flores Vianna (Éditions Rizzoli Flammarion. See: The Tatler, 17.09.2021.)

Last summer (June 2024)  she fronted a new video tour, available in both French and English.  It is certainly pleasing to see the fully restored first floor with its Louis XVIII furniture and learn of current plans to renovate the "salon chinois":


References

Website of the Château de Haroué:

Drouot, Sale of 15th June 2015:  NoticeResults.  

Didier Rykner, "Haroué, Richelieu, Chanteloup, le démantèlement du patrimoine mobilier se poursuit", La Tribune de l'Art, 18.05.2015
_____, "Haroué : l’État a joué son rôle", La Tribune de l'Art, 11.06.2015

CMN Press release concerning the furniture from Saint-Ouen, 24.03.2017
See Le Républicain Lorrain, 26.03.2017: "Le château d’Haroué se vide de son trésor",

Pauline Overney, "Vers un avenir culturel pour le château de Haroué", Lorraine Magazine, post of 2021.

"Le château de Haroué : un monument historique privé sous gestion publique, une première!"
 Droit, patrimoine et culture, 10.05.2021. 

Jean-Christophe Vincent, "Le château d’Haroué s’enrichit de nouvelles œuvres d’art", L'Est Républicain, 09.04.2022.


Reading -  Minnie de Beauvau-Craon in 2014.

The French village of Haroué does not have much to offer. There’s a bakery, a pharmacy, a tabac, a restaurant, a police and fire station, a doctor’s office, a retirement home, a church that’s rarely open and a population of fewer than 500.

But Haroué (pronounced ah-rou-eh) does have an 82-room chateau with its very own princess, Minnie de Beauvau-Craon. Everyone here calls her “Princess Minnie.”

The princess, who is 59 and divides her time between the French countryside and an apartment in London, has ruled over the Château de Haroué in the Lorraine region of northeast France since her father died in 1982. Only 29 at the time, she inherited both the joys and the financial challenges of keeping the place going. In a country where the revolution overthrew the monarchy more than two centuries ago, “princess” is really just a charming honorific. But Princess Minnie takes her job — if not the title — seriously.

“When you inherit something, you owe some respect to your forbearers,” she said in an interview in English. “I’m determined to put life into Haroué. I want to put it in the map, to make it a destination.”

To that end — and to keep the chateau solvent — six years ago, Princess Minnie began hosting operas in an elaborate theater she had constructed atop the formal French garden. On two nights in late August, Opera en Plein Air (Open-Air Opera), a company from Paris, presented “The Magic Flute” to sold-out crowds of 2,400 people. When the opera ended on the first night, the spectators stayed in their seats and applauded with appreciation, not passion. (This is France, after all.) Princess Minnie, by contrast, jumped to her feet and shouted, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

The following evening in her welcoming remarks, she said, “Don’t hesitate, all of you together, to applaud the very beautiful voices and the very beautiful orchestra.” This time, more people joined her in the standing ovation.

“How cool to sing here!” said Pablo Veguilla, an American tenor. “This is exactly what you think a chateau should look like.” Indeed, Haroué has turrets, a moat with white swans, a formal French garden, an informal English garden, centuries of tapestries and family portraits, Baccarat crystal chandeliers, a chapel and an 18th-century library with floor-to-ceiling enclosed bookcases. Owned by the Beauvau-Craon family since its construction was completed in 1732, it celebrates the calendar year with 365 windows, 52 chimneys, 12 towers and four bridges. One of its architectural jewels is a turret decorated with 18th-century chinoiserie murals. It’s the sort of place that attracted Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth for an eight-day stay in 1979. She brought along her own servants, hairdresser, cigarettes and gin.

For a princess, Minnie is thoroughly modern, or at least thoroughly modest. She insists on picking up guests at the Nancy train station in her own car, a 1997 BMW; she underdresses (one of her favorite outfits is a white T-shirt, navy blue straight skirt, unstructured tan suede jacket and very worn Tod’s loafers); she wears little makeup and does not bother with dyeing her gray hair. Her English is flawless (she grew up with British nannies); her accent is unidentifiable rather than French. (She is often asked whether she is Eastern European or Israeli.)

Asked why she is called Princess Minnie in a country that toppled its king more than two centuries ago, she replied, “By respect? By amusement? Yes, it’s ridiculous!”

In an era when many old French families have been forced to sell their chateaus because of the prohibitive maintenance costs, Princess Minnie is determined to beat the odds. “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said on the morning of the first opera performance, as she collected wineglasses and emptied ashtrays in the library, where she had hosted a gathering the night before. “This is not an area for tourists. We are not a chateau of the Loire. We are not in the South of France. There was a point when I felt I couldn’t do anything more. I said to myself, ‘How far can you do this out of duty?'”

Some suggested she dump the place, but she held on. In 2010, Hubert de Givenchy, the retired fashion designer and a close friend, curated an exhibition at the chateau of evening clothes by three of the pillars of 20th-century haute couture: Philippe Venet, the late Cristóbal Balenciaga and Givenchy himself. In the second floor reception rooms, Princess Minnie shoved the French royal furniture aside (one of the finest collections still in private hands) to make room for 42 dresses, including the black duchesse-satin gown designed by Givenchy for Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and the mink-trimmed Balenciaga wedding dress made for Queen Fabiola of Belgium in 1960.

Two years later, Givenchy and Venet organized another show, “The Most Famous Wedding Dresses.” It brought together vintage bridal dresses designed both by them and by several other couturiers, including Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Balmain. Among the highlights: Balenciaga’s last wedding dress, a silk creation for María del Carmen Martinéz-Bordiú y Franco, the granddaughter of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, embroidered with 10,000 pearls and 5,000 sequins, and Princess Minnie’s natural silk shantung gown and long lace veil designed by Venet in 1978 for the first of her two marriages. (Both ended in divorce.)

Next year she plans to expand into the art world by hosting exhibitions in several rooms she has renovated in one of the basements, including one with the decorative artist Joy de Rohan Chabot and another on street art with the British gallery Steve Lazarides.

Her fantasy is to open an informal “pub” at the chateau. She wants families to visit for the day, fish in the river, walk in the small forest and enjoy a simple, home-cooked meal. Maybe one day guests can stay overnight. “I haven’t got the equation together yet,” she said. “I need a second life.”
Elaine Sciolino, LETTER FROM FRANCE: A Tiny Village With Its Very Own Princess, The New York Times, 25.09.2014 [archived version]
https://archive.nytimes.com/tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/letter-from-france-a-tiny-village-with-its-very-own-princess/

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