Lost splendours - La Ferté-Vidame

This  evocative ruin, is all that remains of the once magnificent château de la Ferté-Vidame, in the department of Eure-et-Loir, the property of the fabulously wealthy financier, Jean-Joseph de Laborde.  Eighteenth-century writers argued long and hard over the moral status of riches, the merits of luxury,  the worth of artistic patronage...  This battered ghost reminds us that, for one generation at least the answer to such questions, was to be brutally decided by the guillotine and the wrecker's hammer.

Londonsailles

Versailles in W2?  This splendid Hyde Park Gardens apartment, kitted out in real and reproduction Louis XVI furnishings, went on the market in 20011 for a cool £6.5 million.  The decor was lovingly put together over a twenty years period by an anonymous French-born banker and hedge-fund manager (I don't even know what that means, but I guess it has nothing to do with beeches and hawthorns). The apartment was for sale with Crayson.com. Property brochures have a way of disappearing from the internet, so here are a few pics. to enjoy.

Bronze urns from Bagatelle

Lanhydrock -  urn in situ

These splendid - and well-travelled -  Baroque bronze garden urns, which now adorn the National Trust gardens at Lanhydrock in Cornwall, are modelled from the 17th century originals cast by Claude Ballin II (1661-1754) for Versailles.  The ten urns hail originally from the Château de Bagatelle.  The Marquess of Hertford, who owned Bagatelle in the mid 19th-century, bequeathed them to his son Sir Richard Wallace (of "Wallace Collection" fame) and he in turn left them to his secretary Sir John Murray Scott.  At one point they resided at Nether Swell Manor in Gloucestershire, but they were bought in the 1930s by Lord Clifden, the owner of Lanhydrock.  There is some question that they may date back to the time of the comte d'Artois in the late 18th century;  but sadly no.  The well-informed Cornwell Gardens Trust website confirms that Lord Hertford had them cast from the surviving originals by permission of Napoleon III, and that they bear the mark of the prolific 19th-century maître de forges Antoine Durenne (1822-95).

The Château du Grand-Lucé gets a makeover

In 2003 the 18th-century Château du Grand-Lucé in the Loire Valley was offered for sale by the Department of Sarthe and, after a lengthy application process,  bought by Californian interior designer Timothy Corrigan. For once this is a happy story of private ownership. The chateau, which was an empty shell, has been lavishly refurbished and now has a new lease of life as an upmarket event venue.  Admittedly access for ordinary mortals is strictly limited though the gardens, which had already been partly renovated and opened to the public, can still be visited on Sunday afternoons in the summer.

Fragonard at Louveciennes

Why Fragonard's glorious Progress of love was removed from the walls of the Louveciennes pavilion and paintings by Vien substituted is one of the great unresolved mysteries of art history.  Unfortunately there is almost no documentary evidence and the matter remains a matter of speculation.....

Neoclassical dreams: Madame du Barry's pavilion at Louveciennes

Long neglected or in private hands, Madame du Barry's famous pavilion at Louveciennes is now at last restored and open to the public. This little white jewel of a building has had an adventurous past - the perfume magnate François Coty, owner in the early 1930s, even had it completely dismantled and rebuilt several metres further back to avoid subsidence.  In 1991 it was acquired by Franck and Julienne Dumeste who began an ambitious programme of restoration, successfully recreating much of the interior decor, though not all the once-spendid ornamentation and furnishings, sold off in 1795 and scattered or lost.  In 2006 the Fondation Julienne Dumeste opened its doors as a venue for cultural and educational events.  You can now hold your wedding reception there, or just enjoy "la visite" on Sunday afternoons; definitely one for the "to see" list!

The Château de Bellevue is no more....

The château de Bellevue, Yvrac, in happier times 

There were cries of "foul play" in the little commune of Yvrac near Bordeaux last winter when a fine 18th-century château was inadvertently razed to the ground in three days flat by a gang of Polish construction workers charged only with demolishing an outbuilding. The owner, a Russian plutocrat, who had been conveniently absent at the time, was a little too forgiving and a little too rapid in unveiling plans for a spanking new replica, attempting to smooth ruffled feathers by contracting local firms to do the work.  

Choiseul's pagoda at Chanteloup

The "pagoda" at Chanteloup with its huge semi-circular basin is all that now remains of Choiseul's magnificent chateau.  Always a strange architectural fantasy, deprived of all frame of reference it is now positively surreal - a forty-four metre tall oriental cum neo-Grecian dream set in wide open, and in most photographs, deserted, parkland with the Forest of Amboise stretching beyond.  Choiseul originally conceived the edifice as a monument to posterity to those friends who had come to Chanteloup during his four years of exile from Paris.  For, in the closing years of the old reign, flock to him they had; this miniature Versailles had contrived to combine an aura of domestic intimacy with a round of receptions and entertainments on a truly lavish - and ruinous - scale.