From Chanel to Reves - La Pausa and It's Collections at the Dallas Museum of Art by Dallas Museum of Art

FROM CHANEL TO REVES La Pausa and Its Collections at the Dallas Museum of Art

FROM CHANEL TO REVES

La Pausa and Its Collections at the Dallas Museum of Art

Olivier Meslay and Martha MacLeod

FOR HARRY S. PARKER III AND THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES IN 1984, IN THANKFUL RECOGNITION FOR BRINGING ABOUT THE DONATION OF THE WENDY AND EMERY REVES COLLECTION

AND FOR THE DOCENTS, WHO TIRELESSLY SHARE THE TREASURES OF THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART WITH OUR VISITORS

FOREWORD Since 1985, the Dallas Museum of Art has been the home of the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which includes masterpieces of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and decorative art. Obtained for the Museum thanks to the foresight of then-director Harry S. Parker III, the Reveses’ transformative gift greatly enhanced the collection of European art at the Museum and gave a powerful boost to its European art program. Today, thirty years later, we extend our renewed gratitude and admiration to Harry Parker, the late Board President George Charlton, and former Board Chairman Irvin L. Levy for their leadership and vision, and to the late Gerard van der Kemp, who first presented this idea to them. Although Wendy and Emery Reves assembled a collection of art that was thoroughly impressive in its own right, scholars have recently begun uncovering an added layer of fascination and richness in the history of La Pausa, the villa Emery bought from Gabrielle Chanel in 1953, and where the Reves Collection was first showcased. Spanning some eighty years, and casting new light on such luminaries as Chanel, Winston Churchill, and Salvador Dalí, this volume traces the evolution of La Pausa and the implausible journey of the Reves Collection, which traveled more than five thousand miles from the South of France to a dedicated wing in the Dallas Museum of Art. A debt of gratitude is owed, of course, to Wendy Reves, for her selfless act of generosity in facilitating the gift of this remarkable collection to the Dallas Museum of Art, thus making it available for residents of Dallas and out-of-town visitors alike. In addition—and in particular—we would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Olivier Meslay, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Senior Curator of European and American Art, and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art, for his meticulous scholarship in studying the Reves Collection; for discovering the part played in this history by Chanel, including her ownership of all of the original furniture and decor at La Pausa; and above all for the fresh perspective and aesthetic appreciation he brings to a trove of objects that share an exceptional provenance. We would also like to thank Martha MacLeod, Curatorial Administrative Assistant for the Department of European and American Art, for her role in conducting extensive research on the history of the Reves Collection and the Villa La Pausa, and for coauthoring this publication with Olivier Meslay. A project of this scope and ambition necessarily relies on the skills of a talented group of professionals. Queta Moore Watson, the DMA’s Senior Editor, is to be commended for her attentive and perceptive copyediting of the text, and I am grateful to Rebecca Winti, Director of Creative Services at the DMA, for the volume’s elegant design.

Giselle Castro-Brightenburg, the DMA’s Imaging Manager, helped shepherd the images to the design department, and Alison Schwartzstein, the Museum’s Manager of Digital Rights and Intellectual Property, handled the complicated logistics of copyright and image permissions. Eric Zeidler, the DMA’s Publications Manager, kept the book on schedule and oversaw every aspect of the publication’s production. Other DMA staff without whom this publication would not have been possible include Jacqui Allen, Jill Bernstein, Hillary Bober, Katie Cooper, Kimberly Daniell, Brad Flowers, Tamara Wootton Forsyth, John Lendvay, Anne Lenhart, Brian MacElhose, Alison Silliman, Neil Sreenan, Isabel Stauffer, Jenny Stone, Nicole Stutzman-Forbes, and Joni WilsonBigornia; former volunteer intern Adrien Lenoir and former research fellow Alexandra Wellington; and all of the DMA preparators and photographers. In addition, we owe thanks to the former Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art, Dr. Heather MacDonald, and to former McDermott Curatorial Intern Michael Hartman for their invaluable help with research for this catalogue. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Emmanuel Coquery and the team of the Direction du Patrimoine at CHANEL. Finally, we are grateful to former DMA trustee Nancy O’Boyle for her enthusiastic advice and support. Nancy was an early advocate for a publication presenting the remarkable history of the Reves Collection. We hope this volume will spur new interest in both the Reves Collection and the legacy of Gabrielle Chanel. WALTER ELCOCK Interim Director Dallas Museum of Art

FROM CHANEL TO REVES La Pausa and Its Collections at the Dallas Museum of Art

From the moment it was installed at the Dallas Museum of Art, the remarkable collection of Impressionist art assembled by Emery Reves has been a favorite destination for visitors. Here a partial replica of La Pausa—the house at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France, where they lived beginning in 1953—forms a backdrop to works by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Rodin, and many others. It is an object of fascination in itself. This re-creation was made under the attentive eye of Wendy Reves; it is likely unique in the history of period rooms, and for this reason alone it deserves individual study. Wendy Reves’ attention to detail and the series of changes that she realized over the years made the wing a magnet not only for art lovers but also for museologists. This small volume provides an opportunity to recall the major events in the history of the Villa La Pausa, which housed the Reveses’ extraordinary collection of more than a thousand artworks, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, furniture, frames, and textiles.1 We hope it will cast new light on the objects that comprise the collection—and their astonishing destiny—while allowing us to consider with fresh eyes the house and decor that surrounded them.

Before Emery Reves bought La Pausa in 1953, for almost a quarter of a century it belonged to an extraordinary person who is now recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most influential women, Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel. She not only built the house but was responsible for most of the decoration

FIG. 1 Postcard on which Wendy Reves wrote “La Pausa” and drew an arrow in the upper right corner. 7

and ornamental details, and also chose most of the furniture. Thus, by an extraordinary coincidence, only recently discovered and publicized, the Dallas Museum of Art became the major repository of objects that had once belonged to Chanel. Before discussing the objects themselves, it is important to emphasize the exceptional nature of the Villa La Pausa, the only house ever built and designed under the direction of Gabrielle Chanel. What the visitor sees today at the Dallas Museum of Art reflects that history. The pictures and sculptures are seen against the architectural decor she created as she made La Pausa the most personal of her houses. In 1928, Chanel acquired several adjacent parcels of land, making the construction of La Pausa possible. The role the Duke of Westminster, called Bendor by his friends, played in the purchase of these parcels is a matter still disputed by biographers. It has often been said that he gave her the villa and its grounds, but by 1928 Chanel was already a very rich woman in her own right. A generous and discreet patron of her artist friends, she was able to buy both the castle of Corbère and that of Mesnil-Guillaume, the latter for her nephew André Palasse. On a twelve-acre plot on the heights of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (fig. 1), she commissioned the architect Robert Streitz to build her a house, specifying not only the overall design but also the smallest details. The exterior resembles a large neo-Provençal house, yet upon entering, the visitor is immediately surprised by the convent-like atmosphere created by its large iron grills, cloister, and Romanesque-style staircase. 8

Although Chanel was by this time at the height of her career and fortune, the villa is full of architectural quotations reminding her of the darkest, or at least the most impoverished, days of her life in the Aubazine convent in the Corrèze region of central France. Her biographers have frequently referred to her secrecy regarding this time; she was clearly haunted by the possibility that her years of poverty as an orphan might be disclosed to the public. It is therefore striking to see how many of the architectural details found at La Pausa are drawn from the Aubazine convent. The most remarkable of these elements is the most central; Chanel asked Streitz to visit Aubazine to examine its stone stair rail so that he could replicate it in La Pausa’s great hall (fig. 2). We are left to imagine Chanel at the pinnacle of her success, living with the Duke of Westminster, the richest aristocrat in England, yet anxious to restore the feeling and shape of the banister that guided her hand as a girl. She likely never shared this secret reference with any of her guests; only she understood that the stone was a variant of the maxim “memento, amice, fortuna vana et fluxa est,” or “remember, my friend, fame vanishes and fluctuates.” At La Pausa, Streitz also re-created the rib vaults found throughout the ancient convent. The courtyard, which is in effect a cloister garth, is another surprising reminiscence of her youth. The same is true of the iron grids; dark, heavy doors; and somber colors of the austere furniture. Chanel seems to have deliberately chosen certain items of furniture for their close resemblance to those at the convent. Thus the

FIG. 2 Chanel on the staircase in the great hall, Villa La Pausa, 1938.

two haute-époque wardrobes (one of which is illustrated in figure 3) originally placed in her bedroom, and a large cupboard in the same style in what was formerly the Duke of Westminster’s bedroom, seem to be variants of the cabinet still located at the foot of the Aubazine staircase (fig. 4). Most of the sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury pieces of furniture found in such numbers at La Pausa, and today in the Dallas Museum of Art, are English and probably came from the Duke of Westminster’s collection. They are not, however, valuable pieces, being mainly Tudor or Jacobean items from the attics and peripheral buildings of Eaton Hall or one of his other properties in England or Scotland. The remaining furniture, which is either French or

FIG. 3 Cupboard (in the twelfth-century style), n.d. Wood and paint. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.597.

Spanish, was chosen by Chanel with her characteristically discerning and seemingly effortless taste. The furniture was placed against a background of whitewashed walls that served as a foil for the cerused paneling found, for example, in the salon (fig. 5). Thus La Pausa was both the house where Chanel exhibited the scale of her success and, perhaps for her eyes only, the secretly reinvented “home” of her childhood. Here many identities seamlessly coexist: successive life stories and affairs rub shoulders with the friendships made and unmade over the course of the life of a house.

FIG. 4 Postcard depicting the interior of the church with old armoire and twelfth-century staircase leading to the convent, Aubazine, France.

FIG. 5 Salon, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.

THE STYLES OF LA PAUSA A degree of caution must be exercised when we study the succession of decorative styles prevailing in La Pausa during Chanel’s lifetime. One can easily be misled by the nature of this decoration if one fails to take into account the stylistic developments made roughly over the first fifteen years. The early years were apparently austere, combining the memory of Aubazine with those of other interiors glimpsed during the time immediately preceding the completion of La Pausa. The most obvious influence is that of La Mimoseraie, the Biarritz house decorated by the dazzling Eugenia Errázuriz, who shared many friends with Chanel—from Jean Cocteau to Pablo Picasso and from Sergei Diaghilev to Igor Stravinsky—during the years when Chanel ran her boutique in Biarritz. Born of Bolivian parents, Eugenia Huici grew up in Chile and married José Tomás Errázuriz, a descendant of one of the great Chilean families; she was painted by Sargent, Boldini, Helleu, and Picasso. Eugenia was one of the most prominent women in Biarritz, and her independent spirit and immaculate taste must have left a profound impression on Chanel, who was always intrigued by irrégulières. Eugenia had a gift for simplicity, austerity, and elegance; one of her maxims was “elimination means elegance.” She also said that she wanted her house to look “very clean and very poor.” Her use of terracotta tiles, simple furniture, and everyday objects is surely reflected at La Pausa. The earthenware pots placed around the interior and exterior of Chanel’s villa, and the terracotta

tiles found on every floor and even in the modernist bathroom, also testify to this influence. It should be remembered that the principal admirer of Eugenia Errázuriz was the interior designer Jean-Michel Frank. Some of the furniture, in particular the sofas and armchairs of La Pausa and the Giacometti lamp still in situ, shows a true kinship with Frank, even if there is no demonstrable connection. Another great decorator of that period, Eileen Gray, also left her mark on La Pausa. Certain ingenious arrangements in the guest bathroom seem to have been inspired by details of Gray’s villa, E1027, which stood a few hundred yards away from La Pausa. A photo spread published by Vogue France in 1930, when the house was completed, shows the extreme simplicity of these sparsely furnished rooms, some of which had no rug or carpet. The most spectacular room, both for its scale and its decoration, remains the great hall, with its monumental staircase inspired by Aubazine, five-level forged-iron chandelier, five windows above the entrance, sideboards, and, above all, extraordinary asceticism (fig. 6). The entire spectrum of Chanel’s taste, her cherished lucky number (five), and her secret memories are all here. Luxury and simplicity, luxury and austerity: only Chanel’s bedroom (fig. 16) seems a little more comfortable, with its rugs and dark wooden armchairs. The Vogue article is important because it demonstrates Chanel’s clear intention to present this interior as a manifesto. Other photographs in the Reves Archives at the Dallas Museum of Art show a similar austerity in the salon (fig. 7), library (fig. 8), and dining room (fig. 9),

FIG. 6 Great hall, Villa La Pausa, in Vogue France, May 1930.

FIG. 7 Salon, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

FIG. 8 Library, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

FIG. 9 Dining room, Villa La Pausa, in Vogue France, May 1930.

FIG. 11 Chanel’s bathroom, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

FIG. 10 Duke of Westminster’s bedroom, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

FIG. 12 Toiletries in the guest bathroom, Villa La Pausa, 1938.

FIG. 13 Great hall, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.

and in the bedroom referred to as the Duke of Westminster’s, where the cast iron bed is very simple, and there is no rug on the parquet floor (fig. 10). Chanel’s bathroom, with its modern furniture and floor made of small terracotta tiles, is exceedingly monastic (fig. 11). By contrast, in one of the guest rooms the marble and metal washstand is full of women’s toiletries (fig. 12). The black-and-white photographs accentuate the relatively severe atmosphere found throughout La Pausa. But this spartan simplicity would soon change.

In the 1930s, Chanel added a great many baroque elements to this spare, monastic decor, ushering in an eclectic style similar to that of the apartment she kept above her Paris boutique on rue Cambon. A color photo spread published in 1935 by the magazine Plaisir de France clearly shows this development (fig. 13).2 These photographs reveal spectacular additions to the decoration, such as the large euphorbia plants seen on the staircase of the great hall (fig. 2) and in the cloistered walkway (fig. 14). In accordance with the overall simplicity adopted 15

from the outset, they are planted in large pots made of crudely hooped rough staves. Chanel also embellished the great hall with a large blueand-white rug and an immense sofa. It replaced the austere furniture, in particular the leather-upholstered bench with folding sides that is now in Dallas. A further change was the glassing in of the cloistered walkway. Having thus gained a new interior, she furnished it and installed long blue-and-white rugs (fig. 14). Between the early years of La Pausa and the publication in 1938 of a series of photographs by Roger Schall, Chanel’s bed was enriched with aigrettes and, in a touch of foreshadowing, with a large five-pointed star, such as one might find today in many Texas homes (fig. 15). Over the years, items of furniture moved from one room to another before finishing their journey in very different rooms in the Dallas wing. Thus the castiron chandelier formerly above Chanel’s bed at La Pausa (figs. 15 and 16) moved to the vestibule of the great hall during the Reveses’ residence and now hangs in the same context in Dallas. The large table originally situated in the salon during the early years of La Pausa was subsequently moved to the library and is now in the re-created library in Dallas. Some pieces of furniture were modified at an unknown date; for example, the Spanish Renaissance table that was in the salon in 1930, and is in the entry hall today in Dallas, at some point acquired a new top. The gardens that surround the house attracted no less attention and were another one of Chanel’s creations. Here, too, Chanel’s inventiveness was on display as she played with the idea of luxurious simplicity. There are terraces but no box-bordered flowerbeds. The garden features cypresses and a large number of centenarian

FIG. 14 Cloistered walkway enclosed with glass, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.

olive trees, some of which were replanted after being transported from the environs of Antibes. They stand amid wide stretches of grass in no apparent order. One of them occupied a particularly surprising place, standing in the middle of the allée leading to the house, a few yards from the great cast-iron gate (fig. 17). An early plan of La Pausa survives, showing the garden’s intricacy and the precision with which Chanel supervised the planting. The plan bears the signature of Émile Thillet, an architect from Nice who had previously worked for

FIG. 16 Chanel’s bedroom, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

FIG. 15 Chanel’s bedroom, Villa La Pausa, 1938.

garden. Although the close connection between these two places has never been studied, it is a clear indication of the complexity of Chanel’s inspiration. In the garden of La Pausa, color is principally supplied by large fields of lavender. A famous 1938 photograph shows Salvador Dalí with his wife, Gala, drawing in the middle of one of the fields (fig. 18). Another photograph shows Chanel standing on the simple flagstones in the garden wearing a striped sailor shirt and dark trousers, with her dog Gigot at her feet (fig. 19). The great stretches of lavender ruffled by the wind fascinated visitors and photographers alike.

FIG. 17 View looking toward the main door, with olive tree, Villa La Pausa, c. 1930.

Étienne Balsan’s3 brother, Jacques, and his wife, Consuelo Vanderbilt, the owners of the château Balsan at Èze, just a mile from La Pausa. Constructed in 1920, and known as Lou Seuil, the castle was designed in the manner of a Romanesque abbey and was surrounded by a large

Thanks to the plan of the garden drafted by Thillet, we can retrace elements that have since disappeared, such as the grove southwest of the house, once planted with orange, medlar, peach, and plum trees. Some years later, in 1935, the garden underwent further changes, in particular the area directly in front of the courtyard. A photograph from the Plaisir de France photo spread shows two marvelous swing-seats on either side of an extraordinary collection of little earthenware pots, very much in the style of Errázuriz (fig. 20). 17

FIG. 18 Salvador DalĂ and his wife, Gala, in the garden at La Pausa, 1938.

FIG. 19 Chanel in the garden at La Pausa with her dog Gigot, 1930.

FIG. 20 Garden, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.

FIG. 21 Dining room, Villa La Pausa, in Plaisir de France, 1935.

Describing the disposition of the house and grounds and noting the variations in its atmosphere do little to convey the incredible richness of La Pausa. Chanel’s house was above all a haven of friendship, meetings, and creativity. One of the hallmarks of La Pausa was simplicity, a characteristic that applied not only to decoration but also to etiquette. Lunches and dinners were not, we learn, served at table but as a buffet. The height of the seats of the Louis XIII–style chairs meant that it was not always possible to sit comfortably at the neo-Gothic table, whose source was probably an English grammar school. Today the chairs are upholstered in pale green fabric, but they were originally covered with dark leather (fig. 21). At the end of the room, on a buffet table placed perpendicular to the dining table, plates from a Worcester porcelain service were piled up beside a silver triple plate-warmer 20

by the English maker William Hutton and Sons (fig. 22). Photographs taken by Roger Schall show an easy conviviality at La Pausa, involving pleasures as simple as climbing trees, playing at courtly levers as at Versailles,4 and improvised lunches (fig 23). In one photograph, we recognize Chanel and friends climbing in the olive tree in the courtyard (fig. 24). Guests such as Luchino Visconti, who visited Chanel in 1935, attest to the extraordinary attraction exercised by La Pausa. Chanel was extremely generous, in particular with artists. Among the most fascinating episodes of the Chanel epoch at La Pausa is the extended visit of Salvador Dalí and his wife, Gala. They stayed at the villa from late summer 1938 until early 1939. There Dalí painted several of the

FIG. 22 Chanel and gallerist Pierre Colle at the buffet table in the dining room, Villa La Pausa, 1938.

FIG. 23 Luncheon at the Villa La Pausa, 1938.

FIG. 24 Chanel, Mrs. James Field, Mr. and Mrs. Jean Hugo and their son, and Pierre Colle in the olive trees, 1938.

FIG. 25 Salvador Dalí on the library mantel, Villa La Pausa, c. 1938.

major pictures that he displayed in New York during the notorious exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery.5 During his stay, Dalí demonstrated not only his ability to transform everything around him into an extension of his Surrealism but also his astounding industry and inventiveness. A series of photographs shows how his joking interventions in the domestic environment questioned the placement of every piece of furniture and even the function of a mantelpiece (fig. 25). For all his clowning around, however, Dalí remained entirely devoted to his art. Among the pictures scattered over the floor of La Pausa in one of the photographs (fig. 26), we see Palladio’s Corridor of Dramatic Disguise, Débris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a

FIG. 26 Salvador Dalí among some of his paintings at the foot of the staircase in the great hall, Villa La Pausa, c. 1938.

Telephone, The Sublime Moment, Apparition of Face and Fruit-Dish on a Beach, Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces,The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image, and Telephone in a Dish with Three Grilled Sardines at the End of September. To this list we should undoubtedly add Endless Enigma, Melancholic Eccentricity, Imperial Violets,The Enigma of Hitler, Psychoanalysis and Morphology Meet, and Mad Tristan, which are not represented in the photograph but were included in the 1939 Julien Levy exhibiton. Many of these works are now iconic. During the same period, Chanel was working on the costumes for the ballet Bacchanal, which, though finished, were never used by Dalí because the war delayed their delivery to New York.

After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Chanel closed her Parisian fashion house, and her world was diminished. During this time, she was engaged in a liaison with Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, which lasted throughout the war and probably continued until 1949.6 He made several visits to La Pausa, but for long periods of time the house was uninhabited. By 1953, when Chanel returned to public life, her inner circle had been reduced to just a few close friends. In July of that year, Bendor, the Duke of Westminster, died, and she put La Pausa up for sale.

most intimate friends; he died on La Pausa’s tennis court on September 21, 1935. Jean Cocteau, another frequent guest at La Pausa, is represented by Rappel à l’ordre, Les enfants terribles, and Le mystère laïc, illustrated by Giorgio de Chirico. Still at La Pausa today is a drawing, dedicated by Cocteau to Chanel, of a scene from Le Bal du comte d’Orgel by Raymond Radiguet.

When Chanel signed the deed of sale with Emery Reves, she included her furniture, souvenirs, and books. During the dinner that she gave for Emery Reves and Wendy Russell to seal the transaction, she declared, “It is part of my past now and I don’t wish to go back to it; its charm is something that you will discover by yourselves.”7 By this gesture, she parted with a veritable treasure-house, the full wealth of which we are only now beginning to discover. Among the hand-tooled books that once filled the shelves of La Pausa, one can now see at the DMA classics of the time, including the complete works of Paul Bourget, Henri Bordeaux, and Anatole France together with those of George Sand. A work by Octave Uzanne stands alongside A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur by Marcel Proust (dated 1919, though not a first edition), La nouvelle espérance by Anna de Noailles, and several volumes on Marie-Antoinette. More interesting yet, we found a copy of Spinoza’s Ethics bearing the ex libris of Paul Iribe (fig. 27), the French illustrator and designer and one of Chanel’s

FIG. 27 Paul Iribe’s ex libris (bookplate) affixed inside Spinoza’s Ethics. From the library of the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection in the Mildred R. and Frederick M. Mayer Library, Dallas Museum of Art.

THE RENAISSANCE OF LA PAUSA La Pausa’s second life began in 1953, thanks to the recommendation of Chanel’s friends, the brothers Hervé and Gérard Mille, a journalist and decorator, respectively. They mentioned to Emery Reves that La Pausa was for sale, and Reves bought the house. Emery Reves was forty-nine when he came into possession of La Pausa. Born Emery Revesz in 1904 at Bácsföldvár (then in Hungary and now Baĉko Gradište in the Serbian province of Vojvodina), Emery exemplified the extraordinary lives of certain individuals born into the Jewish communities of central Europe. A brilliant student in Budapest, he moved to Berlin in 1922 and then continued his studies in Zürich; there he obtained a doctorate in economics in 1926, writing on the economic theories of Walther Rathenau, the German politician and industrialist assassinated by a group of rightwing terrorists. There, too, he wrote his first articles and conducted his first interviews with politicians. He left Berlin on April 1, 1933, after the persecution of the Jews had begun and his apartment, with his collection of paintings, was vandalized. In Paris, he started the press agency Cooperation Press Service; it expanded quickly, translating and selling articles in three languages by politicians, diplomats, and famous writers. The subtitle of the agency was “Press Service for International Understanding.” His essays were translated and published in many newspapers throughout the world, not only contributing to the diffusion of ideas but offering an economic model that prospered throughout the century. Among those who wrote for his agency were Austen Chamberlain, Clement Attlee, Alfred Duff Cooper, Paul Reynaud, Léon Blum, Carlo

FIG. 28 Emery Reves and Winston Churchill at Le Bourget Airport, Paris, France, 1938.

Sforza, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein. Beginning in 1935, he solicited articles from Winston Churchill during the latter’s wilderness years (fig. 28).8 Their collaboration formally began in 1937 and resulted in a friendship that lasted until Churchill’s death in 1965, culminating in a series of extended stays that Churchill made at La Pausa. Alongside his journalistic activities, Reves supported the publication of political works, of which the most famous was Fritz Thyssen’s I Paid Hitler, published during the war in 1941. Today historians point out that Reves himself authored significant parts of the book. On February 24, 1940, Reves obtained British citizenship; in June 1940, fleeing the German troops, he left Paris for England. In doing so, he lost a valuable collection of seventeenth-century French furniture. Less than a year later, in February 1941, he set sail for New York, where he remained for a

number of years, publishing first A Democratic Manifesto and then, in June 1945, The Anatomy of Peace (fig. 29), an anti-nationalist work that received unexpected support from Albert Einstein. In the immediate postwar period, it was a best seller, with 800,000 copies printed in several different languages—an astounding number at that time. Throughout the war, Reves had been painfully aware of the appalling events transpiring in Europe; he lost his mother and many other family members to Nazi anti-Semitism in massacres or in extermination camps. Along with his work as a political thinker and journalist, Reves made a vast amount of money at the end of the war speculating on the European stock exchanges. In the postwar era, he returned to his literary activities and became the main publisher of Churchill’s works outside Great Britain. The extent of their friendship and business dealings is well known from their correspondence, which was published in 1997. In these letters, we discover the essential role Emery Reves played in the composition of Churchill’s Memoirs of the Second World War. He continued to arrange translations, allowing the book to be distributed in even the most remote countries; his boundless admiration for the statesman and thinker, along with the outstanding international network he had built up since the early 1930s, decisively contributed to the publication’s overwhelming success.

withdrew from the hurly-burly of public life. The stage was set for the appearance in his life of Wendy Russell, a woman with a very different personality and background. Wyn-Nelle Russell, known as Wendy, was born into a modest family in Marshall, Texas, in 1916. When she was only six years old, her parents divorced. Subsequently, an uncle and aunt took in Wendy and her mother. Soon afterwards, she and her mother moved to Haynesville, Louisiana, and then to San Antonio. Their life was chaotic and difficult. At the age of sixteen, Wendy began a modeling career in San Antonio, where she met a young Army lieutenant named Al Schroeder. The couple married and moved to Hawaii. They had a child, Arnold Leon Schroeder, Jr., but shortly after his birth, they separated. In 1939, Wendy went to New York to pursue her modeling career. She was quickly hired by the Powers Agency and became a much-sought-after model. She also founded her own fashion-rental company, called Wardrobe Services. In 1940, she met and married Paul Baron, a conductor working for CBS, but their marriage lasted only a few years. Then, following the war, she first met Emery Reves, but their relationship did not become established until 1949. The couple eventually married in 1964.

FIG. 29 Cover of The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves, 1945 first edition.

Reves was a very accomplished man, a close friend to some of the most remarkable personalities of his time, but now he entered a more sedentary and reflective stage of his career. Although he continued to divide his time between Switzerland and France, Reves gradually

FIG. 30 Wendy Reves during redecoration of the salon, Villa La Pausa, c. 1953.

FIG. 31 Graham Sutherland (British, 1908–1980), Portrait of Mrs. Emery Reves, 1978. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.72.

When Emery Reves purchased La Pausa in 1953, the house had been unoccupied for years and the garden was badly neglected. The interior, however, had remained exactly as it was in Chanel’s time. Wendy set about rejuvenating the house (fig. 30), restoring the deteriorating furniture and injecting a new vision into the villa’s overall decoration. Her taste was undeniably different from that of Chanel. This difference is particularly noticeable in Chanel’s bedroom, which Wendy Russell transformed into her own. She consigned the natural-oak paneling to oblivion under several light-colored coats of paint, covered the parquet floor with moquette, and replaced the haute-époque furniture with more contemporary and comfortable items. Wendy Reves loved the glittering mother-of-pearl and

FIG. 32 Graham Sutherland (British, 1908–1980), Portrait of Emery Reves, 1966. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.73.

papier-mâché furniture made in Birmingham, England, and she created a style emphasizing contrast, abundance, and comfort. The large portrait of her by Graham Sutherland that hung in her bedroom, which she called La Belle Chambre, shows her exuberant, extroverted, and seductive personality (fig. 31). By contrast, Sutherland’s portrait of Emery Reves, which hung in the library, is dark and full of restrained tones; the composition, worthy of El Greco, exemplifies his intense and reserved personality (fig. 32). This austerity is reflected in Emery Reves’ bedroom, where, with the exception of the Duke of Westminster’s cast iron bed (which Emery rejected in favor of one in natural wood), he kept many of the original arrangements and much of the original furniture.

As if they had foreseen the significance of Chanel’s masterful decoration, Wendy and Emery Reves left a large part of the house in its original state and kept all of the objects and furniture, including kitchenware, bearing Chanel’s monogram. Thus the Dallas Museum of Art became the owner not only of an exceptional collection of Impressionist paintings, sculpture, and decorative art, assembled for the most part by Emery Reves, but also of an important collection of furniture and other household objects once belonging to Chanel. One of the few exceptions to Wendy and Emery Reveses’ preservation of this ensemble was the rapid sale of a suite of six paintings now attributed to the seventeenth-century Bergamesque painter Bartolomeo Bettera (figs. 33–38). They originally hung in the library in matching frames of cerused wood (fig. 39), similar to those then being made by Emilio Terry or Serge Roche. One of the frames was reused by Reves to adorn a mirror. An art historian by nature, Reves had photographs of the six paintings taken; he looked after the photographs carefully, and they are now in the archives of the Dallas Museum of Art. Among the first modifications to the villa that Emery and Wendy undertook was removing the windows enclosing the cloister, thus restoring this part of the house to its original state. They also made a minor alteration to the original design by adding a terrace next to the salon. Some years later, the Reveses remodeled other parts of the house. Most notably, they refurbished the second-floor bedroom to meet Winston Churchill’s needs during his many lengthy stays.

Outbuildings were modified to accommodate the bodyguards who accompanied him when he traveled. Churchill’s first visit to La Pausa took place in January 1956 and was followed by eleven others. Emery Reves estimated that Churchill spent more than four hundred days there. With these exceptions, La Pausa, its essential arrangements, and almost all of its furniture remained intact until 1985, when the majority of the artworks Emery Reves had collected and many pieces of furniture first chosen by Chanel were given to the Dallas Museum of Art. It is extraordinary to note that an ensemble gathered almost a century ago escaped dispersion despite the vicissitudes of history and the villa’s changes in ownership, all due to the work, attention, and love lavished on La Pausa by Wendy and Emery Reves. To this array of furniture and decoration created by Chanel and renovated by Wendy Reves, Emery Reves added the artistic heart of what is today the DMA’s Wendy and Emery Reves Collection: extraordinary Impressionist paintings, a fabulous portfolio of drawings, extremely rare sculptures by Auguste Rodin, and exceptional pieces of decorative art. The goal of this volume is not to give an exhaustive review of the Reves Collection but to highlight works that are essential to an understanding of the spirit in which the collection was formed.

FIG. 33–38 Bartolomeo Bettera (Italian, 1639–1688), Still Life with Musical Instruments, 17th century. Sold by Emery Reves in the mid–1950s; current location unknown.

FIG. 39 Library, Villa La Pausa, 1938.

THE WENDY AND EMERY REVES COLLECTION In many respects, Emery Reves was an unusual collector, not merely a man of taste but a scholarly connoisseur. How he made use of his considerable library and the research he undertook with historians John Rewald, Lionello Venturi, and Douglas Cooper show a familiarity with art history on a par with that of the finest professionals of the time. His skill as an editor, his experience as a journalist, and his work as a publisher amply prepared him for meticulous scholarly research. He patronized the finest dealers, such as Fritz and Peter Nathan in Zürich, Hirschl and Adler Galleries and Wildenstein in New York, Mathiesen Gallery in London, Georges Bac in Paris, and sometimes the major auction houses. He had great confidence in his own judgment and sometimes made unconventional acquisitions. He seems to have bought in bulk, like a dealer, as, for instance, with the set of drawings and ceramics by André Metthey that long remained at La Pausa, or in series, as with the works by Renoir acquired from the Tréhot family.

Reves’ taste in frames was also exceptional. In the immediate postwar period, he bought a whole group of frames from Georges Bac, who was one of the finest dealers at that time in Paris. A receipt in the DMA Archives shows the astonishing number of frames—twenty-nine in total—bought on a single occasion at the London dealer Arnold Wiggins & Sons. Reves displayed frames as one might exhibit sculptures. He appears to have waited for a picture with the right dimensions to become available in order to highlight its merits with a remarkable frame. That he never cut down or spoiled any of the frames he purchased supports the notion that he considered each one a work of art in itself. Thanks to him, the Dallas Museum of Art possesses a remarkable collection of frames, some of which are exhibited empty as masterpieces in their own right on the walls of the staircase or on the mezzanine (fig. 41).

Another characteristic of Emery Reves the collector places him in a little-frequented aesthetic tradition occupied by major collectors such as Albert Barnes, who liked, for example, to mix Impressionist works with cast iron. We know that Reves visited Merion, Pennsylvania, on January 6, 1961, where he admired Dr. Barnes’ collection. It is possible that this visit, known to us through the Dallas Museum of Art Archives, was not the only pilgrimage he made to Merion. The visual resemblances between the two collections are too striking to ignore (fig. 40).

FIG. 40 Entry hall, Villa La Pausa, c. 1983, shortly before the Reveses’ gift to the Dallas Museum of Art.

FIG. 41 Picture frame, France, c. 1740. Oak and gilding. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.378. 31

Emery Reves’ sculpture collection focused on works by Auguste Rodin. Four major pieces illustrate different aspects of the sculptor’s art. The most spectacular, and no doubt also the strangest, is The Fenaille Column, also known as The Poet and the Contemplative Life (fig.42). This Solomonic column, to which Rodin added figures mostly derived from his Gates of Hell (1880–c. 1890, Musée Rodin, Paris), is topped by a mask, originally the mask of Iris, later known as the mask of the poet. It is an eminently decorative piece and clearly inspired by the French eighteenth-century aesthetic, right down to the musical instruments figuring on the base of the column. The original plaster in the collection of the Musée Rodin shows a creative process based on collage and the combination of existing elements. This creation underwent a second stage through Rodin’s relationship with his practitioner.9 The development and transformation of the original idea, a rather dry assemblage, into a marble piece whose undulations are almost aquatic, along with the disappearance of some details and the introduction of others, show the extent to which Rodin gave free rein to his imagination—and considerable liberty to his practitioner—while perceptively overseeing the operation. The very handsome bronze I Am Beautiful (fig. 43) is an assemblage of two figures also drawn from the Gates of Hell. Some have suggested that this couple may represent Rodin and Camille Claudel, because the couple fell in love the year the work was made. Claudel fled to London to escape this devastating affair. The

FIG. 42 Rodin’s The Poet and the Contemplative Life in the courtyard at La Pausa. Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917), The Poet and the Contemplative Life (The Fenaille Column), 1896. Marble. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.64.

FIG. 43 Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917), I Am Beautiful, 1882. Bronze. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.66.

FIG. 44 Auguste Rodin (French, 1840â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1917), The Sirens, c. 1888. Marble. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.65.

FIG. 45 Giovanni Bonazza (Italian, 1654–1736), Reclining Woman, c. 1700. Marble. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.1.

quotation from Baudelaire on the base has often been read as a lover’s complaint: “I am beautiful, O mortals, like a dream carved in stone.” A third piece that is also of great importance, The Sirens, depicting three Sirens amid the waves, originally formed part of the Gates of Hell. As with many other components of this titanic enterprise, Rodin isolated the group and made at least four different versions in marble; the first was made for a Canadian collector, the second belongs to the Dallas Museum of Art (fig. 44) and was used as a model for bronze castings, the third is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, and the fourth is at the Thielska Gallery in Stockholm.

The last example of Rodin’s art in the Reves Collection is a wax sketch for the figure of the poet in The Poet and the Siren. Only five wax pieces by Rodin are known to exist, and he inscribed this one with a dedication to his great friend Arsène Alexandre. Other sculptures in the Reves Collection include works by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Paul Gauguin, Graham Sutherland, and many others. One of these is Reclining Woman (fig. 45), believed in the 1960s to be by the Bolognese artist Alessandro Algardi but recently reattributed to the late seventeenth-century Venetian sculptor Giovanni Bonazza. From its subtle eroticism and marvelous variations in the marble, to the tender

FIG. 46 Graham Sutherland (British, 1903â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1980), Cross of Ely, 1964. Gold and silver. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.71.

polish and harshly rugged ground, this nymph is a perfect example of the little sculptures whose refinement continues to delight art lovers. More recent and more brutal in its design is Graham Sutherland’s Cross of Ely (fig. 46), which testifies to the close relationship between Emery Reves and the English artist. Sutherland’s aforementioned portraits of Emery and Wendy are a first indication of this, but the sculpture in gold and silver illustrates an affinity that went well beyond the commissioning of portraits. Indeed, it shows how Emery viewed his relationship with artists. In 1961, Graham Sutherland received a commission to decorate the main altar of Ely Cathedral, which is known as one of the greatest masterpieces of English Gothic architecture. Despite its imposing size, the rough beauty of the composition, and the powerful figure of Christ, the project was rejected by the Dean of the Cathedral as “unsuitable and too expensive.” Emery remedied this disappointment by purchasing both the cross and the wax model of Christ. A hybrid of decorative art, sculpture, and painting, the ceramic vase by Paul Gauguin depicting the wife of his friend Émile Schuffenecker, Portrait Vase of Mme Schuffenecker (fig. 47), was made around 1889; its anthropomorphism was inspired by pre-Columbian vases from the Moche culture that Gauguin had encountered and drawn as a young boy in the home of his great-uncle Isidore. Both in its form, in particular the hand placed on the back of the head, and in its iridescent colors, it demonstrates the artist’s remarkable mastery of modeling and glazing, which he learned in the workshop of ceramicist Ernest Chaplet.

FIG. 47 Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903), Portrait Vase of Mme Schuffenecker, c. 1889–1890. Glazed stoneware. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.28.

The Reves fine art collection is essentially made up of Impressionist paintings and drawings (fig 48). The works by older artists are those that conventional art history, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War, tended to associate with this movement; however, portions of the collection are from periods that preceded or succeeded Impressionism. For example, there is a fine portrait by Camille Corot of Mme Sennegon, the artist’s sister, and a still life by Gustave Courbet painted during the latter’s imprisonment at Sainte-Pélagie. Reves also acquired from Marseilles dealer Charles Garibaldi several drawings by Courbet. Honoré Daumier is represented by two important works. One of these is a fine drawing of an actor that demonstrates the artist’s very special, seemingly indecisive use of line, which is both wobbly and intensely expressive. Despite its size, Daumier’s little panel painting titled Head of Pasquin can be considered one of the finest works ever painted by the artist (fig. 49). Its finish and balance make it a particularly fine example of Daumier’s art, a point emphasized by its inclusion in the great exhibition held by Durand-Ruel during Daumier’s lifetime.10 Another of Emery Reves’ excursions into the group of artists commonly placed within the context of Impressionism resulted in the acquisition of a work by Adolphe Monticelli (fig. 50). He is considered an important painter not only for his contribution to our understanding of Impressionism but also for his Symbolist tendencies. His virtuosic use of impasto made a deep and enduring impression on Vincent van Gogh and later on the Fauves.

FIG. 49 Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879), Head of Pasquin, 1862–1863. Oil on panel. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.22.

FIG. 50 Adolphe Monticelli (French, 1824–1886), Still Life with Sardines and Sea-Urchins, 1880–1882. Oil on panel. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.39.

FIG. 48 Salon, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, 2015.

FIG. 51 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919), Lise Sewing, c. 1867–1868. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.59.

FIG. 52 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919), Lise in a White Shawl, c. 1872. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.58.

There are no fewer than five paintings and three drawings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the Reves Collection. The two marvelous portraits of Lise Tréhot, the artist’s first mistress, date from his youth. Lise Sewing (fig. 51) was painted around 1867, at the very beginning of their liaison, when she was around eighteen or nineteen. The second, Lise in a White Shawl (fig. 52), was painted around 1872, when she was almost twenty-five, shortly before they separated. Together these portraits form a fine and very moving pairing from Renoir’s early period. Renoir’s affair with Tréhot was discussed in a scholarly article by Douglas Cooper that was based on interviews Emery Reves conducted with Tréhot’s family. Recent new evidence has brought to light a rather different story from that recounted by Cooper, in particular the birth of two children from the relationship: Pierre, who probably died at a very young age, and Jeanne, who was never

recognized by Renoir but whom he supported financially until his death in 1919. The third painting, The Duck Pond (fig. 53), was painted at Argenteuil in 1873 in the company of Claude Monet. The two artists painted together several times between 1869 and 1873. The painting’s rich texture cannot be conveyed in a photograph; its impasto is astonishing in its fresh and vivid assurance. The colors glitter and the reflections in the water are rendered with supreme confidence. The Duck Pond and its neighbor in the Reves gallery, The Seine at Chatou of 1874 (fig. 54), are among Renoir’s finest landscapes. All of the major artists of the Impressionist movement are represented in the Reves Collection, many of them by several works of the highest quality. For instance, Edouard Manet is particularly well represented by two spectacular still lifes and several

FIG. 53 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919), The Duck Pond, 1873. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.56. FIG. 54 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919), The Seine at Chatou, 1874. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.62.

FIG. 55 Edouard Manet (French, 1832–1883), Brioche with Pears, 1876. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art and The Arts, Ltd., 66.1985.

works on paper, including a watercolor entitled The Spanish Singer. This is a smaller version of the picture that is currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and was used to create the engraving of the same subject. Manet’s 1876 still life Brioche with Pears (fig. 55) is the second version of an homage paid to Jean-Baptiste Chardin and his painting La brioche of 1763, which had returned to the Louvre a few years earlier. Against a background of wallpaper with the motif of a climbing rose on a garden trellis, Manet has with great freedom rendered a large golden brioche, a few pears, a 42

knife, and two fresh roses. It is one of Manet’s loveliest still lifes. The second painting, Vase of White Lilacs and Roses (fig. 56), dates from February 1883 and is one of the last works by Manet, who was then in the final throes of a fatal illness and could no longer paint sitting up. The framing of the still life, its dark background, and the cruciform composition evoke a striking and tragic intensity. Life seems to spill out of the frame as if creative energy transcends all limits, including death itself. It is a sort of visual parable.

FIG. 56 Edouard Manet (French, 1832â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1883), Vase of White Lilacs and Roses, 1883. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.34.

FIG. 57 Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), The Pont Neuf, 1871. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.38.

Although there is only one work by Claude Monet in the collection, it is of considerable importance. After his 1871 exile in England and Holland, Monet returned to Paris that autumn to find the city still reeling from its defeat by the Prussian army. The Pont Neuf (fig. 57) was the only urban landscape he painted during that period. Composed almost like a watercolor, the painting shows a high-angle view of the Pont Neuf in rainy weather; it seems almost monochromatic, with its colors reduced to the

essential. The painting expresses resignation rather than sadness at the extent of the suffering inflicted upon the city, as well as a tacit espousal of the values of everyday life. The collection includes a beautiful view of the port of Nice (fig. 58) by Manet’s sister-in-law, Berthe Morisot, which she completed when she went there with her husband, Eugène Manet, during the winter of 1881–82. This elegant and luminous composition gives pride of place to

FIG. 58 Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895), The Port of Nice, Winter 1881–1882. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.40.

the reflections in the water. It might seem casually painted, but the proportions give the work an extraordinary sensation of lightness. A combination of white and blue accentuated by the brown mast’s reflections in the water imparts lasting power to this painting, which was displayed in the penultimate Impressionist exhibition in 1882. The drawings in the Reves Collection are one of the most spectacular aspects of the donation. While not on permanent display for conservation reasons, they remain among the collec-

tion’s most admired works; they are frequently requested for exhibition loans and reproduced in numerous catalogues. In 2014, the DMA exhibition Mind’s Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne presented a great many drawings from the Reves Collection alongside works drawn from local private and public collections, setting off the outstanding quality of the Reves ensemble. Many of the drawings constitute high points in the oeuvre of the given artist. Rather than devote a separate section in this book to the drawings, we have brought together the drawings and paintings of selected artists.

FIG. 59 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, active in France, 1853–1890), Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, September 1888. Chalk, ink, and graphite on laid paper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.79.

FIG. 60 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, active in France, 1853–1890), Sheaves of Wheat, July 1890. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.80.

A large drawing by Vincent van Gogh, Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, is among the artist’s most famous productions and one of the most representative of his works in pen and ink (fig. 59). It remained in the artist’s family and was eventually sold to the famous collector and director of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, Hugo von Tschudi. This stunning work is one of the DMA’s treasures. Another masterpiece in the Reves Collection is van Gogh’s painting Sheaves of Wheat (fig. 60). This picture belongs to a set of thirteen painted by the artist at Auvers-sur-Oise some weeks before his death. With one vertical exception, the works all take the form of a horizontal double square, which was unusual for van Gogh. It is difficult to discern any overall plan to the series or even any thematic coherence, but the Reves picture is undoubtedly the most luminous. There

is real tension in its composition and touch; one would hardly guess from contemplating this painting that it belongs to the same series as the tragic Crows in the Wheatfield (1890,Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). Surprisingly, and under circumstances about which we still know very little, Emery Reves acquired a large quantity of paintings by PaulLouis Gachet, who painted under the name Paul van Ryssel, and whose father was the doctor attending van Gogh when he died. It seems likely that Reves’ interest in the works by van Ryssel may have been historical rather than aesthetic. Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard by Paul Cézanne is a dazzling watercolor and one of the most beautiful still lifes the artist ever painted (fig. 61). In terms of size, richness, and degree

FIG. 61 Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906), Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard, 1900–1906. Watercolor over pencil on paper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.12.

of finish, it is also one of his most complete. Two other works by Cézanne in the Reves Collection should also be noted. Still Life with Carafe, Milk Can, Bowl, and Orange (fig. 62) was probably painted in Melun around 1879–80. The subdued tonality of the everyday objects, slightly underlined by a patch of color (the orange), results in a dense composition. In spite of its reduced format, the painting is a perfect example of Cézanne’s mature period. The artist accomplished its construction through a rigorous analysis of volumes that disassembles our perception in order to piece it back together again. Cézanne’s indifference to what one might call traditional representations of the world led to a new vision of reality so striking and precise 48

that it set off a veritable Copernican revolution in the Western artistic world. The painting’s provenance is remarkable, having been in three famous collections: the first that of Marius de Zayas, a friend of Alfred Stieglitz, and subsequently that of Lillie P. Bliss, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, who then donated it to MoMA. It was deaccessioned in 1944, and in 1955 Emery Reves acquired it. Completing this group of works by Cézanne, the Reves Collection includes a large canvas from 1885–87, Abandoned House near Aix-en-Provence, and a poignant drawing from Cézanne’s youth representing the artist’s father and dating from the years 1868–73.

FIG. 62 Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906), Still Life with Carafe, Milk Can, Bowl, and Orange, 1879–1880. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.10.

Rouen by Johan Barthold Jongkind is another of the beautiful works on paper in this collection. Its turbulent history is characteristic of the complex fate of some of these works. This magnificent watercolor first belonged to one of the artist’s friends, Jean Rousseau, to whom it is dedicated. It was subsequently purchased by the great collector Alfred Lindon, seized by the Nazis, and chosen by Hermann Goering for his own collection. After the war, the work was restituted to Lindon’s family before being sold to Emery Reves in 1953. Among the most dazzling gems of the Reves Collection is surely the pair of remarkable pastels by Edgar Degas that accompany a pastel and

gouache on panel. Of these three, perhaps the most impressive is the large pastel Bathers (fig. 63), dating from the very end of the nineteenth century. It is also the most disturbing. There is nothing seductive in either the poses or gestures of the women’s bodies. A cow in the background suggests a rustic scene, and bathers at the water’s edge are a recurrent theme in French Impressionist painting of this period; however, the total absence of sensuality and the invasive, almost brutal matter-of-factness with which Degas rendered the women’s nudity, combined with the deliberate awkwardness of certain foreshortenings, in particular those of the legs in the foreground, are as disconcerting as they are striking. The imagery

FIG. 63 Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Bathers, c. 1890-1895. Pastel and charcoal on tracing paper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.24.

is reminiscent of Degas’s Scene of War in the Middle Ages of 1865 (Musée d’Orsay). One of the cruelest works in the history of painting, it shows women about to be violated by soldiers; others, who have already been raped or wounded, flee the soldiers’ arrows or lie as if abandoned to death. The second pastel is perhaps more classical but scarcely less impressive in its mastery and complexity. The very beautiful Aria After the Ballet (fig. 64) has often been exhibited since it first appeared at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879. Reves purchased it directly FIG. 64 Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Aria After the Ballet, 1879. Pastel and gouache over monotype (?) on wove paper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.26.

FIG. 65 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901), Prostitutes, c. 1893–1895. Pastel on sandpaper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.75.

from Durand-Ruel in 1946, and the work’s elaborate composition has fascinated specialists: in the background, a stage-landscape identified as belonging to Charles Gounod’s Faust; to the left, a singer in a yellow toga; and in the right foreground, the seemingly prehistoric forms of two colossal monsters who seem to gaze on their prey but are in fact the necks of two bass violins from the orchestra pit. The composition is nevertheless very stable, with the figure on the left spotlit from below, while on the right the composition vanishes into the somber depths.

Acropolis on the left. Here and there the wood of the panel is visible, giving the whole picture an unexpected golden tonality.

The last work by Degas from the Reves Collection, Group of Dancers from 1895–97, is a pastel on panel on which Degas depicted five dancers; their backdrop is an Athenian landscape with the

Emery Reves was particularly interested in the art of Camille Pissarro. Totaling some ten works, this is probably the largest if not the most significant group of works by the same artist in the

Pastel is a medium that Emery Reves particularly appreciated. A large pastel by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec representing a prostitute is one of the masterpieces of the collection (fig. 65). Drawn on sandpaper, this brutal depiction of the female body is also one of the most virtuosic and beautiful works by the artist. In addition to this magisterial work, Reves acquired a masterful drawing, The Last Respects, of 1887.

FIG. 66 Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903), Self-Portrait, c. 1898. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.44.

Reves Collection. Drawings and watercolors account for most of these, but there are two notable paintings, the first an important self-portrait (fig. 66), and the second a view of the Place du Théâtre Français (fig. 67). Both were painted around the same time at the Hôtel du Louvre. The background of Self-Portrait shows the same square seen from a slightly different angle. Place du Théâtre Français: Fog Effect was painted from the hotel window, and the fog lends a subtly monochrome atmosphere.

Among the artists whose works define the collection, we should reserve a special place for Alfred Sisley, represented here by Road Along the Seine at Saint-Mammes (fig. 68). The unusual vertical format of this landscape is reinforced by the trees on the right, which form a long perspective. The painting dates from around 1880 and remained in the Durand-Ruel family until the 1950s, when Reves purchased it.

FIG. 67 Camille Pissarro (French, 1830–1903), Place du Théâtre Français: Fog Effect, 1897. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.50.

Odilon Redon was not part of the Impressionist movement, but Reves acquired three of his works, including Port of Morgat, a small landscape of Brittany from 1883, and Flowers in a Black Vase (fig. 69), a magnificent pastel from 1909–10 whose dark tonality is punctuated by blue and yellow patches. When Wendy and Emery Reves lived at La Pausa, a spectacular painting welcomed visitors to the great hall, as it does today in the Dallas Museum of Art. This is the dazzling view of Bougival by Maurice de Vlaminck (fig. 70).

This brilliant landscape, dating from around 1905, embodies the essence of Fauve painting. Vlaminck was sometimes said to be a Fauve among Fauves, and there is nothing in this painting to suggest the contrary. A selfproclaimed autodidact,Vlaminck nevertheless shows perfect mastery of touch and composition. The pure colors splendidly juxtaposed, the masterful division of the picture into planes up to the very high horizon, and the paradoxical balance in a painting so bursting with excess are almost without equal in his oeuvre.

FIG. 68 Alfred Sisley (British, 1839–1899), Road Along the Seine at Saint-Mammes, c. 1880. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.69.

FIG. 69 Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), Flowers in a Black Vase, c. 1909–1910. Pastel on paper. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.55.

FIG. 70 Maurice de Vlaminck (French, 1876â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1958), Bougival, c. 1905. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.82.

As we have seen, most of the furniture exhibited today in the Reves Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art was collected or commissioned by Chanel. To this the Reveses added their own exceptional ensemble of decorative art: the Birmingham furniture Wendy collected for her bedroom, two magnificent cabinets, a beautiful collection of Chinese export porcelain, numerous pieces of silverware, and an extremely rare collection of Spanish Renaissance carpets. When Emery Reves fled to England in 1940, he lost his collection of Louis XIV furniture. After the war, he continued to collect such items, although whether he was able to reclaim any part of his former collection is unknown. At least two cabinets testify to this taste. The one attributed to Pierre Gole is a tour de force (fig. 71). Its wood, tortoiseshell, ivory, and shell marquetry is remarkable and places it among the finest works by this cabinetmaker, who was almost certainly the first to master the form of marquetry later known as Boulle. Gole worked for Cardinal Mazarin before becoming the principal furniture supplier to the royal court, and in particular to the young Louis XIV. On display today in almost every room in the Reves wing are pieces of Chinese export porcelain assembled principally by Wendy Reves, with encouragement from Mary Lasker, who was one of Emery’s great friends.11 The collection includes scores of porcelain pieces,

FIG. 71 Cabinet on stand, probably Pierre Gole (French, 1620–1684), Paris, France, 1660–1680. Wood, ivory, tortoiseshell, shell, and gilt bronze. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.573.a–c.

including a wall fountain playfully decorated with sea creatures (see page 62). One superlative component of the Reves Collection that all too frequently escapes the visitor’s eye is the collection of textiles and rugs, one of the most remarkable of its kind. Especially noteworthy are the rugs that date to the Renaissance, and more particularly those from the Spanish Renaissance. Working primarily with the Parisian dealer Sami Tarica, Emery Reves assembled a collection equaled only by that of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and by one or two Spanish collections. The sixteenth-century rugs from Alcaraz and Murcia in silk or wool are exceptional (fig. 72), as is an immense Turkish rug with the so-called Holbein motif. That these rugs should have survived for over five hundred years is a matter of constant amazement and imposes a duty on today’s generation to make every possible effort to conserve their dazzling beauty.

FIG. 72 Rug, Alcaraz(?), Spain, c. 1550–1600. Wool. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.102.

Smaller textiles, often of liturgical origin— certain of them displaying macabre motifs (fig. 73)—gracefully complement a whole series of small-scale objects in wood or metal with which Emery liked to surround himself, reflecting a taste for the Wunderkammer notably rare in the mid-twentieth century.

FIG. 73 Embroidered skull medallion, 17th century. Silk. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.125.

FIG. 74 Winston Churchill in the library, Villa La Pausa, c. 1955â&#x20AC;&#x201C;early 1960s.

FIG. 75 Winston Churchill (British, 1874–1965), Custody of the Child, 1955. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.15.

To complete this brief tour of the Reves Collection, we must dwell for a moment on the room displaying the pictures, books, and souvenirs of the great statesman Sir Winston Churchill (fig. 74). He forms a link between the two major epochs of La Pausa. He was a close friend of Bendor, the Duke of Westminster, and met Chanel on several occasions before the war. Photographs from the late 1920s show Chanel and Churchill hunting near Dieppe. After the Second World War, Churchill was a frequent guest at La Pausa. He said of Wendy and Emery Reves: “My hosts are very artistic, they paint and collect. More than that, they delight in the var-

ious painters of Europe and I am having an education in art which is beneficial. Also they play Mozart and others on these multiplied gramophones.”12 It seems likely that these sojourns had a profound influence on the statesman’s future artistic taste; although he had often been the guest of great collectors, he had never come into contact with an Impressionist collection of this stature. We may also assume that he had the opportunity to enjoy long talks about painting with that remarkable connoisseur, Emery Reves. This collection of Churchillian memorabilia is unique: the souvenirs were assembled by Wendy and the publications by Emery. It also contains 59

four paintings by Churchill, including a view of the nearby town of Menton with the curious title Custody of the Child, which he painted from La Pausa (fig. 75), and an interesting still life made after a Cézanne (fig. 76). A cigar case designed by Wendy Reves and made by Van Cleef and Arpels (fig. 77) is engraved with a handwritten note from Emery Reves congratulating Churchill on the publication of his sixvolume Memoirs of the Second World War. It is accompanied by a note from Churchill that attests to his use of the box. Together they exemplify the cordial relations enjoyed by the three friends. To this should be added other less illustrious but no less interesting objects such as his paint box and a whimsical drawing of a pig (fig. 78).

FIG. 76 Winston Churchill (British, 1874–1965), Vase of Red Tulips (After Cézanne), 1957. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.17.

FIG. 77 Cigar case designed especially for Sir Winston Churchill by Wendy Reves, Van Cleef and Arpels, c. 1953. Gold and leather. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, T000102.6.

FIG. 78 Winston Churchill (British, 1874–1965), Small Drawing of a Pig, n.d. Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.536.a–b.

FIG. 79 Grand hall, Villa La Pausa, 1983.

This short evocation of La Pausa and its hosts can scarcely do justice to a most remarkable house (fig. 79), whose history has by no means come to an end. Its owners and their guests have all participated, in their own manner and style, in the creation of an unparalleled epitome of art and decoration, whose complexity we have scarcely begun to evaluate. By their diversity and their quality, the incomparable works of art comprising this ensemble have contributed enormously to the prestige of the Dallas Museum of Art.

NOTES 1. For more information, see Richard R. Brettell, Impressionist Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1995); Charles L.Venable, Decorative Arts Highlights from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1995); and Olivier Meslay and William Jordan, Mind’s Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2014). 2. The photo spread appeared on pages 18 and 19 of the February 1935 issue of Plaisir de France. 3. Étienne Balsan, a French socialite, introduced Chanel to many members of Parisian high society. 4. The lever du roi was a ceremonial custom of the French court in which the king, while still in bed and wearing his night clothes, would receive a select group of dignitaries to watch him dress. 5. Dalí’s solo exhibition at New York’s Julien Levy Gallery ran from March 21 to April 17, 1939. It received critical acclaim in the press and firmly established Dalí as the preeminent Surrealist painter in the United States. 6. Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, a senior German intelligence officer during the Second World War, was Chanel’s lover. See Hal Vaughan, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 130. 7. Interview with Wendy Russell Reves by Robert Rozelle, 1985, in Robert V. Rozelle, ed., The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1985), 49. 8. The period from 1929, when Winston Churchill lost his government position, to 1939, when he joined Britain’s War Cabinet, are referred to as “the wilderness years.” 9. Rodin employed practitioners to complete carvings. Many of these practitioners were sculptors in their own right, like Bourdelle. 10. In 1878, Galerie Durand-Ruel presented a major retrospective exhibition of Daumier’s work. It was the only large exhibition of the artist’s work held during his lifetime. 11. In 1957, Mary Lasker donated to the Dallas Museum of Art what has become one of the most important objects in its collection, a large paper cutout by Henri Matisse titled Ivy in Flower. 12. Winston Churchill, Emery Reves, and Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937–1964 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1997), 18–19. 63

Published by the DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART, Dallas, Texas WALTER ELCOCK, Interim Director OLIVIER MESLAY, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Senior Curator of European and American Art, and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Curator of European Art MARTHA MACLEOD, Curatorial Administrative Assistant, European and American Art TAMARA WOOTTON FORSYTH, Associate Director of Collections, Exhibitions, and Facilities Management ERIC ZEIDLER, Publications Manager GISELLE CASTRO-BRIGHTENBURG, Manager, Imaging Department ALISON SCHWARTZSTEIN, Manager of Digital Rights and Intellectual Property Edited by QUETA MOORE WATSON, Senior Editor Designed by REBECCA WINTI, Director of Creative Services Essay translated by CHRIS MILLER Printed by MILLET THE PRINTER, Dallas, Texas Typeset in Gotham and Bembo Front Cover: Chanel on the staircase in the great hall, Villa La Pausa, 1938, Photo by Roger Schall, © Collection Schall Back Cover: Maurice de Vlaminck, Bougival (detail), c. 1905, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.82 Title Page: (left) Front cover of menu card with “Pausaland,” Wendy and Emery Reves Papers, Dallas Museum of Art Archives; (right) “Pausaland” matchbook, private collection, Dallas Dedication Page: Grand hall, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, 2007 Page 62: Wall fountain, Jingdezhen, China, c. 1700–1730, enameled porcelain, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, 1985.R.843.a–c Page 63: “La Pausa” notepads, private collection, Dallas Page 65: Wendy and Emery Reves at the Villa La Pausa, Reves Collection Records, Dallas Museum of Art Archives Copyright and Photography Credits: Fig. 1, 29, 33–38, 40, 42, 79 Wendy and Emery Reves Papers, Dallas Museum of Art Archives; fig. 2, 12, 15, 22–24, 39 Photo by Roger Schall, © Collection Schall; fig. 4 private collection, Dallas; fig. 5, 13, 14, 20, 21 © Connaissance des Arts; fig. 6, 9 Courtesy of Condé Nast; fig. 7, 8, 10, 11, 16, 17, 30, 74 Reves Collection Records, Dallas Museum of Art Archives; fig. 18, 25, 26 © Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2015; fig. 19 Courtesy of CHANEL; fig. 28 Wendy and Emery Reves Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William and Mary; fig. 31, 32, 46 © Graham Sutherland; fig. 75, 76, 78 © The Churchill Heritage Limited

© 2015 Dallas Museum of Art DMA.org All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. The Library of Congress has catalogued From Chanel to Reves under LCCN: 2015030278. ISBN 978-0-936227-30-6 64