The Library and the Study: Édouard André's Private Apartment

Two rooms that receive no one

The Library originally occupied Nélie Jacquemart's bedroom; according to the museum's presentation, it became the most secluded room in the mansion — the one where the couple would retreat to study catalogues of upcoming sales and settle on their future purchases. The Study, for its part, served as an everyday office: it is where Édouard André, and later Nélie Jacquemart, handled their ongoing affairs.

Nothing, then, like the staging of the reception salons. No monumental painted ceiling transplanted from a Venetian palace, no Botticelli or Mantegna arranged to strike a visitor's imagination. In these two rooms, the canvases are small, the subjects understated — portraits of unknown sitters, a studio scene — and the furniture, however precious, was chosen the way one furnishes a place to live in, not the way one adorns a place to receive guests.

1. The Library — Northern portraits rather than the great machines

Three portraits hung in the Library are enough to measure the gap with the rest of the collection. Rembrandt's "The Pilgrims of Emmaus" (Supper at Emmaus), a panel measuring 39 x 42 cm dated around 1628, belongs to the years when the painter was still working in Leiden, before he settled in Amsterdam at the turn of the 1630s: it is one of his very first versions of the subject, which he would revisit several times over his career, notably in the later and more monumental version held at the Louvre. According to the museum, it is one of three Rembrandt paintings that Édouard André acquired during the Second Empire — nearly thirty years before the painter became an essential reference on the art market.

Next to it, a portrait of a man by Anthony van Dyck (around 1620, oil on canvas, 117 x 98 cm) shows a magistrate who remains anonymous, dressed in black before a red curtain — a painting long attributed to Jacob Jordaens, then to Rubens, before being restored to Van Dyck. A third portrait of a man, by Frans Hals (around 1660), whose sitter is likewise unidentified, was added to the collection by Nélie Jacquemart in 1912, a few months before her death — a late acquisition, made to carry forward the collecting project begun by her husband rather than for her own use. Three unnamed portraits of men, of modest size, in a dark palette: the exact opposite of the great religious or mythological subjects of the Italian wing.

2. The Library — the cabinet known as "of the Duchess of Fontanges"

The most remarkable piece of furniture in the room is not a painting but a cabinet in ebony and veneered wood, made around 1680 by the cabinetmaker Pierre Gole, of Dutch origin, who entered the king's service in 1651. It was commissioned by Louis XIV as a gift for Marie-Angélique de Scorailles, made Duchess of Fontanges in 1680 — one of his favourites, who died the following year at the age of twenty. The link between the piece and the duchess is not a name invented after the fact: an inventory drawn up after her death in 1681, along with accounts of the King's Buildings mentioning a piece of carving "for the cabinet of Madame the Duchess of Fontanges," confirm that she was indeed its owner.

The furniture's history after it left the royal collections is more tangled. Bought by Édouard André in Italy, it bore an Italian stamp that led it to be considered for a long time an Italian piece of cabinetmaking. It took a study conducted in 1985 by the furniture historian Jean-Nérée Ronfort to establish that it was in fact a French piece of royal origin, mislaid in Italy and then brought back to Paris without its nineteenth-century owner knowing its true provenance.

3. The Study — a desk and a studio scene

The Study houses a flat desk by Jacques Dubois (1694-1763), Louis XV's official cabinetmaker, decorated with lacquer and gilt bronze. The museum traces its acquisition in precise detail: bought from the antique dealer Montvallat in 1887, returned for an undocumented reason, then recovered by Édouard André the following year, in 1888.

On the wall, "The Beginnings of the Model" (Les Débuts du modèle) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (around 1769-1770, oil on oval canvas, 50 x 63 cm) shows a mother presenting her daughter as a model to a young painter, who lifts the girl's last veils with the tip of his mahlstick — a studio scene with an openly suggestive undertone, typical of the small "cabinet paintings" Fragonard turned to after giving up the grand history painting of his early years. The museum states that Édouard André acquired it before his marriage to Nélie Jacquemart. It would have had no place either in a reception salon or in a picture gallery open to guests: it is a canvas for oneself, hung in the room where one works.

How much time

Two small rooms, but ones best viewed slowly: the works are few and modest in size, which invites you to pause over each one rather than sweep through the room.

The Pilgrims of Emmaus (Rembrandt) — 3 minutes.
Portraits by Van Dyck and Frans Hals — 2 minutes.
Cabinet known as "of the Duchess of Fontanges" (Pierre Gole) — 2 minutes.
The Beginnings of the Model (Fragonard) and the desk by Jacques Dubois — 3 minutes.

Sources and verification

This article draws on the artwork notices and room presentation pages of the Musée Jacquemart-André, supplemented by the Wikipedia articles devoted to each work cited.

Displays and room openings can change. Check the Musée Jacquemart-André website on the day of your visit before following a route.

Listen to the commentary in the gallery

This route gives you a thread to follow. In front of an artwork, CulturAll adds the audio commentary: photograph the work or its label, listen, then ask your questions.