Le Figaro Nantes
That day, a milky mist envelopes the Brocéliande forest.
A few kilometers from Rennes, a car is going up a path lined with trees nestled in their cushion of steam when the silhouette of a castle emerges.
A man gets out of the vehicle stopped in front of the building, in a peaceful corner of the town of Paimpont, facing the Pas du Houx pond.
He is about to enter the house that walkers on the neighboring hiking trail are content to admire from afar, on the other side of the body of water.
However, it is not tourism that brings him through the door of this former hunting estate.
The gentleman is an auctioneer.
A detail of the house whose furniture he is about to inventory has ignited his curiosity.
It has belonged for several generations to the Corvisart family, who gave a first private doctor to Napoleon I - and a second to his nephew, Napoleon III.
“It’s a discreet family, that I know well, that I have followed for a long time,”
says Nantes auctioneer Bertrand Couton, who has been responsible
“for several years”
for drawing up an inventory of the family collection housed in the castle.
The death of a patriarch prompted the sale of the property and the dispersal of family memories.
Assisted by his son, Henri Couton, also an auctioneer, the expert from the Ivoire group meticulously inspected every corner of the house, accompanied by the family's successors.
Here, old paintings lined a corridor covered with a red carpet.
There, a bust of Napoleon proudly crowned the fireplace of a library.
Silverware services, Louis XVI furniture, hunting trophies... And, at the bottom of the boxes and the forgotten drawers, bundles of archival documents, medals of Saint Helena, crosses of the Order of Charles III of Spain and a Legion of Honor.
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This heterogeneous collection, brought together in 640 lots, will be sold at auction in Nantes, and online, on February 20 and 21.
At the Ivoire Nantes auction house, eras and continents are already mixing in the joyful bazaar typical of family collections, built up in fits and starts of souvenirs and brought back objects, gifts and curiosities gleaned from travel.
“The beauty of our profession means that we never know exactly what we will find in the privacy of the families who trust us
,” says Henri Couton.
It could be a French piece of furniture, an Italian painting, an antique piece of jewelry, exotic chests…”.
The Corvisart collection gives pride of place to eclecticism.
SC/Le Figaro
Few “Bonaparteries” and other souvenirs of the Empire, on the other hand.
The oldest funds date back to Jean-Nicolas Corvisart (1755-1821), personal physician to Napoleon I.
The man of science - affectionately nicknamed
"the great Corvisart"
by Bertrand Couton - was attached to Bonaparte at the time of the Consulate, then died, as a baron of the Empire, four months after the disappearance in Saint Helena of the deposed sovereign .
Japoneries and photo reports
About twenty years later, a coincidence of history propelled the nephew of the imperial doctor, Lucien Corvisart (1824-1882), to a similar position with Napoleon III.
In addition to beautiful sets of silverware, the family keeps some documents from the imperial family from this period, including early drawings sketched by the only son of Napoleon III, Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.
The Bonapartists' “Napoleon IV” leaves sketches of fencers, spearmen of the imperial guard, or even a maritime setting sun painted in pink and black ink.
He dreamed of elsewhere and of battles.
He died in South Africa in 1879, pierced by the spear of a Zulu warrior.
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The exoticism inherited from the colonial era is also well represented in the collection put up for auction.
Japanese prints, Chinese porcelain, an ornate wooden Buddhist altar, a statuette of the Nepalese goddess Usnisavijaya, with eight gilded bronze arms... This Asian irruption into family effects is the work of the third dynastic figure: Charles Corvisart (1857- 1939).
Unlike the doctors who preceded him, the man - who was Prince Louis-Napoleon's playmate - embraced a military career, was appointed to the French legation in Tokyo and participated as a general in the First World War.
And, to the surprise of the auctioneers, the officer was not only keen on Japonism.
He also clicked easily.
“Charles Corvisart was passionate about photography, so much so that he left behind a very large archive, made up of more than 8,500 photos
,” emphasizes Bertrand Couton.
Several albums retrace his military wanderings in Asia.
Between 1880 and 1908, his travels in Manchuria, Indochina, Laos and Cambodia gave him the opportunity to meticulously capture each step, each village, each encounter.
An entire album is dedicated to the Great War.
“These are very good photo reports, among the first of their kind
,” assures the auctioneer.
Funny paradox.
Despite its links with Napoleonic history, the Corvisarts ultimately retained less evidence of the French empire than evocations of the ends of the world.
The memory of several lives, of which Napoleon was not the end, but only the beginning.