Hôtel Lambert
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Hôtel Lambert is an hôtel particulier on Quai Anjou on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, Paris IVème; the name Hôtel Lambert was a sobriquet that designated a nineteenth-century political faction of Polish exiles, who gathered there.
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[edit] History
The house on an irregular site in the heart of Paris was designed by the architect Louis Le Vau,[1] and built between 1640 and 1644, originally for the financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert (died 1644) and continued by his younger brother Nicolas Lambert, later president of the Chambre des Comptes. For Nicolas Lambert the interiors were decorated by Charles Le Brun, François Perrier and Eustache Le Sueur, producing one of the finest, most innovative and iconographically most coherent examples of mid-seventeenth-century domestic architecture and decorative painting in France. Both painters worked on the internal decoration for almost five years, producing the gallant allegories of Le Brun's grand Galerie d'Hercule (still in situ) and the small Cabinet des Muses, with five canvases by Le Sueur that were purchased for the royal collection and are now in the Louvre, and the earlier ensemble, the Cabinet de l'Amour, which in its original configuation featured an alcove for a canopied bed upon which the lady of the house would receive visitors, according to the custom of the day; significantly the alcove was eliminated about 1703.[2] All ensembles featured themes of love and marriage; the paintings have since been dispersed.[3]
An entrance gives onto the central square courtyard round which the hôtel is ranged. A wing extends to the right at the rear, embracing a walled garden. At the same time Louis Le Vau constructed a residence for himself right next to the Hôtel Lambert. He lived there between 1642 and 1650. It was the birthplace of all of his children and the deathplace of his mother. After the architect's death in 1670 his hôtel was bought by the La Haye family, who owned the other palace as well. Both buildings were then joined and their façades combined.
In the 1740s, the Marquise du Châtelet and Voltaire, her lover, used the Hôtel Lambert as their Paris residence when not at her country estate in Cirey. The Marquise was famed for her salon there. Later, the Marquis du Châtelet sold the Lambert to Claude Dupin and his wife Louise-Marie Dupin, who carried on the tradition of the salon. The Dupins were ancestors to the writer George Sand, who because of her relationship with the Polish composer Chopin was also a frequent guest there of the nineteenth century Polish owners of the property.
In 1843 the palace was bought by members of the Czartoryskis, a mighty Polish magnate family. Two of its members, Konstanty Adam and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski were leaders of the liberal-aristocratic faction of the Polish Great Emigration, which came into being after the collapse of the November Uprising 1830—1831 in Poland. The political group was formed around the latter and his palatial dwelling lent its name to the faction.
The political beliefs of the Hotel Lambert faction were derived from the May 3rd Constitution that the members supported. The Hotel Lambert played an important part in keeping the "Polish question" alive in European politics, by promoting the Polish cause. It also served as a safe harbour for Polish emigrants and royalists, exiled from their country after the unsuccessful uprising against Russia. Among the notable politicians taking part in Hotel Lambert's activities were Władysław Czartoryski, Józef Bem, Henryk Dembiński, Karol Kniaziewicz, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Władysław Stanisław Zamoyski and Władysław Ostrowski.
Initially a political think-tank and a discussion club, with time the political faction also started to work on preservation and promotion of the Polish culture. A Polish language library was founded in the palace, as well as a historical society, two schools teaching in Polish (one for girls and one for boys) and several other notable social and cultural organisations. With time, it became one of the most important centres of Polish culture in the world, especially after the January Uprising, when the Polish language and culture became heavily persecuted in Poland itself.
Among the notable guests and patrons of the Hôtel Lambert were some of the most notable artists and politicians of the epoch, including Frédéric Chopin, Zygmunt Krasiński, Alphonse de Lamartine, George Sand, Honoré de Balzac, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Eugène Delacroix and Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin's "La Polonaise" was composed exclusively for the Polish ball held there every year.
The Polish library founded in Hôtel Lambert exists to this day, though it was moved to a different place.
In the twentieth century the Hôtel Lambert was discreetly split into several luxurious apartments; it was once the home of actress Michèle Morgan and of Mona von Bismarck and to Baron Alexis de Rédé who rented the ground floor from 1949 until his death in 2004;[4] he entertained there his intimate friend Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, who continued to maintain a formal residence with his wife, in Neuilly: their dinner parties were at the center of le tout Paris. In 1956, at Alexis de Redé's Bal des Têtes, young Yves Saint-Laurent provided many of the headdresses and received a boost to his career. In 1975 the Hôtel Lambert was purchased by Baron Guy de Rothschild, whose wife, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild was a close friend of Rédé; they used it as their Paris residence. In September 2007, an Arab prince from Qatar has bought the Hotel Lambert mansion from the Rothschild banking family in a deal valuing the Parisian landmark at around 80 million euros ($111m).
[edit] See also
- Baron Alexis de Rédé
- Great Emigration (Wielka Emigracja)
- Union of National Unity (Związek Jedności Narodowej)
- Monarchist Society of the Third May (Towarzystwo Monarchistyczne Trzeciego Maja)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700 (2nd ed. Baltimore 1970) p 135f.
- ^ Henderson 1974:556; compare the custom of the Levée.
- ^ Natalie Rosenberg Henderson, "Le Sueur's Decorations for the Cabinet des Muses in the Hôtel Lambert" The Art Bulletin 56.4 (December 1974) pp 555-570.
- ^ The restorations undertaken at the Hôtel Lambert were discussed by J. Dupont, "Quelques notes sur la restauration de l'Hôtel Lambert" Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art français 1947-48, p, 128. (Noted by Henderson 1974:557 note).
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