Forbes 2nd Empire Collection to be Sold

The NY Times is reporting that Christopher Forbes plans to sell his collection of over 3,000 works of French Second Empire art at auction. The works will be sold in about 2,000 lots at the Chateau de Fontainebleau with expectations totals of between $3.3 million and $4.4 million, although they are still reviewing items. The sale will be in early March, and should be a good one to watch.

The NY Times article notes on the Second Empire "Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected president of the French Second Republic in 1848, and then seized royal powers in a coup d’état in 1851, ruling over a despotic but opulent colonial empire until 1870."

The NY Times reports

PARIS — Christopher Forbes, vice chairman of Forbes, is to sell his vast collection of French Second Empire art and memorabilia at an auction in Fontainebleau, near Paris, next year, according to the auctioneer Jean-Pierre Osenat.

The collection was begun by Mr. Forbes’s father, Malcolm Forbes, and put together over 40 years. “This is the biggest and most important Second Empire collection in the world,” Mr. Osenat said. Major works from the collection have circulated in the United States as an itinerant exhibition over the past dozen years.

The sale, to be held in early March, will see about 3,000 items go under the hammer, arranged in about 2,000 lots. Preview shows will be held in the Paris Opera Garnier – itself a Second-Empire building — and the Château de Fontainebleau, about 35 miles south of Paris.

Among the lots will be about 500 paintings and drawings, like grandiose battle panoramas and portraits, or intimate sketches by Degas and Gustave Doré; sculptures; rare books; letters; and photographs. The total value is conservatively estimated at three million to four million euros, Mr. Osenat said, or about $3.3 million to $4.4 million. But with experts still combing through the lots, that could change.

“We are still discovering treasures as we go through, preparing the catalog,” said the art historian Jean Pierre Chataigner. “There are letters from the architect Baron Haussman to the Emperor; there are secret diplomatic exchanges. This is a chronicle of the entire epic of the Second Empire.”

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected president of the French Second Republic in 1848, and then seized royal powers in a coup d’état in 1851, ruling over a despotic but opulent colonial empire until 1870.

The sale is not the first by members of the Forbes family in the past few years. In 2001 the family disposed of part of its collection of American paintings and in 2002 part of its holding of American historical documents. In 2003 Mr. Forbes sold the family collection of Victorian art, described at the time as the third most important in the world. But the French works are “certainly more important than the Victorian collection,” Mr. Chataigner said.

Source: The NY Times