The Tachard Villa at La Celle-Saint-Cloud: A Legendary Commission

Commissioned by Ms. Jeanne Tachard for her villa at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, located on the outskirts of Paris, this pair of stools (lot 10) and side table (lot 11) constitute two of the most important furniture designs from this legendary project and further contributed to establish Legrain’s stature as a leader of the avant-garde. The two unique designs hold a particularly important place not only in the career of its maker but as masterpieces of 1920s European Art Deco.

The circumstances surrounding the creation of the present pieces can be credited in large part to none other than Jacques Doucet and attest to the word-of-mouth effect responsible for Legrain’s success. Much like Doucet, Jeanne Tachard was a prime figure in the Parisian fashion circles of the time. Née Poncin, she married André Tachard in 1901; six years later, they acquired the fashionable salon J. Suzanne Talbot, which quickly became highly successful in selling high-quality women’s hats in the years to follow and brought tremendous financial wealth to the couple. Tachard was known as an adventurous, free-spirited woman with a love of African art and the avant-garde. She developed a close bond with such artists as Foujita, Picabia and Lipchitz, as well as a unique approach to art and fashion which she shared with the equally daring Doucet—whom she supposedly advised in 1912 to get rid of his collection of classical art.

It is indeed Doucet who introduced Legrain to Tachard in the early 1920s. Intrigued by the couturier’s young protégé, Tachard initially hired Legrain to furnish the first floor of her Parisian apartment at 41 rue Emile-Menier, only to follow, in 1923, with the interior design for her country home at La Celle-Saint-Cloud. Legrain designed nearly everything in this serene secondary residence, from furniture and lighting to the architecture of the gardens, whose layout is reminiscent of Legrain’s bookbinding sketches. Discussing Legrain’s furniture and schemes for the villa at La Celle-Saint-Cloud in L’Amour de l’Art in 1924, critic Gaston Varenne observes: “… here Legrain has truly expressed the full measure of his talent” and recognizes Legrain’s ability to break with the past in his search for a vernacular of design, drawing a parallel with the Cubists’ search for a new formal language in painting.

Unlike the furniture made for Doucet, where eclecticism and exuberance took center stage, the Tachard commission comes across as more minimal and sober. Indeed, Legrain expressed himself very differently in his work for other clients. The two present lots embody a new, more mature phase in the oeuvre of the designer. Their respective, complementary design relies more heavily on a linear structure and clear geometric patterns reminiscent of Cubism and exhibit a rather radical proximity to the floor—also seen in a Japanese-inspired floor lantern and the lacquered seating occupying the main living area.

The pair of stools in particular (lot 10) can be seen as modern reinterpretations of the traditional East Asian drum stool, reinforced in the context in which the stools were displayed—beside a window in the dining room, in a grouping evocative of an ascetic Japanese interior. The decorative circular rings adorning two sides of the stools, on the other hand, arguably belong to African artistic traditions. There is an economy of tones and textures as well, punctuated by hints of color and occasional gold leaf accents, adding a level of luxury and sophistication to the bare forms. Black lacquer is used as a quiet yet silky counterpoint and grounds the base of the stools. The end result is an incredibly eclectic combination of artistic references that together form a delicately composed, elegant and well-proportioned design that is truly Legrain’s own.

Equally as minimalistic in design, but no less powerful, the side table also presents with a highly geometric design—a perfectly executed wooden circle coated with gold leaf framed by two parallel horizontal surfaces in black lacquer. One can make the case that the table is more akin to a work of Cubist or Constructivist sculpture than a functional piece of furniture. As evidenced by archival photographs, the table occupied a rather central position in the main living room of the house—either placed as a standalone object in the middle of the room or flanking the room’s only lacquered armchair— and therefore played a key dramatic role in the composition of an otherwise deliberately spare interior.

Perhaps due to their visual similarities and shared technique, the two lots have evolved in tandem and shared the same prestigious owners for the following decades—Robert Walker, Robin Symes, DeLorenzo Gallery and finally Ronald O. Perelman—, hence attesting not only to the historical significance of the original commission but to the artistic vision that binds them together. The present side table and pair of stools are not only the stunning product of this important commission, they also attest to Legrain’s ability to push boundaries to create, quite beautifully, a new kind of functional objet d’art.