The J. Paul Getty Museum

Paneled Room (salon de compagnie)

Object Details

Title:

Paneled Room (salon de compagnie)

Artists/Makers:

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (French, 1736 - 1806)

Painted panels by Jean-Siméon Rousseau de la Rottière (French, 1747 - 1820, master 1771)

and Jules-Hughes Rousseau (French, 1743 - 1806)

overdoors attributed to Jean-Guillaume Moitte (French, 1746 - 1810)

Culture:

French

Place:

Paris, France (Place Created)

Date:

about 1790–1795

Medium:

Painted and gilded oak; painted and gilded plaster; white marble; modern gilt-bronze hardware; modern mirror glass

Object Number:

98.DH.149

Dimensions:

Other: 682.2 × 592.8 cm (268 9/16 × 233 3/8 in.)

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Object Description

The design of this room was invented by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, one of the most celebrated French architects of his generation, who called on skilled painters and sculptors to implement his decorative scheme for the painted and gilded doors and panels, and the gilt plaster relief sculptures in the overdoors. The grotesque ornamentation, which combines graceful arabesques and winged centaurs with palmettes and sphinxes, shows some of the finest decorative work of the late 1700s. Much inspired by the art of ancient Rome, such designs are characteristic of the style called neo-classicism that was fashionable in Europe during this period.

The paneling decorated the main reception room of a house built for Jean-Baptiste Hosten. Hosten derived his fortune from a large sugar plantation in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Republic of Haiti), where two hundred slaves worked. He invested his colonial wealth in Parisian property and entrusted Ledoux with the construction of his private house surrounded by a planned group of fourteen other houses to rent. As his home was being built in Paris during the early 1790s, Saint-Domingue was riven by a slave uprising – the beginning of a revolution that would result in the abolition of slavery in that colony in 1793 and the winning of independence from France in 1804. Hosten had returned there by 1802, possibly to oversee the anticipated re-imposition of slavery, and was executed in February of that year by a mulatto militia. Only six of the houses of his planned Parisian development were completed and the paneling from his own reception room was removed just before the group of buildings was demolished in the early 1890s.

Provenance
Provenance
1795 - 1802

Jean-Baptiste Hosten, French, 1741 - 1802 (salon de compagnie, Maison Hosten, 38 rue Saint-Georges, Paris, France), by inheritance to his daughter, Pascalie Hosten, 1802.

1802 - 1823

Marie Agnès Françoise Pierre Pascalie Hosten, comtesse d'Arjuzon, French, 1774 - 1850 (salon de compagnie, Maison Hosten, 38 rue Saint-Georges, Paris, France), by gift to her heirs, 1823.
Source: Pons, Bruno. French Period Rooms Rebuilt in England, France, and the Americas (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 1995), p. 406.

1823 - by 1892

Heirs of Marie Agnès Françoise Pierre Pascalie Hosten, comtesse d'Arjuzon, French, 1774 - 1850 (salon de compagnie, Maison Hosten, 38 rue Saint-Georges, Paris, France), dismantled between 1885 and 1892, when the house was demolished, and sold to Mme Lelong.

by 1892 -

Mme C. Lelong (Paris, France)

possibly before 1897

Paul Fournier, American, 1888 - about 1961 (Paris, France)

-

Lévy (15 rue Pigalle, Paris, France), sold to the Prince d'Essling.
Source: Marmottan, Paul. Le Style empire: Architecture et décors d'intérieurs. Vol. 4, Étude critique et descriptive (Paris: F. Contet, 1927), p. 2.

possibly 1897 - 1913

Victor Masséna, Prince d'Essling and duc de Rivoli, French, 1836 - 1910 (8 rue Jean Goujon, Paris, France), sold to Maison Carlhian when the house was demolished, 1913.
Source: mentioned and pictured in Dilke, Lady Emelia. French Furniture and Decoration in the XVIIIth Century (London: George Bell and Sons, 1901), pp. 67-68, 70.

1913 - 1921

Maison Carlhian, 1914 - 1930 (Paris, France), consigned to both Maison Carlhian and Jacques Seligmann, 1921.

1921 - 1925

Maison Carlhian, 1914 - 1930 and Jacques Seligmann, French, 1858 - 1923 (Paris, France), sold to Otto Wolf, 1925.

1925 -

Otto Wolff (Cologne, Germany), sold to a private collection.

- 1969

Private Collection (Cologne, France), sold to Joachim Kaiser and Georg Fahrbach, 1969.

1969 - 1986

Joachim Kaiser and Georg Fahrbach (Cologne, Germany), sold to Axel Vervoordt, 1986.
Source: Correspondence with Joachim Kaiser, March-June, 1987, in the files of the Sculpture & Decorative Arts department, J. Paul Getty Museum.

1986 - 1987

Axel Vervoordt (Antwerp, Belgium), sold to the J. Paul Getty Trust, 1987.

1987 - 1998

The J. Paul Getty Trust (Los Angeles, California), accessioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998.

Education Resources
Education Resources

Education Resource

Subjects

Grades

Format

The Grotesque in Art and Poetry

Students identify grotesque elements and symmetry in artworks, create designs for a pilgrim bottle and door panel, and write poetry.

Visual Arts; English–Language Arts

K-2; 3-5

Three/Five-Part Lesson