The small still life “Wild strawberry basket”, which was auctioned in Paris at the Artcurial auction house for 24.4 million euros, is not allowed to travel to the USA.
Jean-Siméon Chardin: “Le panier de fraises des bois”, auctioned in Paris for 24.4 million euros.
“Jean-Siméon Chardin’s masterpiece would be in perfect harmony with the architecture of Louis Kahn,” assures the director of the Kimbell Art Museum Fort Worth in Texas, Eric M. Lee, on the phone. The museum in the USA is the buyer of the small painting “Wild Strawberry Basket” by Chardin, which the New York old master dealer Adam Williams bought on March 23 in Paris at the Artcurial auction house for 24.4 million euros.
Much to the Texas museum’s disappointment, however, the Louvre pulled out all the legal stops to acquire Chardin’s work for its own collections. The general director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, supported by her predecessor Pierre Rosenberg, managed to get the culture minister Roselyne Bachelot to designate the Chardin painting as a state treasure on April 22 and subject it to a temporary export ban. It was the Minister of Culture’s last official act to leave the government after President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected.
The Louvre has thirty months to raise funds with the help of patrons. If eligible patrons, such as Total Energies, don’t come up with the money, the Kimbell Art Museum Fort Worth in Texas can definitely look forward to purchasing the Chardin. Of course, the picture would also be loaned out, the museum says.
Before the auction, the Louvre informed the expert Éric Turquin, who represents the heirs, and the auctioneer of Artcurial, Matthias Fournier, that it wanted the work to be sold privately, of course within the framework of its acquisition budget of less than 10 million euros. All parties involved rejected this. They were well aware of the worldwide interest in the harmonious still life by Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) and expected a high hammer price.
Not without reason: on the one hand, the stylistic quality of the work with the pyramidal red strawberries is high, on the other hand, the work is one of the very last Chardins available on the art market. Incidentally, the export ban was requested by the former director of the Louvre, Pierre Rosenberg. However, once the work was classified as a Treasury, those affected by the decision were not informed.
France must buy two more paintings that have been declared state treasury by the summer, otherwise they can leave the country: the gold background painting by Cimabue “The Mocking of Christ”, which was sold for 24.2 million, and “Le Canotier” by Gustave Caillebotte, the one Private collector wanted to sell abroad for 43 million euros.