Charles-Louis BOUTET DE MONVEL (1854-1913) - Lot 25

Charles-Louis BOUTET DE MONVEL (1854-1913) Large drapery necklace with gilded silver mount joined by two partially black-enameled Horus heads with blue glass inlays for the eyes. Neo-Egyptian decoration of ouchebtis, scarabs, protective amulets and blue, turquoise and green enameled frit beads. Drop charms, bees and small seals. In a jeweler's box marked "Charles Boutet de Monvel. 18, rue Tronchet, Paris". Height: 30 cm. Width: 21.5 cm. Neck diameter: 12 cm. Gross weight: 123.1 g Provenance: Private Parisian collection. Bibliography: - Marguerite de Clerval (ed.), Dictionnaire International du bijou, Éditions du Regard, Paris 1998, p. 85. - Alastair Duncan, The Paris salons (1895-1914). Jewellery, Tome 1: The designers A-K, Éditions Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, 1994, p. 94-107. - Patrick Mauriès and Évelyne Possémé, Faune. Galerie des bijoux, Éditions Les Arts décoratifs, Paris, 2017, p. 32. Related to the famous Parisian family of artists, Charles-Louis Boutet de Monvel is the great-grandson of Comédie française actor Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel (1745-1812) and the grandson of Noël-Barthémy Boutet de Monvel (1768-1849), secretary to Jean-Jacques de Cambacérès (1753-1824). An engraver and painter, he was trained from 1874 by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) at the École nationale des Beaux-arts de Paris, and studied metal engraving with medallist Hubert Ponscarme (1827-1903). Exhibiting his graphic and pictorial works at salons from 1885, Boutet de Monvel's known jewelry creations only date back to 1898, the first examples of which were presented to the public in 1900. In 1899, he set up store at 18, rue Tronchet in Paris, address of the boutique "La Maison moderne", which distributed his jewelry. Most of his jewelry was made in gold or silver, with little enameling, in the Art Nouveau movement tinged with Japonism, as in the case of a belt buckle with a crane motif now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Probably a commissioned item with a strong symbolism of protection and resurrection, our necklace is therefore an atypical example of neo-Egyptian jewelry in Boutet de Monvel's oeuvre. Its "rough" character also distinguishes it from the harmonious neo-Egyptian enamelled creations of the Maison Castellani or Émile Philippe in the last third of the 19th century.