Musée d'Ennery

 

Last weekend, I visited Musée d'Ennery.

Adolphe Philippe d’Ennery (1811-1899), journalist, novelist and playwright was a famous writer during his lifetime.  The museum's collection of Asian art was the passion of his wife, Clémence d’Ennery.  From the mid to the end of the 19th century, Asian art was extremely popular in Paris and many wealthy people had collections.  There were several Asian art dealers who sold to wealthy customers and some of the big department stores even sold some Asian pieces.  Most of the Impressionists tried their hand at Japonism.  Cléménce's collection was far from ordinary.  In 1875 the Ennerys built a mansion on what is now Avenue Foch, on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne.  In the early twentieth century, the collection and the mansion were donated to France.

The museum contains nearly 7000 objects purchased from the antique shops Bing, Burty, and Sichel, as well as Au Bon Marché and small boutiques, illustrating daily life in China and Japan from the 12th to 19th centuries. They are exhibited in large wooden cabinets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and include Kyoto ceramics, Namban Art resulting from contacts between the Japanese and the Portuguese 1543-1640, over 300 netsuke from the Tokugawa Period (1603–1837), porcelain of various East India companies, dolls and figurines, carvings of semi-precious stones, ivories and bronzes, furniture, lacquerwork, with many fine carvings of animal and human forms.

  Netsuke used to be used on the belts of kimonos to hold the belt closed.  At first they were functional (they have two holes through which to thread the belt) and later became primarily decorative.  Netsuke took many forms, but were often animals or fruit and were usually made of wood or ivory.  They or only an inch or so big and carvers would often take months, or years to carve each one; they are amazingly detailed. 

 No photos are allowed inside the museum, so I had to borrow all of mine from different websites.  The museum is only open on Saturday and Sunday and only for a couple of hours each day.  My book club scheduled a private tour.  We decided to visit the museum after reading Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal.  de Waal traces the story of his family's collection of netsuke thorough many generations and to many different countries.  His ancestors were wealthy Jews who originated in St. Petersburg, and the netsuke were originally purchased in Paris around the same time that Madame d'Ennery made her purchases.  After Paris, the netsuke travel to Vienna during WWII and on to Tokyo, with de Waal's uncle, after the war.  I highly recommend the book.

We were let in by a museum employee with a key and the gate was locked behind us.  There seemed to be about five museum employees for our tour of ten people.  The museum is three large rooms full of thousands of objects.  There are over one thousand netsuke.  I will have to take my girls back to the museum because many of the netsuke are amazingly detailed little animals which they would love.

 Our tour guide was fabulous and an hour was much too short a time to see everything.  The mansion and the collection were breathtaking.

Two netsuke from the collection.