A palace for the sheikh: royal as the sun

Dhis interior is like a gilded dream of Versailles: room by room, Sheikh Hamad Al Thani has brought together the finest decorative arts from the French 17th and 18th centuries in great density. In 2007, the ruling family of Qatar acquired the Hôtel Lambert – and recently sold it. Thanks to video recordings and photographs, everyone can now virtually walk through the interior of the Paris City Palace. The eye can hardly rest, the rooms are so overloaded with fairytale-like furnishings. From October 11th to 14th, the Sheikh’s magnificent collection will be up for auction at Sotheby’s in Paris, with more than 1100 lots in five live auctions and one online bid. Around 50 million euros are expected.

Hamad Al Thani is one of those collectors who accumulate a lot quickly and with great enthusiasm. The paintings, sculptures, Louis XIV and Louis XV furniture, vases, chandeliers, goldsmith work, enamel art, Kunstkammer objects, jewelery and porcelain he collected for the Hôtel Lambert are largely inspired by the neoclassical baroque architecture of the city palace. The provenance, especially in the case of works by well-known artists and craftsmen, is often sublime. Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Catherine the Great or the Duke of Windsor, but also the Rothschild family, Coco Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent are among the previous owners. What once belonged to them did not adorn just any building: the Hôtel Lambert is the most beautiful and expensive private residence in Paris. It was built in 1640 on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis by order of the financier Jean-Baptiste Lambert. The architect Louis Le Vau was later one of the key designers of the expansions of the Château de Versailles under Louis XIV. The painters Charles Le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur, who worked on the wall and ceiling paintings of the Hôtel Lambert for five years, were also responsible for large-scale paintings – about the Hall of Mirrors – appointed to Versailles.

The Hôtel Lambert has always been the scene of encounters steeped in history. When it was bought by the financier Claude Dupin in 1732, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and the Baron von Grimm conversed in the salon held by Madame. Voltaire is said to have been fascinated by the beauty and atmosphere of the City Palace. In the middle of the 19th century, the Polish magnate family Czartoryski acquired it and made the Hôtel Lambert the center for the Polish independence movement, but also for cultural life. Eugène Delacroix, Honoré de Balzac and Franz Liszt were present at receptions, as were Frédéric Chopin and George Sand. Chopin wrote some of his polonaises for the annual ball.

The magnificent building remained in the possession of the descendants of the Czartoryski family until 1975, with various illustrious tenants. Then Guy de Rothschild became the head of the house and decorated the walls with paintings from the outstanding family collection.

When the Al Thanis finally acquired the palace for around 60 million euros, the building was to be fundamentally modernized. Plans to build an underground car park with a car lift under it were thwarted by French cultural protection. Then a fire destroyed parts of the attic and the top floor, including a bathroom with paintings by Eustache Le Sueur. Only a restoration for around 130 million euros gave the city palace back the splendor of the time it was built.

The interior design with the Al Thanis collection made the Hôtel Lambert a perfect ensemble de l’ancien regime. A pair of Egyptian porphyry vases, dated between 1680 and 1710, which overlook the Seine in Le Brun’s Gallery of Hercules, are among the few specimens to date from the era of Louis XIV. They are estimated at one to two million euros. Pieces of furniture by the great cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle rarely appear on the market. Two high pedestals with marquetry work and gilded satyr masks were delivered directly to the Palace of Versailles from Boulle’s workshop in 1684. They adorned the Appartements du Grand Dauphin, the last surviving son of Louis XIV (estimate 500,000 to 1 million euros). The Dutch ebenist Bernard I. Van Riesen Burgh is also one of the geniuses of the Sun King period. A chest of drawers with marquetry and gilded decorations, expected to sell for between €1.5m and €1.5m, is attributed to him. It was long owned by the Machault d’Arnouville family.

Among the paintings, the most prestigious is “Portrait of a Bearded Gentilhomme” by Jan Sanders van Hemessen, from the collection of Prince William of Orange-Nassau (1/2 million). A tondo by François Boucher shows a young lady doing her morning toilette who has just stuck on her “mouche”, the fashionable beauty mark (500,000/800,000 euros). The Kunstkammer collection of the Hôtel Lambert, with its silver and gold shimmering curiosities, with quartz crystal figures or enamel from Limoges, which Hamad Al Thani had put together with special attention, will have its own offer in the auction series. An octagonal jewelery box by the Augsburg goldsmith Hans Jakob Mair is striking: it is wonderfully decorated with silver relief medallions and gold, gemstone and enamel decorations (200,000/300,000 euros).

After the auctions, the proceeds of which benefit the Al Thanis Art Foundation, a new chapter begins for the Hôtel Lambert. The Palais was acquired by the French entrepreneur Xavier Niel for more than 200 million euros and is to house a cultural foundation in the future. The other art treasures of the still immense Al Thani collection, which combines works from antiquity to the present, can be viewed in the sublimely restored Hôtel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde since autumn 2021.