709. This Is Not Archeology - Or Is It?

In 2010 a discovery made the headlines in Paris: Me Olivier Choppin de Janvry, auctioneer at Drouot, had, in April, been entrusted by the guardianship judge with the inventory of the property of a ninety year old woman, Simone Beaugiron, who was ending her days in a retirement home in the Ardèche, France.

So, accompanied by a painting expert, Marc Ottavi, and a photographer, Luc Pâris, he entered, one spring afternoon, an apartment located at 2, square La Bruyère, in the 9th district of Paris.

Marthe de Florian - first owner of the apartment.

Her granddaughter Simone Beaugiron in the apartment, the day of her wedding.

Visitors are greeted at the entrance by a stuffed ostrich. In the apartment, everything is gray, covered with decades-old dust. 

All the rooms, from the neo-Renaissance dining room with its coffered ceiling, to the living room, including the bedroom, are cluttered with furniture from various eras, knick-knacks, piles of newspapers and books, paintings placed on the floor...

Next to the Louis XVI style furniture, a mahogany dressing table, resolutely more modern, attracts particular attention by its originality: of a rather rare model, its kidney-shaped top, surmounted by an oval mirror, is supported by a sculpted base, decorated with openwork garlands and stylized griffins.

A large painting intrigues the visitors: signed "Boldini", it represents a young woman dressed in a vaporous pink evening dress. A search will identify the model: it is Solange Beaugiron's grandmother, Marthe de Florian, who was, during the Third Republic, one of the most beautiful women in Paris. A demi-mondaine, in fact, who had relations with the greatest names of the time: Paul Deschanel, Georges Clémenceau, Raymond Poincaré, Aristide Boucicaut, the founder of Le Bon Marché, and many others, were among her "acquaintances". A drawer of the desk reveals the existence of letters that these gentlemen wrote to him, gathered in packages and tied with ribbons of different colors according to the identity of each sender, as well as various business cards, those, among others, of Waldeck-Rousseau, Gaston Doumergue and the painter Giovanni Boldini. As for the painting, the expert is intrigued, because it is not listed anywhere. Further research allowed him to date it to 1898, thanks to a monograph written in 1951 at the request of the artist's widow.

The painting was further sold for €2.1 millions.

Solange Beaugiron lived in Ardèche until her death on May 11, 2010, in the retirement home "Les Pervenches" in Lablachère. Without descendants, it is not known exactly who inherited her goods, consisting, in addition to the painting of Boldini, in several real estate properties; one evoked an Ardèche grocer who delivered her groceries at home, of whom she would have made her universal legatee. But that is another story...