A funerary gift and the Gallé-Keller friendship.
A contribution to the provenance research for a specimen from a remarkable Gallé series.
April 13th was the International Provenance Research Day in art. This crucially important subfield of art history presents some special challenges for the Gallé art pieces, given the general lack of archives and Émile Gallé’s practice of making several copies of even his masterpieces.
The difficulty expands of course by an order of magnitude for the Établissements Gallé glassware as the Gallé heirs moved toward industrial series and multiplied the number of specimens as well as the number of made series. But, in Émile Gallé’s time as well as later, some vases sometimes bear some precious clues as to their original owner, in the shape of the inscription added to the original design.
I am not referring here, of course, to the elaborate literary quotes Émile Gallé is known for on his verreries parlantes, but to the simpler and often shorter dedicatory or commemorative text that was engraved in some cases at the request of the buyer, to an add a personal touch to what was, in general, a gift. It could be one or several names, in full or abridged to their initials, sometimes combined in a monogram, with additional information such as a date, a place, a momentous occasion. These inscriptions can be most useful as a terminus ante quem to date a particular design, for which no piece of archives is available. They can also be tricky to understand in full, when only initials or first names are given. Lacking the understanding of these, one loses the true significance of the gift, and therefore the symbolical significance that was attached to the vase.
Gallé glass pieces bearing such inscriptions do regularly surface in auction sales, and these texts are seldom given proper attention. Occasionally, it’s the owner’s wish because it can be potentially embarrassing to advertise the sale of a family heirloom which was a special gift to begin with. In fact, an inscription can even be considered as lowering the item’s value, like an unwanted artefact marring the artwork. But more often than not, it’s because the meaning has been lost, after the vase changed hands a few times.
Such is perhaps the case of a vase sold by Quittenbaum in 20151 which is the subject of this short study, to showcase the kind of insight one might gain from provenance research.
From La Soude to the Écume de mer vases by Émile Gallé (ca 1903-1904).
The vase belongs to a well-known small series illustrating Émile Gallé’s very late artworks and his will to pursue his research on glass while being already severely hampered by illness, in his life’s final year. It’s an interesting series because it exemplifies how a commercial commission could spur Émile Gallé to research technical innovations, which he would then reprise on more artistic works, experimenting in various shapes and additional decorative effects along the way2. The case in hand was especially well studied by Françoise Thérèse Charpentier3, Philippe Thiébaut and François Le Tacon4, and there is little to add to their illuminating comments. The creation’s date is documented by mentions in two letters from Émile Gallé to Roger-Marx, in October and November 19035. Le Tacon has published sketches of two related vases’ designs from Émile Gallé’s hand6, Les Soudières and Le Sânon, while the watercolours renditions of the Écume de mer derivative models are kept in the Musée de l’École de Nancy7.
The original commission was a vase to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Solvay soda factory in Dombasle, along the Meurthe, just south of Nancy. The Belgian Solvay company was a major actor in turning the Nancy area into an industrial powerhouse in the later 19th c. and its founder Ernest Solvay subsidised many social and research projects in Nancy. As a producer of sodium carbonate, the Solvay factory was also instrumental in lowering the cost of mass glass production, and it had thus a direct impact on art glassmaking, such as Gallé’s8. Émile Gallé accepted the commission and made two vases, named La Soude or Les Soudières and Le Sânon. For these, he drew inspiration from the striking industrial landscape of the Solvay factory (as drawn by Auguste Herbst), as well from the chemical process of making the soda, depicted by the sodium crystals protruding from the vase’s foot, the swirls of the mud-like soda before it’s processed, as well as from droplets of salt-charged water during the purification process.
From this experimental commission, Émile Gallé quickly derived several artworks, which are well documented by drawings in the Musée de l’École de Nancy collection. According to the last count, made by H. Bieri Thomson9, which looks to be still valid — I could not locate additional shapes – there were five different shapes adorned with the soda droplets borrowed from La Soude, each one made in slight variants, and in small numbers, no more than a few units. The most famous one, and perhaps the most common too, is the so-called “cabbage leaf-shaped” footed cup or bowl (H. 16.9 cm, D 18.5 cm): the Musée d’Orsay (from the celebrated Fruhinsholz collection) as well as the Glasmuseum Hentrich both own a specimen and others pop up from time to time in auctions (Millon in 2017, Quittenbaum in 2019 for instance). A simpler bowl is attested by a specimen in the Roubaix Musée d’art et d’industrie André Diligent (inv. 11840-1187), fitted with a bronze foot10. The second most common is the Écume de mer under discussion. And another rare variant exists in the collection of theMusée de l’impression sur étoffes in Mulhouse11. It used to belong to the powerful Société industrielle de Mulhouse, with which the Gallé family had strong ties. The shape of this variant was also in use in other contemporary series, such as the Cylène light bulb cover from 1904 or an early specimen of the Érable à feuille de sycomore, green/yellow on rose series also dated from 190412. Since it’s a rather uncommon vase shape, with its high tapered mouth, this is yet another concurring indication to date the making of these series in 1903-1904.
The foremost common distinctive feature of all these creations is of course the applied heavy droplets of white crystal overflowing from the mouth along the body of the vases, whose earth-toned marbleised colours offer a profound contrast. Some vases offer an additional decorative pattern etched on the body, either algae or ferns, and even, in a unique case, it seems, dragonflies and ephemera on the inside. These refinements have led to different symbolical interpretations of the decor, notably because of literary quotes from Marcel Proust. Twice in his celebrated Recherche du temps perdu, Proust evokes Gallé’s glass masterworks, the first time in a metaphor related to the sea-foam, and the second time, relating to the winter’s snow. Depending on the added etched patterns, or on notes jotted down on the model’s drawing, the white droplets on the different series have been interpreted as icy rivulets or meerschaum.
In comparison with the Musée de l’École de Nancy specimen, the Léo Keller vase has been given this Écume de mer title. Four or five other specimens at least are known from this series (keeping the names as indicated on the catalogues), depending on whether the Christie’s 2006 and the Sotheby’s 2008 are one and the same, which is impossible to tell from the online pictures alone. It surely looks like the series got its contemporary name from the specimen in the Musée de l’École de Nancy, stemming from one common interpretation of its design, but that’s not the only known designation:
Écume de mer, in the Musée de l’École de Nancy (inv. HV 12) but acquired in a public sale in 1969 ; with a fern pattern etched on the body13.
From the Barry Friedman Ltd’s collection, sold by Sotheby’s in 1992 (Important Gallé Glass, cat. 26, p. 46-47), without additional engraved decorative pattern, but with elaborate marbleised sworls on the glass walls of the vase’s body.
Écumée de mer (sic), from Sotheby’s London, 2 April 2008, lot 125, with a seaweed engraved pattern on a martelé ground.
Le Cristal de soude, from the former Marcilhac collection, on sale on the 30th October 2016, by Besch Cannes Auction, lot 139; no engraved pattern but heavy metallic oxidisation effects on the body.
Léo Keller (1882-1905), the Keller and the Gallé families.
What sets apart the Quittenbaum specimen from the other Écume de mer vases is the commemorative inscription it bears on the lower part of the body. It’s a finely incised intaglio text that reads as follows: En souvenir de Léo 17 Novembre 1905. As can be guessed right away from this remembrance formula (“In memory of” followed by a first name), the dedicatory inscription marks the vase as a funerary gift. The associated date, the 17th November 1905, allows identifying the deceased without any semblance of a doubt, as Léo Keller, who died at the young age of 23 in Paris on that day.
Léo Keller was born on the 5th July 1882, in Belfort14, the third child of Charles Keller (1843-1913) and Mathilde Roederer (1850-1936), who had been socialist activists. They had met in Bischwiller, Mathilde’s birthplace, a small town 30 km north of Strasbourg, where Charles used to visit his cousins, the Grimm, whose father was a local pastor15. One of the Grimm sisters, Élise Chalon, was very politically aware and had introduced her close friend, Mathilde Rœderer, to the progressivist cause after a trip to London where she had joined the International Workingmen’s Association16. Another one of the Grimm sisters was none other than Henriette Grimm, who married Émile Gallé in 1875: the three women would remain close friends and live close to another in Nancy until their respective death.
Mathilde Keller was the scion of a rich Alsatian family: the daughter of a physician in Strasbourg, Jules Roederer (1812-1891), and granddaughter of Geoffroi Louis Roederer, a textile manufacturer. She was also a niece of Louis Roederer (1809-1870), a wine merchant who founded the famous champagne house bearing his name in 1833 and made a fortune. Her inheritance made her and her husband well-off annuitants who could afford to finance their political endeavours. Charles Keller17, whom she married in Strasbourg in 1876, was a civil engineer in Mulhouse, the technical director of an Alsatian spinning company in Willer, before getting fired for his political proselytism in 1868. He had then moved to Paris and become a full time political activist, a close ally of Mikhaïl Bakounine and the Reclus brothers, working on a never completed French translation of Karl Marx’s Kapital, writing and publishing revolutionary poems and songs under the pseudonym Jacques Turbin — some of which became quite successful18. He was a delegate of the Paris section for the First International at the Bern congress in 1868 and later took part in the Commune de Paris in 1871: he was even wounded in the street fights against the French provisional government’s troops during the Paris insurrection in May. Furthermore, he managed to escape but was forced to emigrate to Switzerland to evade arrest, and lived in Basel for a while, where Mathilde Roederer joined him19. When amnesty allowed their return in 1880, they settled briefly first in Belfort, the heroic stronghold from the 1870 war, that had remained French and was close to Mulhouse then in German hands. Their son Léo was born there and named after a dear friend of the family, Léodile Champseix (1824-1900), better known under her pen name as André Léo20, a writer and a prominent feminist and political activist whose publications the Kellers funded in part.
Like many of their Alsatian brethren, the Kellers moved then to Nancy, where they had family with the Gallés and Elise Chalon, and they became an influential couple in the local leftist political milieu. They were certainly generous with their money, financing various social and political causes, in Nancy and elsewhere — Charles Keller was a patron of megalithic archaeology in Brittany, for instance. Their main political endeavour was in 1899 the creation of the Université populaire de Nancy21, a social educational project. Charles Keller had a special house built on Drouin street, the Maison du Peuple, to host the project, in 1902. He enlisted the help of some of the more renowned artists of the nascent École de Nancy, Victor Prouvé and Eugène Vallin, and with the full support of the artistic movement’s founder, Émile Gallé, his cousin.
Beyond their family ties, the Kellers and the Gallés were close allies in Nancy, their political views partially in sync in the late 1890s-early 1900s: even though the Gallés were not revolutionaries, they shared with the Kellers the same social concerns in a time of political upheaval with the Affaire Dreyfus. As crucially, perhaps for our subject, the Kellers were also financial supporters of Émile Gallé’s work and business. Soon after the 1900 Exposition universelle, the Gallés’ financial situation deteriorated, both from the massive expenses they had experienced on that occasion and from disappointing sales, due in part to Émile Gallé’s political exposure in the Affaire Dreyfus. The Keller family, both Charles and his brother Théodore, a physician in Paris, then stepped in with two important loans (respectively Fr 36,000 and Fr 20,000, the equivalent of two months’ cash flow for the factory22) that were still outstanding at the time of Émile Gallé’s death in September 1904 — they were repaid soon after when the business picked up under Henriette Gallé. In other words, in 1905, the Gallés were indebted to the Kellers in the literal sense, adding another layer to the complex web of their relationship.
Léo Keller, a life cut too short.
By 1905, Léo was the eldest of the Kellers’ remaining children: they had lost earlier their first two daughters, Marianne in 1886 and Julia in 190123. Léo Keller’s life and personality remain sketchy, but a few facts emerge from the Gallé family archives, for his name pops up here and there in Émile and Henriette Gallé’s letters as well as in their son-in-law’s, Paul Perdrizet. The latter happened to be one of Léo’s professors in Nancy’s university, in 1901-1902, when he acquired the licence ès lettres diploma (the French bachelor of arts degree). The Gallé family was then closely monitoring his academic progress24. Since they had only daughters of their own, Léo Keller was almost like a surrogate son to them. Léo and his younger brothers, Paul and Jacques, were constantly mingling with the Gallé daughters. The Kellers’ house, 83 rue du Montet, was located just behind the Gallé factory ground, 39 avenue de la Garenne, while the Gallé family home was only a few hundred meters further away on the same street. In a 1910 letter, Jacques Keller reflected that they felt like brothers and sisters. And it’s no happenstance if the main family portrait still preserved of the Keller family has Geneviève Gallé standing among them (see above).
In 1902, when he was called up to the army for the military service, Léo apparently chose to enlist for 3 years in the 69th Infantry Regiment25. What happened in the following years is somewhat murky, but he managed to pass the rigorous entrance examination for the École nationale des chartes, France’s elite school for archivists and librarians. He was studying in the prestigious school in the Fall of 1905 when he contracted the typhoid fever: that much is known from a letter of Paul Perdrizet to his friend the librarian René-Jean on November 20th26. Léo Keller died in Paris on the 17th and his body was transferred to Nancy and then to Bischwiller, the ancestral family hometown in Alsace, where he was buried soon after.
Identifying the donor of the vase.
Léo Keller’s death resonated throughout Nancy all the more because of the Kellers’ outsized social and political influence. L’Éducation sociale, the monthly bulletin of the Université populaire, published a short obituary in its December 1905 issue (see below)27. This unsigned text does not say much, beyond offering the publication’s sympathy to the bereaved parents, but its mere existence was exceptional — the bulletin usually did not do obituaries. It’s also worth noting that L’Éducation sociale’s publisher was none other than Paul Nicolas at that time, one of the main Gallé artists and a political activist in his own right. There were other public shows of support for the founder of the Université populaire and the funeral ceremony was certainly well attended.
The wide impact of Léo Keller’s death leads to the question of who was the donor of the Écume de mer vase in his memory. Gallé vases were a common gift in Nancy (and all over France, really) for many occasions, but typically happy ones, whether they were private (birthdays, marriages, baptisms and so on) or public (competition prizes for instance or other commemorative gifts). Funerary gifts are more of a rarity, but they are attested too, especially coming from the Gallé family. The fact that the Léo Keller vase bears a simple dedication without any indication of the donor’s identity excludes in any case that it was a collective and public gift, as were many Gallé vases bearing this kind of inscription. If that was the case, surely, the inscription would have mentioned the responsible group or organisation. The most straightforward hypothesis is therefore almost certainly the right one: Henriette Gallé made the gift, on behalf of the Gallé family, to honour Léo Keller’s memory, as her husband had done several times before for some other friends and parents. For instance, in April 1896, Émile Gallé gifted to Marcelin Daigueperce’s widow a “small vase” inscribed with a quote from saint John’s Gospel he had used in his eulogy on his friend and collaborator’s funeral, “Personne n’a un plus grand amour que de donner sa vie pour ses amis” (John, XV, 13). The vase’s whereabouts are unknown, at least to the best of my knowledge, but Émile Gallé’s speech was published in the union trade publication, La Céramique et la verrerie28, and his calling card announcing the gift to Daigueperce’s widow reappeared in an autographs auction in 201929. Henriette Gallé certainly maintained her late husband’s practice in such circumstances after 1904.
Moreover, she had already established a strong tradition of giving glass pieces to the Kellers’ children, in particular as Christmas or New Year’s gifts: in December 1902, she writes to her husband that “she gave to [the Kellers’] boys only insignificant glass pieces, but that [she] reserves the right to offer them something nice for their electric lighting that is being installed”30. Earlier in the same letter, she mentions letting Paul Keller have a somewhat broken specimen of a recent glass creation, the Forêt guyanaise, a green vase with a scarab31. Even damaged, that was a precious gift, a major glass artwork by Émile Gallé, and not an industrial series.
The symbolical meaning of the vase in Léo Keller’s funeral context.
Only some corroborating archival evidence would allow asserting this with absolute certainty, but barring any credible alternate, one should consider Henriette Gallé as the donor. The choice of the vase also makes great sense. She did not pick a unique masterwork from the family collection, but the next best thing in this specimen of the Écume de mer: as it’s been established earlier, this was a recent limited and prestigious series, well representative of the Gallé glassworkers virtuosity as well as of their master’s inspiration. In all fairness, if we know with relative confidence the date of the design’s creation, in late 1903, we ignore when it was discontinued. While we cannot rule out a special commission for the gift to the Kellers, it seems improbable: after Émile Gallé’s death, under Henriette Gallé’s conservative financial leadership, gone were the days of such extravaganzas. In all likelihood, she just settled on an existing piece and had it engraved with the dedicatory inscription.
At the date of the funeral, in November 1905, she still had a diverse inventory to choose from, but she made her selection quite a meaningful one on various levels.
First, the overflowing droplets on the vase can symbolise the tears that are being shed for the departed. With its earth-toned colours, this is not a joyful creation, and it befits the mourning atmosphere. Second, the association with the sea is still present, in the evocation of the meerschaum by these translucent rivulets, even though the accompanying engraved motive is not algae but ferns. This sea-foam theme could have been selected in reference to the Brittany coast32, where the Keller family maintained a holiday home in Carnac (see above). They had a first villa built in Carnac Plage in 1899, Les Murets, on the shore and then two more on the rocky outcrop Ty Bihan, later renamed Pointe Keller honoring Charles Keller’s role in Carnac33. They frequently entertained friends and visitors there, while Charles Keller lent a hand to the local archaeologist Zacharie Le Rouzic in his archaeological endeavours34. It’s unclear if Émile Gallé himself visited the Keller in Carnac in 1898 or later (he probably did not, due to his failing health), but his family did, like many of their friends from Nancy. The painter Victor Prouvé made portraits of the Gallé daughters in Carnac in September 189835, and the Keller family photograph including Geneviève Gallé was taken in Carnac around that time. One of the last visitors before the events discussed here was Gallé’s future son-in-law, Paul Perdrizet36, himself an archaeologist, just two months before Leo’s death, in September 1905, and Le Rouzic was invited to Nancy where he gave a conference on his research. More crucially, some of Émile Gallé’s sea-inspired late artworks appear to have been influenced by Charles Keller’s falling in love with Carnac and megalithic archaeology37. In this context, Henriette Gallé’s choice of a vase with a clear allusion to the sea was almost evidence.
In summary, the symbolical polysemy of the glass drops on the vase as a metaphor for the tears of mourning as well as for the sea-foam on Carnac’s beach made the Écume de mer the perfect funerary homage for the Keller and Henriette Gallé was in the best position to understand and deliver this somewhat understated gift.
One of the few available sources regarding Léo Keller’s death is Paul Perdrizet’s testimony who mentioned the event because he had spent part of the 20th of November’s night in Nancy’s train station waiting, certainly among other friends, for the return of the Keller couple bringing back their deceased son from Paris38. As a prominent Republican activist in his own right — he had been the president of the Union de la Jeunesse lorraine and a founder member of the Université populaire – Paul Perdrizet was a friend of Charles Keller, who had introduced him to Émile Gallé, ca 1901. At the time of Léo Keller’s untimely death, Paul Perdrizet wasn’t part yet of the Gallé family, but he was already romantically involved with Lucile, the Gallés’ second daughter39. Their betrothal was made official three months later, and they married the next summer, on the 13th August 1906. This happy event, for the Gallés at least, was deeply resented by Mathilde Keller, who deemed unseemly the betrothal’s announcement during her mourning, given the closeness of the two families. In a striking turn of event, for she had written glowingly to Henriette Gallé about the man just two months before, wishing even that he would marry Lucile Gallé40, Mathilde Keller came to see Henriette Gallé’s new son-in-law as the living reminder of the loss of her son. Left unsaid was the dashed hope of seeing their families united by a marriage between Léo and Lucile. But as a result, the relationship between the Keller and the Gallés hit quite a rough patch in 1906, with Mathilde Keller refusing to receive Paul Perdrizet while Henriette Gallé was not having him thusly ostracised. As fate would have it, Henriette Gallé’s precious and thoughtful funerary gift in memory of Léo, was most probably the last goodwill gesture, at least for a while, between the two families. Further tragedies would bring them back together though, like Charles Keller’s death in 1913, then the Great War and so on.
The Keller family tragic destiny and the vase’s unknown fate.
When Mathilde Keller died in October 1936, her funeral was held in Bischwiller (then returned to France with Alsace) where it had all begun between the Keller-Rœderer and the Grimm-Gallé. It was Paul Perdrizet who was asked to deliver the funerary speech on her grave41. Three decades had passed since his marriage to Lucile Gallé had temporarily cast a shadow on the two families’ close friendship. Paul Perdrizet had never developed with Mathilde Keller the same relationship that she had with the Gallé daughters, who commonly referred to her as “Aunt Mathilde” all their life. But time had soothed this wound, or rather, perhaps, new ones had superseded it. And, for better or for worse, Paul Perdrizet was commonly seen then as the patriarch of the extended Gallé family. In his speech, he carefully avoided any mention of Mathilde Keller’s political and social activities, focusing instead on her personality and her tragic history. For Mathilde, who had five children with Charles Keller, had lost them all well before her death: following Léo’s death in 1905, Paul had been killed in action as a soldier in the Great War (1918), while Jacques, a brilliant physician, never recovered from the conflict and ended taking his life in the Carnac villa, in June 192742. As Paul Perdrizet put it in his speech, Jacques Keller was “a victim of the gruesome things that, as a physician, he had seen from too close a distance, in the frontline ambulances and in prison camps”. Mathilde Keller’s only direct family left in 1936 was therefore a natural granddaughter, born out of wedlock to her son Paul — that she considered fully as family, as Perdrizet makes well clear.
This family tragic history is relevant to our purpose, insofar that it can explain, at least in part, the later history of the vase, i.e., that the significance of its dedication and more broadly its special meaning were lost rather than forgotten. I cannot claim to have any further information on the history of its ownership, but the vase direct link with the Gallé family was evidently severed – otherwise, it would have been mentioned because of the added value it gave the object – and the family history was certainly the reason.
© Samuel Provost, 24 April 2022.
Footnotes
It made € 36,000, hammer price, and it was at least the second time this particular vase had appeared in a Quittenbaum auction: it was sold a first time in 2009 (auction on the 28 April 2009, lot 135).
See Bieri Thomson 2004 on this specific subject.
Charpentier, Thiébaut 1985, cat. 141, p. 230-231.
Le Tacon 2000.
Gallé, Marx 2006, p. 250-251.
Le Tacon 2000, p. 32-33.
They were published by Bieri Thomson : Bieri Thomson 2004, p. 79. The drawing for the Écume de Mer series is inv. MOD 304.
Le Tacon 2000, p. 22.
Bieri Thomson 2004.
Bieri Thomson 2004, fig. 60 p. 77.
Inv. AD 976-25-1 SIM, H. 16.5 cm, D. 11 cm, ca 1903-1904. See Bieri Thomson 2004, p. 81 fig. 65.
This particular colour combination is listed on the factory’s inventory at the time of Émile Gallé’s death.
Musée de l’École de Nancy 2014, cat. 314, p. 178.
Archives départementales du territoire de Belfort, 1 E 10 N 86-90, nr 255, p. 492.
Charles Keller’s father, also named Charles (1815-ca 1888), was a roller engraver in Mulhouse. He had 9 (!) siblings, among whose Caroline Keller who married Daniel Grimm, the Bischwiller’s pastor, in 1845. Source : Généalogie Keller, Gallé family archives.
Mathilde Roederer Keller wrote her friend’s obituary : Mathilde Keller, R. Evard, Elise Chalon (1852-1928), Nancy, Berger-Levrault, 1928. See also Le Maitron, dictionnaire biographique, article GRIMM Élise, [online] 26 July 2009.
Jean Maitron, Rolf Dupuy, Marianne Enckell, and Claude Pennetier, “KELLER Charles [dit Jacques Turbin]”, in Dictionnaire des anarchistes [online].
Didier Francfort, “Musique et politique à Nancy à la Belle Époque : Autour de Charles Keller”, in Musée de l’École de Nancy 2015, p. 59-67.
Le Tacon, Yamane 2016, p. 24.
https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article54997, CHAMPSEIX Léodile, aka André Léo or Léo André [BERA Victoire, Léodile], online version from 26 July 2009, last modification on 30 June 2020.
Françoise Birck, “L’Université populaire et l’École de Nancy”, in Musée de l’École de Nancy 2015, p. 79-85.
Bilan résumé de la maison Gallé, September 1904, Gallé-Charpentier archives.
Keller and Grimm genealogy, Gallé family archives.
See Gallé, Gallé 2014, p. 238 for instance, where Henriette Gallé tells her husband her worries on the eve of Léo’s final exam.
He is recorded with the number 989 in the Nancy-Toul military registry for the 1902 class. His occupation is listed as “student”.
Paul Perdrizet to René-Jean, 20th November 1905, Autographes René-Jean, 144-2-521, INHA, Paris. If there was need, the letter confirms the identity and date of death.
“Nécrologie”, L’Éducation sociale, numéro 8, nouvelle série, December 1908, p. 95.
“Nécrologie. Marcelin Daigueperce”, La Céramique et la verrerie, journal officiel de la chambre syndicale, 15e année, 1er-15 avril 1896, p. 30-31.
Autographs, Letters & Manuscript Auction, International Autograph Auctions Europe, Marbella, 30 October 2019, lot 257.
Letter from Henriette Gallé to Émile Gallé, 26 December 1902, Amphoux and Thiébaut 2014, p. 293. The mention of the Keller home being fitted with electric lighting is also interesting in the general chronology of this technological development in Nancy.
That’s according to the note by the editors of the letter: Henriette Gallé does not name the vase but the short description fits the artwork. The Nancy museum bought one specimen in 1904, now in the Musée de l’École de Nancy: Émile Gallé et le Verre, la collection du musée de l’École de Nancy, #247, p. 148.
The fern pattern could also be seen as an oblique reference, but it’s a very common botanical species.
Le Tacon, Yamane 2016, p. 25.
François Le Tacon, “La contribution de Lorrains et d’Alsaciens à la connaissance de la préhistoire de la Bretagne et du Sud-Ouest de la France”, Académie de Stanislas, 16 October 2015 [online].
Musée de l’École de Nancy, Victor Prouvé 1858-1943, Gallimard, Paris, 2008, cat. 67 p. 163.
Letter from Mathilde Keller to Henriette Gallé, 22 September 1905, Gallé family archives.
Le Tacon, Yamane 2015, p. 26-29.
As he indicated to René-Jean, he had been in Paris when Charles Keller came from Nancy to visit his son who had just fell ill, so probably in early November 1905 (ibidem).
The following paragraph’s reconstruction of event stems from the Gallé family letters and oral history.
Letter from Mathilde Keller to Henriette Gallé, 22 September 1905, Gallé family archives.
Discours de Paul Perdrizet sur la tombe de Mme Mathilde Keller, October 1936, Gallé family archives.
The suicide was so striking that it made the news: “Mort mystérieuse d’un docteur”, L’Est Républicain, 1st July 1927, p. 1 [online].
Bibliography
Bieri Thomson 2004: Helen Bieri Thomson, “Les éphémères et la soude. Deux exemples de thème décoratif unique décliné dans des œuvres de qualités diverses”, in Thomas, Thomson and Thiébaut 2004, p. 69-81.
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Le Tacon 2000: François Le Tacon, Solvay Gallé & Art Nouveau, Association des amis du Musée de l’École de Nancy, Nancy, 2000.
Le Tacon, Yamane 2015: François Le Tacon, Ikunobu Yamane, “Le poulpe du Lufang. Deux verreries d’Émile Gallé à la triple signature “Gallé, Prouvé & Keller””, Art nouveaux, 32, septembre 2016, p. 24-29.
Maitron 2014: Jean Maitron, Rolf Dupuy, Marianne Enckell, and Claude Pennetier, “KELLER Charles [dit Jacques Turbin]”, in Dictionnaire des anarchistes [online].
Musée de l’École de Nancy 2014: Musée de l’École de Nancy Émile Gallé et le verre: la collection du Musée de l’École de Nancy, Paris, Somogy éditions d’art, 2014 (2).
Musée de l’École de Nancy 2015: Musée de l’École de Nancy, L’École de Nancy face aux questions politiques et sociales de son temps, Somogy, 2015
Sotheby’s 1992: Important Gallé Glass, Sotheby’s, New York, June 11, 1992.
Thomas, Thomson and Thiébaut 2004: Valérie Thomas, Helen Bierie Thomson and Philippe Thiébaut, Verreries d’Émile Gallé : de l’œuvre unique à la série, Paris, Nancy, Gingins, Somogy éditions d’art, 2004.
How to cite this article : Samuel Provost, “A funerary gift and the Gallé-Keller friendship. A contribution to the provenance research for a specimen from a remarkable Gallé series”, Newsletter on Art Nouveau Craftwork & Industry, no 19, 24 April 2021 [link].
Un exemplaire de cette série sera vendu le 8 octobre à Paris :
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/collection-francis-meyer-lame-du-verre/ecume-de-mer-vase-circa-1903