Claude Chapuis

Identity:

Chapuis was a canvas and frame maker and picturer restorer in Paris.

Life:

In May 1902 Chapuis 'beautifully repaired' Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl y052 after it had been damaged [#03163]. The stamp of 'Maison Chapuis' can be found on the frame of A Paris Model y458, Violet and Rose: Carmen qui rit y506 and Harmony in Rose and Green: Carmen y507, and the stretcher of Self-Portrait y460.

An excellent biography, bibliography and account of the firm of Maison Chapuis and its successors is found on the National Portrait Gallery website, summarised as follows:

C. Chapuis ca 1870-1896, Chapuis et Cie from 1896, Brisson fréres c.1899-1910, Brisson 1911-1915, Brisson & Leguay from 1915. At 20 Quai de la Mégisserie, Paris from 1873 onwards, 2 Rue des Bourdonnais, Paris from or before 1882 onwards, also at 4 Rue des Bourdonnais. Picture liners and restorers, suppliers of canvases and picture frames.

Claude Chapuis (1829-1908) worked for Whistler in Paris and the Duc d’Aumale in England. He was a picture liner for the National Museums of France and undertook a range of other restoration work.

The origins of Chapuis’s business can be traced back to the mid-18th century to Jean Louis Hacquin (d.1783). He was followed by his son, François Toussaint Hacquin (1756-1832), whose son-in-law, Augustin Emile Mortemard (1794-1872) was described as his pupil and successor in 1832 (‘son élève, est son successeur’, see Guyot de Fere, Annuaire des artistes français, 1832, p.87, accessed through Google book search). Elsewhere, Hacquin’s son-in-law has been identified as Guilloux Mortemard (1794-1870) (see Bergeon in Sources below).

Claude Chapuis: More information is required to confirm that the restorer is the Claude Chapuis who married Henriette Hacquin in Paris at the age of 19 in 1848, when he was described as a mason ( www.ancestry.co.uk). She was born in 1828, the daughter of Jean François Henri Hacquin but a relationship to François Toussaint Hacquin remains to be established.

Chapuis trained as a liner and restorer under Mortemard and was sufficiently well-established by 1868 to be taken into partnership by Mortemard and his second wife, Louise Laborde, trading as Mortemard et Cie (see Desserrières, p.68 and n.51). After 1870 Mortemard retired, leaving Chapuis ‘la Maison de commerce’, its goodwill, tools and materials (Desserrières, p.69). In 1873 Chapuis moved his workshop to 20 Quai de la Mégisserie (Desserrières, p.72, n.64). In 1882 he was listed at 20 Quai de la Mégisserie and 2 Rue des Bourdonnais as ‘rentoileur des musées du Louvre et des palais nationaux, maison spéciale de rentoilage, marouflage et transport de peintures sur bois, sur toile et à la fresque’ (Ris-Paquot, Annuaire Artistique Collectionneurs 1882-1883, year 2, c.1882, accessed through ‘Internet Archive’).

Claude Chapuis’s nephew, Charles Chapuis (b.1862), was also a picture liner, trading at 4 rue Cretet. He treated paintings for Edgar Degas, as Hoenigswald describes in detail, and he worked for the dealer, Ambroise Vollard. There was also an artists’ colour merchant by the name of Chapuis et Cie trading at 35 rue de Chazelles, 1888-97, and from 15 rue Clément-Marot from at least 1894 until as late as 1910; this business was trading as Chapuis veuve et Cie by 1901 but is not demonstrably connected with Claude Chapuis (who did not die until 1908).

Brisson frères: In 1896, when Claude Chapuis would have been 67, the business began trading as Chapuis et Cie, and in 1899 the role of his nephews, ‘Brisson frères’, was formalised, apparently Fernand Brisson and his brother, A. Brisson. In 1900 ‘Messieurs Brisson’, as Whistler calls them, were clearly identified with the business, and by 1901, if not before, they were listed as Chapuis’s successors (Paris Almanach, 1901). Claude Chapuis died in 1908. There is a lengthy entry in the Paris Almanach in 1910 (p.2918), describing the business as founded in 1740, tracing it to the ‘ancien maison’, Mortemard, and naming it as ‘Brisson frères neveux succ[esseurs]… rentoileurs des Musées nationaux, Beaux Arts, Arts décoratifs: parquetage, marouflage et restauration; transpositions de peintures sur bois, sur toiles et à fresques’. By 1911 the business was trading as ‘Brisson Neveu & Successeur de Chapuis’, rather than Brisson fréres.

Brisson & Leguay: In July 1915 Brisson sold the goodwill in the business to Leguay and entered into an agreement for a 10-year partnership as Brisson & Leguay. By 1933 the business was described as Henri Leguay, successor to A. Brisson & Leguay, ‘anc. Maison Chapuis’ (Almanach du commerce de Paris).

Whistler used Maison Chapuis in the late 1890s, as is apparent from three of his paintings bearing Chapuis’s stretcher stamp and from his correspondence, 1898-1901. Interestingly he chose to go to Claude Chapuis despite his work for the Louvre being criticised by Whistler’s erstwhile good friend, Degas, in 1894 and subsequently.

In October 1898, Whistler asked Rosalind Birnie Philip, his sister-in-law, who was in Paris, to drive over to Chapuis to find out whether he was ‘getting on all right with the two ovals – and his frames’ and to ask him ‘to put in hand at once a dozen more canvasses of the same sizes as the last – there were two measurements… say then a dozen of each – say they are for heads, and that I want them at once – Exactly like the last only not quite so black’. In this context it is worth noting three oval paintings in the Hunterian Art Gallery, stamped ‘MAISON CHAPUIS’ on their stretchers, Violet and Rose: Carmen qui rit y506 and Harmony in Rose and Green: Carmen y507, ca 1898, and A Paris Model y458.

In March 1900, Whistler told Arthur Haythorne Studd to send a picture to ‘Messieurs Brisson, Maison Chapuis’ for repair, adding that ‘Chapuis shall do everything under my personal direction’ and saying that ‘They do everything for the Louvre’, later telling him that his picture had been ‘beautifully repaired’; this may be Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl y052.

Whistler’s Self-Portrait, c.1896, has the stretcher stamp: Maison CHAPUIS/ BRISSOE (?) Freres, Neveux (?) Successeurs (?)/ 20 quai de la Magisserie/ 2. Rue des Bourdonnis (?) 2 (Hunterian Art Gallery). It remains to be ascertained whether Maison Chapuis worked on this picture for Whistler himself or for Rosalind Birnie Philip after Whistler’s death in her capacity as manager of his estate.

Chapuis travelled to England in 1869 for Mortemard et Cie to treat pictures in the collection of the exiled Duc d’Aumale at Orleans House in Twickenham. His other customers included the national museums of France, notably the Louvre, the paintings collection at Chantilly and pictures in Stockholm.

Bibliography:

Simon, Jacob, 'British picture restorers, 1600-1950', 2015, in http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-british-picture-restorers/british-picture-restorers-1600-1950-c.php

Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980

For Chapuis, see Emilie Barbet, Claude Chapuis (1829-1908), rentoileur des musées nationaux, élève et successeur de Mortemard, [unpublished] mémoire de l’Ecole du Louvre, Paris, 2008, and Ann Hoenigswald, ‘Charles Chapuis: Degas’ “picture doctor” and painting restoration at the end of the nineteenth century’, in Isabelle Brajer (ed.), Conservation in the Nineteenth Century, 2013, pp.67-79.