#memrobilia

By Ted Loos, New York Times

Sept 7, 2018

According to Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

The Paris-based collector Pierre-Jean Chalençon does not have to worry about the latter problem. Mr. Chalençon has become renowned for a hyper-specialized field: He buys, sells and exhibits Napoleon-related art and antiques.

The people who know him call him “a character” (said the fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac); “a strange man” who has “a good heart” (said the Napoleon expert Bernard Chevallier); and “so enthusiastic he makes me look like a stick in the mud” (said the American collector Christopher Forbes).

And Mr. Chalençon, 47, has parlayed his niche interest into wide fame, currently appearing on the French TV show “Affaire Conclue,” a kind of mash-up of “Antiques Roadshow” and “Shark Tank” that might be called “Done Deal” in English. Contestants try to sell an antique or object of value to him or to several other expert buyers on the show’s panel.

For those who want to see what Mr. Chalençon has been up to when he’s off the air, a selection of about 30 items from his collection are on view at the Grand Palais during the art fair La Biennale Paris, in the exhibition “Napoleon: L’Empereur Sous la Verrière” (which could be translated as “The Emperor Under the Glass Roof”).

“To protect Napoleon is my career,” Mr. Chalençon said in a phone interview from Paris.

Indeed, he meant it literally: He said he made his living from his interest in this particular slice of the past.

He was speaking from the Palais Vivienne, his grand historic home in the center of Paris, built in the early 18th century for a minister of Louis XIV. Not only does he live there and store some of the 1,500 to 2,000 objects in the collection there, he also rents it out for events like weddings.

“It’s a 300-year-old building where almost everything is intact,” Mr. Chalençon said. But he has stuffed a lot into the gilded envelope: Napoleon-themed paintings, ceramics, books and manuscripts, and furniture. Some of it was owned or used by the emperor himself; other items are depictions of him or high-end homages, or were owned by members of his family.

The collection includes one of Napoleon’s wedding certificates, which Mr. Chalençon bought from Mr. Forbes (it had originally been collected by his father, Malcolm Forbes). Mr. Chalençon also owns an armchair circa 1801 by the renowned furniture maker Georges Jacob; it was in the Tuileries Palace during Napoleon’s reign. And the collector doesn’t treat it like a museum piece: “I use it,” he said.

Mr. Chalençon is probably the world’s “most significant” collector of Napoleona, said Paul Gallois, an associate specialist in European furniture and works of art at Christie’s London.

“Only a family member would have more,” Mr. Gallois added.

For anyone who doubts it, the Biennale exhibition includes the emperor’s coronation baton, as well as a madras scarf he used when in exile on St. Helena, the second of his two banishments. Also on display is a rare goblet and set of cutlery seized from Napoleon’s carriage during the Battle of Waterloo.

The fact that Waterloo — the Dutch city (now in Belgium) where the British and Prussians defeated the emperor — has become synonymous with the concept of downfall highlights the hold that Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) still has on imaginations, particularly Gallic ones.

( A baton, made of wood, silver gilt, gilded bronze and silk, and studded with bees, a symbol of his reign, was used to proclaim Napoleon emperor during his coronation in Paris. )

Napoleon may have ruled for only some 15 years, but his empire-expanding mind-set, brilliant victories like the one at Austerlitz and his grandiose style continue to resonate.

“It’s very French to collect these things,” Mr. Chalençon said, perhaps understating the case.

But Mr. Castelbajac, who designed the Biennale exhibition of Mr. Chalençon’s trove, as well other elements of the fair as its guest creative director, said that the collector was also an outlier in at least one way.

“With this material, you expect someone older and conservative,” Mr. Castelbajac said. “But he’s a rock ’n’ roll collector.”

Mr. Chalençon said he identified with the famously brash ruler. “Napoleon was a self-made man,” he said. “And I am a self-made man.”

He was born and raised in the suburbs west of Paris to a family he called “simple,” adding that his trajectory showed that “a guy from nowhere” could have “dreams come true.”

His lifelong obsession began early, he said. “I was 8 years old and my father gave me sketchbooks about Napoleon,” Mr. Chaleçon said. “After I finished, I asked him, ‘Was he real?’”

( Very rare cutlery with the imperial coat of arms. It was seized from Napoleon’s carriage at the Battle of Waterloo. )

When he was told yes, the wheels started spinning. “I said, ‘Wow, I want to go to his house,’” Mr. Chalençon recalled. They went to Château de Malmaison, Napoleon’s last residence in France, which is now a museum.

“I met him when he was only 19, when I was the director there,” said Mr. Chevallier, who is also the author of a book on the Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s first wife. (She bought the Malmaison, a country retreat, in 1799.)

“He was fond of Napoleon,” Mr. Chevallier said. “I should say: crazy for him, actually.”

Having known Mr. Chalençon for decades now, Mr. Chevallier said one defining characteristic of the collector was, “For him, business is business,” notably that “sometimes he sells a part of the collection to get new items.”

In June 2017, Mr. Chalençon offered a suite of about 30 objects at Christie’s London. “Great collectors are always upgrading,” said Mr. Gallois, of Christie’s.

For his part, Mr. Chalençon is also working on expanding his territory — at least when it comes to exhibiting his trove. Part of it is scheduled to be on view at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum beginning in December, and his dream, he said, is to show it on a grand scale in New York City.

And after 20 years of actively collecting his specialty, he is still chasing new treasures, not all of which make it into his net. Late last year, he was outbid on a piece of gold from one of Napoleon’s crowns. It sold for about $750,000 to a Chinese collector, he said.

Asked whether this constituted a personal Waterloo, Mr. Chalençon was quick with a retort.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “But it was not an Austerlitz, either.”

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