Musée Nissim de Camondo

My dad and I have been visiting a museum each day this week. Today we returned to the Nissim de Camondo Museum. I first visited this museum with my parents when Kelly and I directed our first BYU Study Abroad program in 2005. It was time to return!

Dad in Courtyard Entrance to 
Musée Nissim de Camondo

The mansion backs onto the Parc Monceau and was built by Moïse de Camondo. He was from a wealthy Jewish banking family that was mainly from Constantinople but over the generations lived all over the Mediterranean. They were called the Rothschilds of the East. 

Moïse's father, Nissim, and uncle, Abraham-Behor, came to Paris in 1868 when Moïse was a child to expand the family's banking operations in France. The brothers bought land next to each other that backed onto the newly created Parc Monceau. Nissim's land had a townhouse on the property where he lived and his brother Abraham built a huge mansion on his empty lot next door. They became French citizens and Moïse considered himself French in every way.

Portrait of Moïse's father 
Nissim de Camondo

In 1891, Moïse married Irène Cahen d'Anvers, 12 years his junior, who was the eldest daughter of another large Jewish banking family (which became BNP Paribas). They had two children, Nissim and Béatrice, in 1892 and 1894. But unfortunately it was an unhappy marriage and they separated in 1897 after Irène had an affair with Moïse's stable master. Several years later Moïse was able to obtain a divorce but had to give up his Italian citizenship to do so. The children remained with Moïse and he was an attentive and loving father. He was utterly humiliated by the divorce and devoted the rest of his life to ensuring that his children grew up in as solid and serene an environment as he could create.

Photo of Moïse's son Nissim

Moïse had collected furniture, furnishings and art from the period of the French kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, just before the start of the French Revolution. As an avid Francophile, he considered this period to be “the great century of the Enlightenment” – which was an age when “France was really France.”

In 1911, Moïse began rebuilding his mansion to house his antiques. He was inspired by the Petit Trianon in the gardens of Versailles, the palace of Madame de Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV.  Although it was based on an 18th century palace, it was a mansion with all the modern comforts of the 20th century.

Elevator on Main Floor

Modern kitchen stove and ovens,
and on the right, a rotisserie oven

Dad in the kitchen

View from the second floor of
the courtyard entrance

Nissim's bathroom with
modern green tile, tub, 
footbath and bidet

Nissim's bathroom and 
door to his dressing room

Everywhere you looked, this mansion was exquisitely decorated.

Gobelin Tapestry from 1680
on stairs to second floor

Drawing Room

The roll top desk in the picture above right was a precursor to a desk built for Louis XVI. Moïse was a patient collector, waiting for exactly the pieces he needed to create his 18th century rooms. He bought the paneling from other mansions that were being razed and had his architect construct the rooms to fit the paneling. The height of ceilings on the third floor where the family lived was dictated by the height of the library paneling. Notice the cute tiny red chair in the foreground.

Library 

He acquired one Japanese lacquer commode and searched for 30 years to find its companion in order to reunite them.

Japanese Lacquer Commode

Companion Japanese Commode

There were beautiful views out to the garden and beyond to the Parc Monceau, separated by only a fence.

Second Floor View

Third Floor View

Moïse moved into the mansion with his family just before the start of World War I. His son Nissim enlisted in the army in 1914 and spent little time in the home. He was able to return for visits when he was on leave, and Moïse hoped that Nissim would take over the family empire and his mansion and collection. Sadly, it was not to be. On September 5, 1917, Nissim was in an airplane that went down somewhere over Lorraine, behind enemy lines. Moïse received a telegram but refused to believe that his only son, his pride and joy, was truly dead.

Dining Room

Hallway

Nissim's room, used as
a study after his death

Staircase from third floor

Despite repeated entreaties to the French military, Moïse could not recover his son's body until after the war. Following Nissim's death in 1917, Moïse was broken-hearted and closed all banking activities. He largely withdrew from society and devoted himself primarily to his collection and to hosting dinners for a club of gourmets a few times a year. 

Moïse's daughter Béatrice was an accomplished horsewoman. She married Léon Reinach and they had two children, Fanny (born 1920) and Bertrand (born 1923). Béatrice was not interested in antiques and her father's collection. She was more interested in horses. So after the death of Nissim, Moïse arranged to donate his mansion and all the contents to the state of France and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. He died in 1935, and the museum opened the following year.  

In his will, he wrote that his lifelong project had focused on glorifying French culture “in the period I loved more than any other.” He appointed his daughter to be the guardian over his collection and left her strict instructions. She was not allowed to loan out any works of art or add or acquire new ones. He even forbade her from moving any pieces of furniture or paintings from one place to another unless they remained in the same room. His wishes are still respected today.

Moïse's bed in an alcove
built to fit the bed

Moïse's bedroom

The tragedies that afflicted this family continued. During World War II, Béatrice would often be seen riding her well-groomed horse in the Bois de Boulogne, accompanied by a German officer. She felt safe in Paris after the Nazi occupation. By then, she had converted to Catholicism and divorced her husband. She believed her wealth, her elite status, and all that her father had contributed to France, along with the influential people she rode horses with, would shield her from being deported. She did not think of herself as Jewish in any way. Her ex-husband urged her to leave Paris with the children, but she disregarded his advice. 

In 1943, Béatrice, her ex-husband and their two children were forcibly removed from Paris and taken to the Drancy deportation camp, 11 kilometers north of Paris. From there, they were subsequently deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Reinach and the children were deported in 1943 and Béatrice in 1944 and they were all murdered in Auschwitz. Béatrice was executed in a gas chamber on January 4, 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated by the Soviets. The story of this family was truly tragic.