Latest news with #Versailles
Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Marie-Antoinette and a ferocious gold rush in this months historical fiction: The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman, The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis, The Rush by Beth Lewis
The Tarot Reader of Versailles is available now from the Mail Bookshop The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman (Manilla Press £16.99, 480pp) The author of the dynamic The Witches Of Vardo heads onto the bloody streets of the French Revolution in this equally propulsive epic in the company of two extraordinary women – Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand, the titular tarot card reader (and a real historical figure), and Cait, an Irish scullery maid with psychic gifts. Marie Anne, loyal to Queen Marie Antoinette, and firebrand Cait, whose leanings are more republican, unite to make their fortunes in volatile Versailles. The prose is lush, the love stories beguiling, but Bergman doesn't shy away from the horror of the reign of terror and the harsh realities of change. The Hounding is available now from the Mail Bookshop The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis (Hutchinson Heinemann £16.99, 272pp) There's a haze of heat over the small, claustrophobic village of Little Nettlebed in 18th-century Oxfordshire, the setting for Purvis's haunting debut. The days are parched, the river is drying up and people's thoughts are addled, honing in on five unconventional Mansfield sisters. Rumour has it that the siblings can transform themselves into dogs – and in this 'season of strangeness', there's great danger in being different. Purvis's story is brimful of dark foreboding; unsettling hints of violence ripple through her prose and there's a fearful sense that the sisters' safety is at stake. Reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, this debut is feverish, finely wrought and unforgettable. The Rush by Beth Lewis (Viper £18.99, 400pp) Canada, 1898, and the frozen bleakness of the Yukon has been gripped by gold fever. Ramshackle claims have been staked, desperate men are seeking their fortune, and Dawson City is the scene of lawlessness. Into this chaotic mix, Lewis places three strong-minded, spirited women. Journalist Kate is searching for her rebellious sister; bar owner and brothel keeper Martha is determined to keep her business from the local hard-man, while Ellen is worried about her safety as her prospector husband loses his perspective. When a woman is found murdered, the lives of the three women intertwine as they search for the killer. A rip-roaring adventure that's rich with drama and gutsy plotlines.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Marie Antoinette exhibition to recreate scent of French court
Britain's first Marie Antoinette exhibition will feature a 'scent experience' to recreate the smell of her French court. The new V&A exhibition on the French queen, who was guillotined during the Reign of Terror in 1793, will open at the South Kensington museum in September. Titled Marie Antoinette Style, it will feature 250 objects illustrating the life of 'the most fashionable, scrutinised and controversial queen in history', according to Sarah Grant, the curator. She added: 'Marie Antoinette's name summons both visions of excess and objects and interiors of great beauty.' The exhibition will also feature an 'immersive' scent experience that will recreate the smells of the court as well as the perfume favoured by the French queen. The scents have been created by the V&A in collaboration Tasha Marks, from AVM Curiosities. They are based on recipes from archival records and are intended to mimic the French queen's perfumes and the floral aromas from the garden of Versailles. Born in Austria in 1755, Marie Antoinette married Louis-Auguste when she was 14 years old and became Queen in 1774 when he ascended the throne as Louis XVI. It was during the King and Queen's reign that the monarchy was overthrown during the French Revolution. Their court was known for its extravagance in most things, including opulent social gatherings as well as the queen's taste and influence on fashion. She was widely disliked across France over her apparent penchant for luxury fashion, which led to her nickname Madame Déficit. Ms Grant said: 'The Austrian archduchess-turned queen of France had an enormous impact on European taste and fashion in her own time, creating a distinctive style that now has universal appeal and application. 'This exhibition explores that style and the figure at its centre, using a range of exquisite objects belonging to Marie Antoinette, alongside the most beautiful fine and decorative objects that her legacy has inspired.' She added: 'This is the design legacy of an early modern celebrity and the story of a woman whose power to fascinate has never ebbed. Marie Antoinette's story has been re-told and re-purposed by each successive generation to suit its own ends. 'The rare combination of glamour, spectacle and tragedy she presents remains as intoxicating today as it was in the 18th century.' The exhibition will feature richly embellished fragments of court dress, the queen's own silk slippers, and jewels from her private collection. Objects will include clothing and decorative arts, with some loaned from France's Chateau De Versailles. There will also be a number of items which have never left France before, such as the queen's dinner service from the Petit Trianon, her accessories and items from her toilette case. Marie Antoinette Style will look at her origins and impact on style from 18th century France to the present day through audio visual installations and 'immersive' curation. The exhibition will also feature contemporary clothing including pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino – and costumes from Sofia Coppola's Oscar-winning Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst. Tickets for the exhibition go on sale on Tuesday and are available from the V&A website.
BBC News
11-06-2025
- BBC News
French antiques fraudsters found guilty of Versailles chair scam
Two French antiques experts have been convicted of forging historic chairs that they claimed had once belonged to French royals such as Marie "Bill" Pallot and Bruno Desnoues were given four months behind bars as well as longer suspended sentences for selling a number of fake 18th Century chairs to collectors including the Palace of Versailles and a member of the Qatari royal both have already served four months in pre-trial detention, they will not return to defendant, Laurent Kraemer, who - along with his gallery - was accused of failing to adequately check the chairs' authenticity before selling them on, were acquitted of deception by gross negligence. Wednesday's judgement was the culmination of a nine-year investigation that rocked the French antiques a court in Pontoise, north of Paris, the judge also handed out hefty fines to Pallot and Desnoues of €200,000 (£169,500) and €100,000 to his sentence, Pallot said it was "a little harsh financially", but he was glad that his Paris apartment would not be seized, according to AFP news the trial, the prosecution had argued that Laurent Kraemer and his gallery in Paris were at fault for failing to sufficiently check the authenticity of the items they bought, before selling them on to buyers such as Qatari prince Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, who bought two chairs said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette for € on Wednesday, Mr Kraemer and the gallery were acquitted. They always denied knowing about the a comment sent to the BBC, his lawyers said the verdict "demonstrated the innocence that the Kraemer gallery has been claiming since day one of this case"."The gallery was the victim of counterfeiters; it didn't know the furniture was fake, and it couldn't have detected it, as the judgment indicates," Martin Reynaud and Mauricia Courrégé said."For almost 10 years, our clients have been wrongly accused. They have waited patiently for the truth to appear. It is now done, and it is a great relief for them to see their innocence recognized today," they added. At the height of his career, Pallot was considered the top scholar on French 18th-Century chairs, having written the authoritative book on the was also a lecturer at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, with access to Versailles Palace's historical records, including inventories of royal furniture which had existed at the palace in the 18th was able to pinpoint which chairs were unaccounted for in collections and then make replicas with the help of Desnoues, an award-winning sculptor and cabinetmaker who was employed as the main furniture restorer for Versailles."I was the head and Desnoues was the hands," Pallot told the court during the trial in March."It went like a breeze," he added. "Everything was fake but the money." Prosecutor Pascal Rayer said in his closing arguments at the trial that the case shone a "rare and remarkable spotlight on the market for historical furniture, bringing to light a world that has been stamped with confidentiality and discretion."He said it revealed the flaws of the market and "the conflicts of interest inherent in its structure, particularly where experts such as Bill Pallot, and his accomplice woodcarver Desnoues, are also merchants, undisclosed to the buyer".Mr Rayer said the case had "resulted in the disruption of an entire marketplace, thereby highlighting the need for more robust regulation of the art market to achieve transparency and fairness of transactions".Other cases that have emerged from the murky world of antiques dealings in France in the past decade include that of the late Jean Lupu, who was also accused of selling fake royal furniture of the 17th and 18th Centuries to galleries around the world. He died in 2023 before he was due to appear in court.
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- The Guardian
French furniture expert and restorer guilty of fake 18th-century chair scam
A French furniture expert and a renowned restorer have been found guilty of conning the art world with a multimillion-euro scam in which they faked 18th-century chairs they claimed had adorned the rooms of historic figures including Marie Antoinette. In one of the biggest forgery scandals to hit the French art world for decades, the two men duped not just wealthy collectors including a Qatari prince but also the Palace of Versailles. The chateau, which before the French Revolution was home to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, spent more than €1.5m (£1.3m) acquiring six royal chairs that were fakes. The case was seen as extremely damaging to France's reputation as a world centre for heritage and museum collections. After the police investigation began, in 2016 the ministry of culture ordered an audit of Versailles's acquisitions policy. Bill Pallot, 61, who was known as the world's leading expert on 18th-century royal French furniture, wrote the definitive book about seats of that era and was nicknamed Père La Chaise. On Wednesday he was given a four-year suspended prison sentence and a €200,000 fine. He was also sentenced to four months in prison, which he had already served on remand after his arrest. The judges ruled that between 2008 and 2015, Pallot was behind the scam in which he and one of France's most acclaimed woodcarvers and restorers, Bruno Desnoues, produced what the court in Pontoise heard were 'extraordinarily convincing' fake 18th-century chairs. The court was told that the scheme began as a bet between Pallot and Desnoues to see who could be duped by fake seats. Pallot told the trial: 'We said we'd do it as a game, to see if the art market noticed or not.' The men used old wooden frames of real 18th-century chairs as a base so that the dating of the wood could be authentic, but the trial was told that everything about the chairs was fake. Soon, through some of Paris's top galleries and auction houses, the chairs were selling for hundreds of thousands of euros each to wealthy collectors including a Qatari prince. The scam is estimated to have caused €4.5m in damages. Desnoues had previously worked as a restorer of furniture for the Château de Versailles, where he had once been commissioned for a restoration of Louis XVI's bed. He told the court: 'I'm into work and sculpture. I've never been passionate about money.' During the investigation, Desnoues's wife described the antiques world her husband worked in as 'a detestable environment where antique dealers want to make money at any cost'. Desnoues was given a three-year suspended prison sentence and a €100,000 fine. He was also given a four-month prison sentence, which he had already served on remand. The scam was discovered in 2014 when tax authorities noticed suspicious financial and property transactions for large sums being made by a couple outside Paris who had a relatively low income. A money-laundering investigation led police to find a link to Desnoues and what became known in France as the 'fake chair' scam. The investigation took nine years. Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Laurent Kraemer, an art and antiques dealer at the prestigious Kraemer Gallery, who sold four of the chairs, told the court he and his team were '100% convinced, without a doubt, that these were authentic chairs'. His gallery was acquitted of charges of negligence. Several experts told the court that the fraud was 'blatant' and could have been spotted if the fakes had been compared with real chairs at Versailles. One expert said anomalies in the chairs were visible to the naked eye, notably the absence of signs that the wood had retracted with time. Pallot told the court: 'It's said there is no such thing as the perfect crime. There's no such thing as a perfect fake either. We could have done better. We're not good forgers. We didn't make the wood retract.'
BBC News
07-06-2025
- BBC News
The furniture fraud that hoodwinked the Palace of Versailles
In the early 2010s, two ornate chairs said to have once belonged on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles appeared on the French antiques to be the most expensive chairs made for the last queen of France, Marie Antoinette, they were stamped with the seal of Nicolas-Quinibert Foliot, a celebrated menuisier – or carpenter – who worked in Paris in the 1700s.A significant find, the pair were declared "national treasures" by the French government in 2013, at the request of palace, which displays such items in its vast museum collection, expressed an interest in buying the chairs but the price was deemed too were instead sold to Qatari Prince Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani for an eye-watering €2m (£1.67m). The chairs made up a remarkable number of 18th-Century royal furniture that had appeared on the antiques market in the past few items included another set of chairs purported to have sat in one of Marie Antoinette's chambers in Versailles; a separate pair said to have belonged to Madame du Barry, King Louis XV's mistress; the armchair of King Louis XVI's sister, Princess Élisabeth; and a pair of ployants – or stools – that belonged to the daughter of King Louis XV, Princess Louise É of these were bought by Versailles to display in its museum collection, while one chair was sold to the wealthy Guerrand-Hermès in 2016, this assortment of royal chairs would become embroiled in a national scandal that would rock the French antiques world, bringing the trade into reason? The chairs were in fact all scandal saw one of France's leading antiques experts, Georges "Bill" Pallot, and award-winning cabinetmaker, Bruno Desnoues, put on trial on charges of fraud and money laundering following a nine-year investigation. Galerie Kraemer and its director, Laurent Kraemer, were also accused of deception by gross negligence for selling on some of the chairs – something they both three defendants are set to appear at a court in Pontoise, near Paris on Wednesday following a trial in March. Mr Pallot and Mr Desnoues have admitted to their crimes, while Mr Kraemer and his gallery dispute the charge of deception by gross negligence. It started as a 'joke' Considered the top scholar on French 18th-Century chairs, having written the authoritative book on the subject, Mr Pallot was often called upon by Versailles, among others, to give his expert opinion on whether historical items were the real deal. He was even called as an expert witness in French courts when there were doubts about an item's accomplice, Mr Desnoues, was a decorated cabinetmaker and sculptor who had won a number of prestigious awards, including best sculptor in France in 1984, and had been employed as the main restorer of furniture at in court in March, Mr Pallot said the scheme started as a "joke" with Mr Desnoues in 2007 to see if they could replicate an armchair they were already working on restoring, belonging to Madame du of their crafts, they managed the feat, convincing other experts that it was a chair from the buoyed by their success, they started making more. Describing how they went about constructing the chairs, the two described in court how Mr Pallot sourced wood frames at various auctions for low prices, while Mr Desnoues aged wood at his workshop to make were then sent for gilding and upholstery, before Mr Desnoues added designs and a wood finish. He added stamps from some of the great furniture-workers of the 18th Century, which were either faked or taken from real furniture of the they were finished, Mr Pallot sold them through middlemen to galleries like Kraemer and one he himself worked at, Didier Aaron. They would then get sold onto auction houses such as Sotheby's of London and Drouot of Paris."I was the head and Desnoues was the hands," Mr Pallot told the court smilingly."It went like a breeze," he added. "Everything was fake but the money."Prosecutors allege the two men made an estimated profit of more than €3m off the forged chairs – though Mr Pallot and Mr Desnoues estimated their profits to be a lower amount of €700,000. The income was deposited in foreign bank accounts, prosecutors said. Lawyers representing Versailles told the BBC that Mr Pallot, a lecturer at the Sorbonne, managed to deceive the institution because of his "privileged access to the documentation and archives of Versailles and the Louvre Museum as part of his academic research".A statement from lawyer Corinne Hershkovitch's team said that thanks to Mr Pallot's "thorough knowledge" of the inventories of royal furniture recorded as having existed at Versailles in the 18th Century, he was able to determine which items were missing from collections and to then make them with the help of Mr Desnoues also had access to original chairs he had made copies of, they added, "enabling him to produce fakes that had all the visual appearance of an authentic, up to the inventory numbers and period labels"."The fraudulent association between these two professionally accomplished men, recognised by their peers, made it possible to deceive the French institutions that regarded them as partners and to betray their trust, thereby damaging the reputation of Versailles and its curators," they Pascal Rayer said the trial highlighted the need for more robust regulation of the art market, and also shone a light on the standards antiques dealers should abide court heard authorities were alerted to the scheme when the lavish lifestyle of a Portuguese man and his partner caught the attention of French by police about the acquisition of properties in France and Portugal worth €1.2m while on an income of about €2,500 a month, the man – who it turned out worked as a handyman in Parisian galleries – confessed to his part in working as a middleman who collaborated in the furniture fraud, AFP news agency reported. The money trail then led investigators to Mr Desnoues and Mr Pallot. A case of deceit by gross negligence? Some of those originally indicted in the case, including middlemen, later had charges against them charges against both Laurent Kraemer and Galerie Kraemer, which sold on some of the forged chairs to collectors such as Versailles and Qatar's Prince al-Thani, were allege that while the gallery itself may have been duped into first buying the fake pieces, Mr Kraemer and the gallery were "grossly negligent" in failing to sufficiently check the items' authenticity before selling them on to collectors at high prices. In his closing arguments, prosecutor Mr Rayer said that based on Galerie Kraemer's "reputation and contacts, they could have taken the furniture to Versailles or the Louvre to compare them."They could also have hired other experts given the amounts at stake and considering the opacity on the origin of the chairs."Speaking in court, a lawyer representing Mr Kraemer and the gallery insisted his client "is victim of the fraud, not an accomplice", stating Mr Kraemer never had direct contact with the a statement to the BBC, lawyers Martin Reynaud and Mauricia Courrégé added: "The gallery was not an accomplice of the counterfeiters, the gallery did not know the furniture was fake, and it could not have detected it"."Like the Château de Versailles and the specialists who classified the furniture as national treasures, the Kraemer gallery was a victim of the forgers," they added."We are waiting for the judgement to recognise this."The BBC has contacted Mr Pallot's lawyer for comment. The BBC was unable to reach Mr Desnoues or his lawyer.
