Consulting
Overview of Services
A lecturer at The University of Paris 4 Sorbonne and trusted art dealer for many museums in North America and Europe, Camille Leprince offers his informed, scrutinizing expertise as he works with clients as a curator of the finest European decorative arts. He is renowned for his expertise in European ceramics from the Renaissance until the 1900s. Drawing from an extensive and informed network, Camille ensures his clients unparalleled service in locating, buying, selling, evaluating and conservation of rare works of art.
Curating Collections
Buying, selling, collection management, authenticating
Locating and Restoring
Camille works on behalf of museums and individuals passionate about historic arts to restore and seek out unique hidden arts/pieces. He works with the most adept craftsmen to gently restore pieces to their former splendour, while still maintaining the integrity of the work, whether it is a painting, a ceramic vase etc.
Buying
He offers excellent buying opportunities at auctions as well as some of the most recognized ceramics shows across the world, including TEFAF in the Netherlands and the FRIEZE Masters in London. In addition to these global events, Camille arranges and takes part in selected pop-up shows, and in doing so creates a personalized and intimate buying experience.
Selling
Camille also has extensive experience conducting/guiding important sales for individuals and museums alike in the strictest confidentiality.
Contact
Contact Camille if you have any questions. Speaking about curatorial services will allow Camille to understand your specific needs and requests, allowing your transactions to be clearly communicated and effectively carried out.
Auctions
Accreditation
Camille has been appointed expert in European ceramic at C.N.E.S (Chambre Nationale des Experts Spécialisés en objet d’art de collection) Paris in 2015. He has experience as an expert assisting auctioneers in Paris at Hôtel Drouot, as well as other auction houses across the country.
Camille assists clients with the utmost discretion, whether they are looking to sell or obtain a piece.
For enquiries do not hesitate to reach Camille directly
PHONE: +33 6 25 85 43 98
EMAIL: info@camilleleprince.com
Auction Success
Rediscovery of masterpiece, earning recognition from the best collector.
Our collaborations with the studies of auctioneers lead us to authenticate and rediscover missing masterpieces.
This is the case of a superb tondino painted by the famous Xanto who was in the succession of a local doctor whose family suspected neither the origin nor the value.
After being fully published in the Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot its auction drew interest from all over the world. The piece was finally sold for 270,0000.00 € and acquired by the great Swiss collector Jean-Claude Gandur.
Fra Xanto Avelli de Rovigo (c.1486-c.1542)
Urbino, circa 1529-1530
Diameter: 26 cm
Inscriptions on the reverse: "De Appollo and Pangli / musicali acceti / fabula (and brand of epsilon)".
This unrecorded earthenware tondino dish is painted with a full polychrome decoration representing Apollo, seated against a tree trunk playing the lyre, challenged by the satyr Pan, lying in the foreground and holding a sort of bagpipe, observing an old man seated against a trunk of half-naked tree, King Lydian Tmolos. The mythological scene is taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Metamorphoses, XI) where we relate the episode in which Pan defies Apollo in a musical competition judged by Tmolos, King Lydian.
This unique dish belongs to a service called "three crescents" made most probably for a Florentine family, but the identification remains unclear today. The publications have proposed several hypotheses: the Strozzi, the Buoncristiani, the Cosi or even the Vitelli.
According to John Mallet and Timothy Wilson, two painters collaborated on this service: Xanto and the painter known as the Milan Marsyas painter.
Acquired by Jean-Claude Gandour
Now in the collection of Foundation Gandour pour l'art
(inv. FGA-AD-OBJ-00)
Making his Mark: a Reunion of Historical Importance
The reunion of exceptional sets: the mission of a passionate antique dealer
Exceptionnal testimony of the art of ceramic at the era of the Sun King, Camille Leprince had a key role in reuniting an unique Nevers faience set of a monumental ewer and basin painted with Pastoral and Turkish figures on blue ground so called « bleu persan ».
The New-York based French faience collector Sidney Knafel acquired the ewer in the late 1990's. Only a few months before the exhibition of his collection held at the Frick Collection, Camille Leprince managed to source an unique basin that belonged to the same family for almost an entire century.
This unique ensemble is a promised gift by Sidney R. Knafel to the Frick Collection, New-York.
Basin in the shape of a basket painted in Bleu Persan with a Pastorale scene
Nevers, circa 1670-1680
L. 58 cm
Monumental ewer painted in Bleu Persan with Turkish figures and Pastorale figures
Nevers, circa 1670-1680
H. 80 cm
Essays by Camille Leprince
FRENCH BAROQUE FAIENCE
In general, it is only recently that seventeenth-century baroque faience made for the French royal court has been fully appreciated. Because pottery and the art of the gar- den are two such distinct fields, the importance of faience in the garden designs of André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), France’s most celebrated seventeenth-century landscape architect, had previously been completely overlooked.
This article aims not only to demonstrate how Le Nôtre’s artistic vision synthesized these two disparate fields, but also to identify where faience garden objects were made and their factory charac- teristics, and to reveal how the study of graphic sources and archives has allowed us to understand their use and purpose. The colorful and easily portable containers for exotic plants and trees, as decorative elements in an all-encompassing design, were a significant aspect of the fashion for jardins à la française and the use of faience garden urns, which spread to other European royal courts.
This essay will also provide new insight into the sumptuous French baroque faience produced for buffet dining en plein air ("in open air") during this period, when magnif- icent banquets were held outdoors in Le Nôtre’s gardens.