The Macé & Demotte Collections

Georges Joseph Demotte (1877–1923), was a celebrated Belgian-born art dealer. He maintained galleries in a sumptuous private mansion in Paris, rue de Berri (8th arrondissement), and later in New York, at 8 East 57th Street, where he exhibited masterpieces of French medieval sculpture, captivating both private collectors and institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A discerning specialist, Demotte published in 1921, in two volumes, a catalogue of the artworks that entered the Louvre between 1914 and 1920, and in 1922–23 a study of the drawings of Edgar Degas. Henri Matisse painted his portrait in 1918.

Among his most famous acquisitions was the Persian manuscript Shāh-Nāmeh (“Book of Kings,” 14th century), executed under the Ilkhanid sultan Abū Saʿīd. Two folios from this manuscript are now preserved in the Louvre. It is still known today as the “Demotte Shāh-Nāmeh.”

In the Figaro of 7 July 1921, Édouard Mortier, Duke of Trévise, President of La Sauvegarde de l’Art Français (the French heritage-protection society), wrote an article in which he praised Demotte’s efforts:

“Mr Demotte—and we do not say this to flatter him—has owned or owns a great number of complete monuments, towers, chapels or cloisters, spread across our land and selected with perfect taste, not to mention crosses, niches, windows, or portals. His visitors are enchanted by his hospitality; they cannot but admire the charm and elegance of his installation, comparable to that of the finest museums, if not superior. … When such an enlightened connoisseur as Mr Demotte alerts us to the decay of our too-few listed monuments, or the repairs delayed only by lack of funds, he can be sure of our full gratitude.”

Georges Demotte was the first to take an active part in the revival of the medieval style in both France and America. He notably influenced the collector William Randolph Hearst for his residence at San Simeon, California, and likely that of the philanthropist Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan at Èze—both expressions of the fashionable historicist taste of the period.

After the deaths of Georges-Joseph Demotte and his son Lucien, and following the transition of the Georges family, Andrée Macé (1918 - 2000) took over the firm. It was she who gave it its international stature, contributing to numerous prestigious projects and architectural commissions. Among her principal patrons were leading decorators such as Henri Samuel, responsible for the refurbishment of the Château de Ferrières (residence of Baron and Baroness Guy de Rothschild), for the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum, and for projects at the Élysée Palace, the Petit Trianon, and for Louise de Vilmorin and the Prince Aga Khan.

She collaborated with François Catroux, Jacques Garcia, François-Joseph Graf, Jacques Grange, Peter Marino, Juan Pablo Molyneux, and Alberto Pinto.

Andrée Macé was also a notable donor. In 1978 she gifted the Demotte photographic archive—some 4,500 glass plates—to the Louvre Museum.

“In autumn 2013, the Louvre Museum will devote an exhibition in its Sculpture Department to the antiquarian photographs of Georges Joseph and Lucien Demotte — ‘A Photographic Archive and Its Many Uses,’ curated by Christine Vivet-Peclet (October 2013 – March 2014, Salle d’actualité).”