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Henry Vasnier, born April 28, 1832 in Paris and died February 28, 1907 in Reims (Marne), was a wine merchant associated with the Maison Veuve Pommery, fils et C^ie. A major collector at the end of the 19th century, he bequeathed his works to the city of Reims on his death in 1907, considerably enriching its collections and forming the core of the future Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Biographie

Henry Vasnier was born into a bourgeois family in Paris on April 28 1832. His father, Félix Joseph Dominique Vasnier (1788-1845), was a maître d'hôtel, and his mother, Anne-Marie Caroline Auger, the daughter of a merchant. He was one of three siblings, along with his brother Edmond and sister Clémence.

He began his career as a banker in London. In 1856, he moved to Reims at the request of Alexandre Louis Pommery, the husband of Jeanne Alexandrine Louise Melin (1819-1890), with whom his sister Clémence Vasnier had boarded in Paris. At the age of twenty-four, Henry Vasnier joined the Champagne wine business that Alexandre Louis Pommery had just taken over with Narcisse Greno. On Alexandre Louis Pommery's death in February 1858, Henry Vasnier became the main collaborator of his widow Jeanne Pommery. On July 1, 1885, he went into partnership with Jeanne Pommery and her children. On her death on March 18, 1890, he took over effective management of the Champagne house.

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He is described as a level-headed man "imbued with a sense of reality". With the deployment of his fortune, he was able to own several properties, including 1,892 hectares around Reims dedicated to his hunting.

He died of an embolism on February 28, 1907, at the age of seventy-four. His funeral took place at Saint-André church on March 4, 1907. He bequeathed his art collection to the city of Reims, forming the embryo of the city's Musée des Beaux-Arts collection. He donated 100,000 francs to enable the museum to be set up in the former Saint-Denis abbey.

On his death, his collection of works and objets d'art (including works by Corot) was bequeathed to the musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims in the "Bequest Vasnier". However, following a testamentary interpretation, certain pieces were excluded from the bequest and dispersed, including the famous "dining room" created for him by Nancy glassmaker Émile Gallé between 1891 and 1894, and surely one of the artist's masterpieces. These included the "Chemins d'automne" sideboard, the "aux herbes potagères" table, the "fleurs d'avril" table and a series of twelve chairs. These pieces were sold at auction in 1974 by maitre Maurice Rheims at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris.

During the construction of the dining room between 1891 and 1894, relations between Gallé and Vasnier were strained, with the bill for delivery almost double the initial estimate and the delay considerable.

The correspondence between the two men clearly reveals the balance of power.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims recently acquired the dining room thanks to private and public sponsorship. It is now open to the public in the main hall on the first floor.

The museum also has Gallé's own descriptive booklet, as well as several major pieces of glassware that belonged to Henry Vasnier (the Divines Ramées vermeils fruit globes).

His libertine temperament led him to build a brothel and a saloon called La Californie near the village of Craonne in Picardy. He also built a zoo and an exotic plant park. He had vines planted on the slopes to expand the Pommery estate (the Champagne zone was not defined at the time). The plateau is still known today as the plateau de Californie.

Henry Vasnier's collection

Henry Vasnier's fortune as a wine merchant enabled him to build up a remarkable collection of works by 19th-century artists. These included paintings by Louise Abbéma, Eugène Boudin, Jean-Charles Cazin, Camille Corot, Albert Dammouse, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Émile Gallé, Henri Harpignies, Charles Léandre, Léon Lhermitte, Maxime Maufra, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Théodore Rousseau and Alfred Sisley. In addition to paintings, Henry Vasnier also acquired graphic arts, sculptures and objets d'art.

Around 1863, when he was in his thirties, Henry Vasnier began acquiring works. His first purchase was a landscape by Léon-Charles Flahaut, Paysage à Magny-les-Hameaux, shown at the Paris Salon, for 600 francs. His purchases continued to favor this pictorial genre. Attentive to various artistic events, he continued to expand and enrich his collection, particularly from the 1870s onwards. Henry Vasnier made his acquisitions at several key establishments in the Paris art market, such as Hôtel Drouot, which represented an essential source for the enrichment of his collection. He also frequents the French Salons, takes part in auctions, and completed his purchases with dealers such as Georges Petit and Paul Durand-Ruel, from whom he bought Camille Pissarro's L'Avenue de l'Opéra in 1902. In this way, he built up a rich collection that was highly representative of his era. His acquisitions also testify to his professional success.