The Hôtel de Villeneuve-Esclapon is located near the Porte Saint-Dominique, at number 17, Rue Victor-Hugo, in an area that bears witness to the urbanization of Avignon in the second half to the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Choice property from 1840 onwards –after the demolition of what remained of a Doninican monastery built in 1220 which had been damaged during the Revolution before being converted into foundries- the cleared grounds were purchased by several noble and grand-bourgeois families who were inclined to modernity. They each built spacious hôtels particuliers.

The hôtel de Villeneuve-Esclapon was built in 1885 by the Bérard construction company for Mathilde Thysebaert, the wife of viscount Marie-Xavier Villeneuve-Esclapon. She lived there only briefly. The architect is unknown.

With is autere yet neatly arranged northern facade, and more cheerful southern facade on the garden, the hôtel evidences the period’s fondness for decorum : There are a large entrance hall, a dinning room and reception halls on the ground floor ; a floor divided into bedrooms ; and in all some dozen primary living spaces, plus secondary spaces, attics, cellars, greenhouse and work and storage areas. Fireplaces, mosaics, stained glass, trompe-l’œil ceilings, stucco and paneling define its decoration.

Louis Vouland was a native of the Bouches-du-Rhône region whose industrial fortune derived from fresh and salted meats. He headed a company he created in Avignon after the First World War, whose influence extended beyond the bounds of the region and even the nation. In 1927, at the age of fourty-four, he became the owner of Villeneuve-Esclapon.

This charming location became his home until his death in 1973. He left it to the Fondation de France, stipulating the creation of the Fondation Louis-Vouland, whose principal function was to be « to adapt the hôtel into a museum for the conservation and development of collections ». Primarily comprised of the decorative arts of the seventeenth, and especially the eighteenth century, when they reached their apogee, furniture, objects and art works have gradually been acquired from antique dealers, auctions and estates sales in Nice, Marseille and Paris.

Experts have directed purchases for more than forty years. On the model of the Museums Nissim-de-Camondo and Jacquemart-André, in Paris, the Ephrussi House in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, and the Museum Grobet-Labadié in Marseille, the hôtel de Villeneuve-Esclapon presents its collections in situ. The Musée Louis-Vouland opened on January 15, 1982.

Ceramics and furniture share the place of honor within the residence. Nearly 200 pièces on permanent exhibition trace the diversity and evolution of European ceramics, its connections with the Far East, the relations among different French ceramic centers, such as Nevers, Rouen, Strasbourg and Lyon, and more specially the work-shops, techniques and styles of the southern ceramic centers in Marseille, Moustiers and Montpellier. Porcelains from Saxe, Vincennes and Sèvres add their particular refinement and elegance.

The collector’s taste from « authenticity », as he himself put it, is easily seen in the choice of elegant Regency, Louis XV, Louis XVI, furnishings : commodes, console tables, corner pieces, desks, accessory furnishings, gilded and painted and inlaid pieces by the grand master Parisian cabinetmarkers Migeon, Ellaume, Boudin, Tuard, Desforges and Garnier. Renowned Lyonnais chair makers were chosen for most of the chairs.

Gold and silver plates marked with coats of arms, coffeepots, creamers, cups, salt cellars, egg cups, boxes, cases, candle holders and candlesticks display in combination daily life and a taste for luxury in arts de la table and personal items. Bronze –gilded, chased, edgings, handles, ornemental moldings, mountings- protects furnihings, embelishes vases, adorn clocks, and reflects the glimmer of mirrors and wall lamps.

Large flanders, d’Aubusson and Gobelins tapestries with mythological subjects, fine Beauvais tapestries with literary motifs, needle-point, rugs, and silks adorn walls, cover armchairs and adorn the floor.

While its criteria for selection are not as remarkable as those of the other collections, the painting and sculpture is as interesting and is of as high a quality.

A Catalonian fifteenth-century polyptych relating scenes from the Life of the Virgin, A child with Cherries by the Flemish mast Joos Van Clève, landscapes by other Dutch masters, such as Wouwerman’s Pesants’Moving Day, and closer in time and place, The Trout-Fisher by the Avignonnais Joseph Vernet. A polished bronze statuette of Louis XIV as Roman Emperor attributed to Desjardin, and a superb terracotta by the Lyonnais sculptor Chinard which served as the model for a monument to Bayard, mark a taste for the glory of grandeur and chivalry. It is perhaps this heroic and generous spirit that defines Louis Vouland’s works ; the founder of an industrial empire who discretely provides the public with an exceptional collection of decorative art.

The Louis Vouland museum