Un marchand entre deux Empires, Elie Fabius et le monde de l’art

Everyone knows Laurent, the young minister prodigy under Mitterrand and then President of the National Assembly. Yet, for a long time, among the Fabius family (a patrimony chosen at the beginning of the XIXth century, at a time when Jews in France had to register at the Registry Office) it was his grandfather Elie who was the best known. This antique dealer born in 1864 and dead in 1942, just in time to see his «Aryanised» and its fund scattered at Drouot, lay the foundations of a dynasty of merchants that continues to work at 152, boulevard Haussmann. The book reviews the major moments of this business, marked by a special taste for the XIXth century and a real rediscovery of the Second Empire – Elie Fabius was especially remarked at the Farnborough sale in 1927, when he scattered the goods of Empress Eugénie. Barye, Carpeaux, Winterhalter are some of the names he specialized in, next to souvenirs of Napoleon or La Fayette. In 1974, the sale by one of his descendents of a Madeleine by Georges de La Tour to an American museum caused a minor revolution and he was accused of giving away the national patrimony …The book is an indispensable complement for all spectators of the sale of the Fabius fund, on 26 and 27 October 2011, in Paris, through the intermediary of the Piasa and Sotheby’s houses.

• Un marchand entre deux Empires, Elie Fabius et le monde de l’art by Olivier Gabet, Skira Flammarion, 2011, 160 p., 35 €.