Family
Paris Left Bank: A Grand Apartment with Timeless Elegance Across Generations
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Agathe Derieux, Blanche 15, Roxane 13 and Iris, 11 years old
It could be a festive evening in the 18th century, with the gilding illuminated by the chandeliers casting a thousand reflections in this impressively proportioned apartment. Or you could be interrupting a meeting of intellectuals from the inter-war years, sitting amidst the masterpieces and curiosities accumulated in your family's lair on Paris's Left Bank. Or entering the home of a fashionable artist from the heyday of the Faubourg, surrounded by the silent, articulated presences of his studio mannequins. Gallery owner Agathe Derieux's family apartment is a little of all these things. A timeless haven, an ancient jewel handed down from generation to generation, a precious labyrinth filled with mute souls who follow your gaze from room to room. And a personal extension of her gallery Yveline - which she named after her grandmother, who founded the place - at 4 rue de Furstemberg, one of the oldest surviving businesses in the neighbourhood. If you need to get your bearings, take a step back. The decor here has its own personality and plays tricks on you. The melancholy heroines of painter Douni Hou respond to the beady eyes of porcelain animals and the mysterious profiles of wooden mannequins. Agathe Derieux, her husband and their daughters, who look like the Three Graces, live here in their own world. It is a world where poetry is found in little things, where beauty blends centuries and mediums, all orchestrated with an accomplished hand - a long and elegant hand, of course - by a woman for whom a sense of setting also invites a sense of play. There's no question of showing you every room, every nook and cranny in this slightly surreal setting. The Socialite Family tiptoes in to capture a little of the family intrigue.
Location
Paris
Author
Elsa Cau
Photos and videos
Clothilde Redon, Elsa David
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TSF
Who are you, Agathe?
Agathe
That's a very good question, but I don't really know. I don't think my answer will shed much light. I think I change every day.
TSF
Tell us about your background.
Agathe
I started out as a trainee at Gallimard, then Stock, and I worked at Albin Michel until Blanche was born. In 2014, I took over my grandmother Yveline's gallery at 4 rue de Furstemberg in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
TSF
What kind of environment did you grow up in?
Agathe
I grew up in Paris, Touraine and Jura. My father was a brilliant intellectual, a pianist and a Polytechnicien. But events like the Algerian war and his bankruptcy turned his life upside down. He was heir to the Armand Thiery brand - that's my maiden name - and in the 1980s bankruptcy forced him to sell. My mother was beautiful, eccentric, Catholic, and in love with trees, children and flowers. A lot of beauty, a lot of spirit. Beyond classification and somewhat unbalanced! In 1987, my parents went to live in Touraine, with lots of children, on a large estate and in a magnificent property like a princess's castle, far from the world. We led a solitary life, except at weekends when our friends would come down from Paris for days spent talking, eating and playing cards. It was a poetic and romantic childhood and adolescence, filled with reading, the piano, dozens of Labradors, crates of champagne and cartons of Rothmans International. A concept... that would lead to their early demise - life is fragile! I've always been very close to my maternal grandmother; I took over her gallery ten years ago.
TSF
Tell us about the history of this apartment and how you discovered it.
Agathe
It was the apartment that discovered me! I've always been here. We are in a family apartment, The first time I really became aware of the passage of time here was when I was nine years old and I was by the door. I was sitting on the steps of the building's main entrance hall, waiting for my grandmother. It was strange because I was looking at them and thinking, "my mother also sat on this very spot at the same age as me". And suddenly I was moved. Especially as, in my mind, I completely dissociate the place where I live from the place where my mother grew up and my grandmother lived. When people talk to me about here at that time, it's as if they were talking about someone else. And yet, everywhere is steeped in their former lives. Every now and then, I have a flashback, and I think about the fact that I'm sleeping in the exact spot where my grandmother used to sleep. Somehow, we've never been apart. In fact, she and I were born on the same day.
TSF
There's a very strong bond between you and your grandmother.
Agathe
My bonne maman thought that her only daughter had given her the gift of a granddaughter on her birthday. We were very close. I spent a lot of time in her gallery, affectionately known as 'the shop', which I now own on rue de Furstemberg.
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TSF
Yveline Lecerf was a leading figure in Saint-Germain-des-Près. Your grandmother had an unusual destiny!
Agathe
Christ was the love of her life. When she was young, she married a man, my grandfather. She worked with Marthe Robin in the Foyers de Charité spiritual retreats. And then came the tragedy; after the war, she met the man who was to become the man I've called my grandfather all my life. Obviously, being pious, as she was, infidelity was out of the question, let alone divorce. And a separation meant being ostracized from good society. So she decided to have a child with her husband, as a permanent obstacle to this impossible love. A few months later, her husband went bankrupt and did not take this blow of fate well. Yveline took her daughter and went to live with her mother. But my great-grandmother was a great socialite, coming alive in the evenings, and she didn't take kindly to having a toddler in the house (laughs). I always adored this magnificent woman; she was full of humour and wit. But bringing up a child was by no means top of her list. So my mother was sent to live with her aunt, Yveline's sister. My grandmother was forced to start working because there wasn't much money left. She worked as a sales assistant in an antique shop on the rue Jacob. One evening, her father came to pick her up. Seeing the poor conditions in which his daughter was working, he decided to set her up in her own gallery and give her a small sum of money to buy her first stock. Yveline was born where the gallery still stands, on the edge of this beautiful square, but back then the space was three times smaller! The gallery is celebrating its seventieth anniversary this year. After five years, Yveline was able to find accommodation on rue des Saints-Pères, bring her daughter here and find a nanny. The shop quickly became a success. And it wasn't long before she was able to settle here, at the end of the 1950s.
TSF
The Yveline Gallery has been home to many prestigious clients.
Agathe
She worked hard for it. There are lots of funny stories about the shop. Some social, others private... and that has never changed. And her pace of life was unusual, too: Bonne Maman worked evenings, even nights. She entertained a lot at home when she wasn't in the shop. I remember that she got up around eleven in the morning, and by the time she got ready, it must have been two o'clock in the afternoon. We used to go bargain-hunting together at five o'clock in the evening!
TSF
Did she specialise in a particular era?
Agathe
Not really. She was better known for her eclectic 'rustic chic' style. And, of course, for artists' mannequins: she owned some of the finest examples.
TSF
What atmosphere did you want to create here? Did you have to do a lot of work?
Agathe
I was fifteen when I started living here for good. I was alone with my grandmother in this part of the apartment (corresponding to the living room, editor's note): everything was very beautiful, but frozen as if in a museum. She lived with the shutters closed for fear of the light damaging her paintings. When she died, we closed the apartment up, and I stayed in the apartment next door. This part corresponds to my daughters' current bedrooms and the second kitchen. The spaces are smaller, and everything feels more private and cocooned. I lived there with a friend who became Blanche's godmother, and then I went to live with my fiancé. In the meantime, I hadn't touched my grandmother's part. Everything was still intact and closed up. Later, when I was married and pregnant with Blanche, we thought about coming back here. But once we'd settled in, we decided it was too heavy. It was like a mausoleum in here. So the work began. We removed a lot of things, but we also kept some, like the set of painted canvases that line the walls of the dining room.
TSF
From then on, the apartment became all about you, with a few memories of Yveline.
Agathe
It's funny, when cousins visit us, they often say that nothing has changed. And yet everything has changed. Yveline's taste undoubtedly shaped mine!
TSF
And that taste also had to embrace family life with three children!
Agathe
Especially as I've had three children in three years... My priority at the beginning was to make the place a pleasant place for the children to live: the rooms were very cute and functional. The sofa in the living room wasn't white; it was brown so you could spill anything on it. Everything had to be easy and, if possible, tasteful.
TSF
Can you describe this taste for us?
Agathe
I'm interested in colours and proportions. It has to be subtle and tell amusing or fairytale stories. I like muted tones. I love how soft they are on the eye. These days, all these chemical, acidic colours with their violent contrasts shock me, although I find the freedom with which they are now used is interesting. OK, in the living room, I have a corner reserved for my children's slightly vivid artwork, but that's how I'd sum it up: harmony and softness are essential. And a dream, a story. If there's a hidden message, even better! There are some themes that will always inspire me: childhood, in particular. And everything fluctuates according to one's time of life. At the moment, I'm in the mood for white, for the first time. To purify. Lighten up. Sometimes, I think about taking everything away and living with a Japanese screen in the middle of a white room as my only decoration.
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TSF
Artist's mannequins have always had a special place in your décor, both at home and at the gallery.
Agathe
These models are very much alive. They served as technical models for painters, were placed in workshops and have been collector's items since the 19th century. Some people are afraid of them, but I love the life that emanates from them. I like animated objects that have a presence.
TSF
Your home spotlights an artist who is very much alive: Douni Hou, whom you collect.
Agathe
Quite simply, Douni is all about the virtuosity of the line. Three brushstrokes and it's done. She paints in the old-fashioned way, with eggs or tempera. She only paints her inner state, her most powerful emotions. She paints the fleeting beauty of a very profound moment. It takes a long time to become a human being. It is all-consuming, and it's not easy. For me, meeting her was a rather mystical encounter. I discovered her work thanks to my gallerist friend Laurence Esnol. One day, she came into the shop, and although I had never seen her other than through her paintings, I recognised her straight away.
TSF
Do you see your daughters living here after you, like you after your grandmother?
Agathe
Absolute memory is not something I cultivate. Otherwise, I'd be constantly living in the past, which would be too heavy, and I like lightness. When they talk about it, they don't seem to imagine themselves anywhere else, but who knows!
TSF
Where can we find you at the moment?
Agathe
Always working somewhere, here in Paris, at the mill in my country house a few kilometres away or in Jura... Or with the craftspeople, enthusiasts and seekers of harmony with whom I am lucky enough to work at Yveline's. The door is always open there.
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