In January 2023, the Musée d’Orsay acquired The boat parta painting by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), dating from 1877-1878, recognized as a major piece of impressionism for its daring and dynamic treatment, combined with the carelessness of its subject. This oil on canvas has long been perceived as a minor in the history of painting, like the rest of the work of Caillebotte. The artist had gone from fashion before his death, especially because of the subjects treated, such as manual work or the world of idleness.
Gustave Caillebotte’s canvases are now interested in museums and wealthy collectors. Very wealthy even, with prices that panic institutions. In November 2021, J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles bought the table Young man at his window (1876) for $ 53 million (46.7 million euros), spraying the previous record of the painter set at $ 22.1 million for Upright (1881), during an auction at Christie’s in February 2019.
The price of The boat part is a little more reasonable: 43 million euros. When it comes to sale, the Ministry of Culture makes the decision to classify it as a national treasure, recognizing its exceptional character. But it does not unlock a budget capable of buying it. However, he forbids him to leave the territory for thirty months. This ranking starts a countdown to keep the canvas in France.
Obviously, the price exceeds the acquisition budget of the Musée d’Orsay. And not just a little, since the latter is around 3 million euros per year. In order not to see the masterpiece escape again in a private collection, as it has been since the death of the last descendant of the painter, a call for patronage is launched with a beautiful carrot: a tax allowance of 90% of its cost.
The Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) group – said Bernard Arnault is the main shareholder and the CEO – is already a patron of the Musée d’Orsay and quickly answers the call. True to its habit, this acquisition is not done in discretion, the group produced a press release with an inspired tone, which a dispatch from the France-Presse (AFP) is partly resumed. It is the latter that we find in the press, with a total absence of mention to the gift made by the State at LVMH.
That a private group uses the purchase of a table from a public collection for communication purposes questions in itself. But the problem is elsewhere: it is in reality the taxpayer who pays the LVMH communication operation (90%, due to the tax advantages granted to patronage). For the company, the cost is minimal and the operation ensures its image of “cultural benefactor”, while potentially opening the door to a diffuse influence of the private group within the museum, since a donation often generates implicit debt.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation, a “gift to France”?
The purchase of Gustave Caillebote’s table is the type of initiative that is in the habits of the LVMH group. Are these disinterested gifts? It is possible to question, due to the amount of the tax deduction and the regularity with which cases arise concerning the low tax rate of Bernard Arnault (14%); While being little taken up in the press. Some people question the generosity of patronage led by the mastodon at 84.7 billion euros in turnover in 2024, a practice described as one of the many aggressive tax optimization strategies.
Thus, in 2014, during the construction of the Louis Vuitton Foundation, thanks to the “Aillagon law” of 1er August 2003 relating to patronage, LVMH had been able to avoid 60% of the cost of its construction by evacuating it from its taxes, or 518 million euros in rebate. That year, the cost of the foundation, “A gift to France”According to Bernard Arnault, alone cost 8% of the entire tax niche, the largest amount of all the tax niches combined, forcing the National Assembly for the first time to impose limits on this law.
If in April 2019, following the fire of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, LVMH declared that it does not operate this mechanism, it is not by soul. Simply, the firm’s ceilings were widely affected. Furthermore, this gift is the fruit of a racing to the shallot with the eternal rival, Kering, the second world group in the luxury sector, founded by François Pinault, who preceded him in the race for the prestige of the restoration of the cathedral.
Taken in his own trap, LVMH could only double the bet, without forgetting to communicate abundantly on the operation. He attracted a number of criticisms that went so far as to bring Bernard Arnault out of his usual reserve. On April 18, 2019, during a meeting in front of the shareholders, he “defended” by explaining, in front of the camera, that in some countries, we would be “Felicity” and no “critical” For such an act of generosity.
The painting on tour in the museums of France
To celebrate his arrival in public collections, such as a rock star, The boat part went on tour. It is exposed in turn in various museums (an unusual practice), in order to present it to the most public as possible: first the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, then that of Marseille and finally that of Nantes, straddling the 1920s and 2024.
A strange idea, whose principals are unknown, appears to mark the occasion: to pass the city board in town, from stopover to stage, by boat, to browse the canals and rivers of the country. After all, here is a boat trip, what could be better than walking on a boat?
It never happens. For simple questions of time, costs and security, the tables always pass through their boxes, accompanied by their conveyors, by truck and plane, so as not to spend too much time in transport, a risky situation. The idea of making the country cross several times to an exceptional dearly paid canvas, by a slow means of transport (it would have taken several weeks) and possibly submersible, asks the question of risk capital vis-à-vis the flat metaphor: boat trip/moves by boat.
Even more curious, the said cash register was, within the framework of this tour, put on a particular motif, a detail which sheds light on the logics at work behind the scenes of patronage. From a certain insurance value, a work of art stores and moves in a wooden body which protects it. Waterproof, isolated, varnished: there are any for all uses, customs or rental. In general, quite little fantasies on their appearances, quite the contrary: they must remain discreet, even anonymous. Some museums, of those who lend a lot of works, paint these specific nuances funds, in order to identify them in overloaded reserves.
Master canvas in luxury trunk
For the boat ride that was to perform The boat partthe cash register had to be specific to protect this star from the picture rails in its dangerous aquatic tour. Louis Vuitton would have proposed to make the canvas travel in one of these famous overpriced trunks, ensuring in passing a prestigious advertising, in addition to the heavy communication operation already permitted by the acquisition of the work.
If this time, the curators of the museum played the speed and made the board go to the checkout, it was not a try. In 2018, the table The dairy de Johannes Vermeer left the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam to join the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo in a marked trunk.
#Museum Johannes Laatière #Vermeer Travel to Tokyo in Louis #Vitton ! + info: https://t.co/wwwqomlmdt pic.twitter.com/nnswxj0sgb
– Knowledge of (@cdesarts) October 13, 2018
The trunk of all the superlatives had to transport a work in its journey that does not belong to the sailboat, but we could almost have forgotten it. It is undoubtedly not a coincidence on the part of the luxury group, which never deprives themselves of mixing the advertisement with patronage, voluntarily blurring the boundaries by grazing the limits of the law, but not those of ridicule.
