Description
Unique architecture by France’s master of Art Nouveau
The “Castel Val” villa was built in 1903 by architect Hector Guimard for Louis Chanut, brother-in-law of his friend and patron Léon Noval, a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in steel. The house and its landscaping have been listed as a Monument Historique since 2006.
Set in landscaped grounds of 2,280 m², the house offers 217 m² of living space over three levels.
The first floor features an entrance hall, a living room with dining area, a separate kitchen, a small lounge or study and a laundry room. A magnificent wooden staircase with two opposing spiral staircases leads to the upper floors in the center of the structure. The second floor includes three bedrooms, one with a balcony and a shower room, and opens onto a vast terrace with a planted walkway overlooking the park. The second floor houses two bedrooms, an office and a shower room.
Each floor has its own external access to the hill behind the house.
Two double garages complete the ensemble.
The house enjoys a quiet, privileged setting in Auvers-sur-Oise, a major center of Impressionism whose church was immortalized by Vincent van Gogh.
A total work of art
Hector Guimard designed the entire interior and exterior décor of the house, from the curved window frames framing patterned stained glass, to the pearwood furniture, door handles and ornate fireplaces. Several of the house’s interior features, such as the gilded bronze window handles and espagnolette bolts, are listed as Monuments Historiques.
Many of the villa’s original furnishings are now part of international museum collections. The Musée d’Orsay owns one of the original wooden armchairs, and one of the fireplaces is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the USA.
A design that combines the picturesque with Art Nouveau
Hector Guimard created a composite design whose architectural vocabulary borrowed from the picturesque and Gothic styles, accompanied by typically Art Nouveau decorative elements.
Set against a hillside, the house blends into its surroundings, with a fan-shaped plan and rounded lines. The variety of materials used, such as red and yellow brick, millstone, cast iron and wrought iron, wood, reinforced concrete for the balustrade of the first-floor terrace and flat tiles for the roof covering, give the house a distinctive polychromatic look. Stone buttresses, partially exposed metal framing and painted half-timbering punctuate the exterior façade. Rounded doors and windows are adorned with colorful stained glass and wrought-iron hardware with curvilinear motifs typical of Art Nouveau.
The balustrade of the outside terrace is inlaid with glazed ceramic medallions, like the entrance hall of Castel Béranger, the legendary building built in Paris’s 16th arrondissement by Hector Guimard in 1898.
Portrait of Hector Guimard, archive image, sd
Metro entrance, Porte Dauphine, Paris
Hector Guimard
Hector Guimard (1867-1942) studied at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris from 1882 to 1885, then was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he left in 1893 after failing the Grand Prix de Rome competition. That same year, he received his first commission from a friend, who entrusted him with the construction of his home, the Villa Jassede.
With this first project, Hector Guimard already established a rustic formal vocabulary, mixed materials and designed an asymmetrical, anti-classical composition. He then built the Sacré-Cœur school on rue de la Frillière, where he adopted a system of twin cast-iron support crutches, a technical solution described in Viollet-le-Duc’s Entretiens sur l’architecture. In 1894, he obtained a travel grant to England, and also visited the Netherlands and Belgium. He was profoundly influenced by early Art Nouveau trends, discovering the work of Paul Hankar and Victor Horta. On his return to France in 1895, he built the Castel Béranger building on rue de la Fontaine, a veritable architectural manifesto. This tenement building challenged the housing conventions of the Parisian bourgeoisie. Its facade, with its varied materials, accentuated reliefs and plant and marine motifs, echoes the themes previously developed by the architect in his detached houses.
Entrance hall of Castel Béranger, 1895, Paris 16
Sacré-Coeur school, Paris 16
Following this achievement, Hector Guimard presented himself as an “art architect” and gave lectures, positioning himself as the figurehead of the new architecture. From 1900 to 1902, he built the famous entrances to the Paris metro system.
Criticised by the press of the time, he managed to continue his work thanks to the financial support of his friends and clients, who commissioned villas and private mansions from him between 1899 and 1913. In particular, Hector Guimard took part in the movement to build opulent apartment blocks in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, on Avenue de Versailles and Rue de la Fontaine.
In 1925, when he took part in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he remained, along with Charles Plumet and Victor Horta, one of the last representatives of the Art Nouveau movement, out of step with the modern achievements that had come to fascinate the period. Relegated to the rank of eccentric, he emigrated to the United States in 1938 and died in New York in 1942.
Long considered a secondary player on the architectural scene, he left behind no posterity, no disciples and no school. In addition to the Castel Val, Hector Guimard also designed a town house in Paris, a holiday villa in Cabourd, a factory in Saint-Denis and a funerary monument for the Chenut family.