Style Napoleon III / Ref.0777

Wood paneling for dining room, with sideboard and two paintings

Complete dining room walnut wood paneling. Originaly this was the dining room of the Count A. de Chavignac, decorated with hunting attributes and trophies painted and carved, including two large oil canvases painted by Louis Guy – a painter from Lyon – representing bouquets of flowers. It comprises six doors and a monumental walnut wood sideboard of 12 feet 1 inches 1/2 high, custom made for the room with a characteristic Neo-Renaissance decor, which is repeated in the overmantel pediments above the doors. A beautiful female figure surrounded by cornucopia looks down from the top of the sideboard.
Length of the wood paneling: 82 linear feet.
Size of the room: 23 by 18 feet.

Louis Guy (1828-1888)
Louis Guy belongs to the Lyon school of art, well known for the high quality of its floral painting. Indeed, this city, a crossroad between the North and the South benefited early on from the influence of the great still life artists of Northern Europe. Louis Guy was first a student then a professor at the Lyon School of Fine Arts.
Louis Guy specialized among other things in picturesque scenes and painted the well known "Marché aux animaux de L’Arbresle" (Animal market in Arbresle) in 1851, that represents with much precision and life a market in the courtyard of a castle, belonging to the Fine-Arts museum in the Palais Saint-Pierre in Lyon. In this painting, the young 27 years old painter acts like a reporter, including as much historical information as possible without destroying the composition: the attitudes of the huckster, the clothes of the horse dealers, the different races of cattle, the realism of the animals that seem ready to move, the Renaissance architecture and Medieval ruins, saddlery, everyday objects, etc. He seems to put his talent in the service of history and curiosity. There are reproductions of this painting in the townhall and museum of Arbresle.
Two other paintings by Louis Guy are in the museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, "Retour du marché" (Returning from the market) and "Intérieur Bressan" (Bressan Interior).
Dimensions of the paneling : 82 linear feet. They were in a 23 by 18 feet room.