Jacques Doucet (also Jacques-Antoine)

French fashion designer and pioneer of haute couture at the turn of the century, Jacques Doucet was one of the most important art patrons and collectors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His first collecting interests focused on French eighteenth-century art, and after 1912 on French modern and contemporary art. In his collecting practice, Doucet considered the fine and applied arts of equal importance and championed their integration, an attitude reflected in his display practices. In addition Doucet collected African and Asian art.

In 1875, Doucet joined the family couture business, established in Paris by his grandfather Antoine Doucet in 1817, and continued by his father Édouard Doucet and mother Mathilde, née Gonnard. Under Jacques Doucet’s leadership, Maison Doucet grew in scale and importance to become one of the most important fashion houses of its time. Doucet further exerted influence on the fashion industry by employing and mentoring the next generation of influential designers, among them Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet. In 1924 Maison Doucet merged with competitor Maison Doeuillet. The new venture closed in 1932.

Beginning in the 1870s, Doucet assembled one of the most extensive collections of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative arts, which in June 1912 he sold en bloc at a public auction held at Galerie Georges Petit. A social event of the year, the sale reached record prices and marked a dramatic shift in Doucet’s collecting interests. By this time he had already begun buying Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, and during World War I, his tastes became more radical, focusing on avant-garde artists. Doucet met Pablo Picasso around 1915 or 1916, and made his initial purchases of the artist’s work soon after. By the time of his death in 1929, Doucet owned several paintings and works on paper by Picasso. Parallel to his modern art collection, Doucet assembled two libraries, both of which he donated to the University of Paris. The scholarly Library of Art and Archeology (Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie) specialized in materials related to history of art and archeology and also encompassed drawings and prints, including examples by Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, and Picasso. Doucet employed writers and poets as librarians and advisors to assemble the Library of Literature (Bibliothèque littéraire), a collection of special editions and manuscripts of the modern literary movement beginning with the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1920 and 1924, Doucet employed for this task the poets André Breton, Pierre Reverdy, and Louis Aragon. Breton became especially instrumental in Doucet’s art purchases, advising him to buy Henri Rousseau’s The Snake Charmer (1907; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), obtained from Robert Delaunay in 1922, and Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907; Museum of Modern Art, New York), acquired from the artist in 1924. Among the Cubist works in the Doucet collection were Picasso’s Man with a Guitar (1912; Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Georges Braque’s Still Life with Glass, Dice, Newspaper and Playing Card (1913; Art Institute of Chicago). Other artists represented in the collection were Constantin Brancusi, Giorgio de Chirico, André Derain, Marcel Duchamp, Matisse, Joan Miró, and Amadeo Modigliani.

The final home of Doucet’s modern and non-Western art collection was the Saint James studio, a suite of three rooms reached by a grand staircase that Doucet built as an annex to his wife’s house at 33 rue Saint James in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Designed by the architect Paul Ruaud and designer Pierre-Emile Legrain, the private gallery was a showcase of Art Deco design, decorated and furnished with works commissioned from Rose Adler, Marcel Coard, Joseph Csaky, Eileen Green, Lalique, Legraine, Jacques Lipchitz, Jean Lurçat, Louis Marcoussis, and others.

Following Doucet’s death, the collection passed onto his widow, Jean Doucet (née Roger), and his sister Marie Dubrujeaud (née Doucet), both of whom gradually dispersed the collection through private and public sales and donations to French museums. Jean Doucet sold several works by Picasso and Braque through the dealer Jacques Seligmann. A portion of Doucet’s collection is now housed at the Musée Angladon Collection Jaques Doucet in Avignon, established by Doucet’s descendants.