Experts in exceptional arts and heritage
"The Château Boulart, built in Biarritz by the architects Louis Duc and François Roux at the end of the 19th century, is clearly one of these manifestos: a unicum among unicums, an important element in the understanding of the French architecture of its time."
cl. Laroche, in the review Le Festin, n°61, 2007.
"The designers seem to be concerned only with the composition - particularly elaborate, brilliantly playing both with respect for the grid plan and its subtle transgression, with the balance between symmetry and dissymmetry, with the effects of spatial staging and with the writing, a delicate variation on French Renaissance models. The whole gives shape to a building that does not yield to the mansion or the castle, developing on the raised first floor large reception rooms and relegating the services to the basement.
cl. Laroche, in tous à la plage ! villes balnéaires du xvIIIe siècle à nos jours, catalog of the exhibition of the cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Liénart, 2016.
"Realized at the end of the nineteenth century, La Folie Boulart can, for the abundance and the quality of its marbles, only be compared to the Opéra Garnier.
J. dubarry de Lassale, author of Identification des Marbres, published by vIAL, 2000.
"The Folie Boulart is an example of the quality buildings of the end of the nineteenth century: the best architects, the best decorators, the best craftsmen have used the most beautiful materials of the time.
J. dubarry de Lassale, author of Identification des Marbres, published by vIAL, 2000.
"This set of stained glass windows - the triptych of the esca-lier, the dome and the chapel - designed by Oudinot is remarkable for two reasons. On the one hand for its outstanding quality, which makes it one of the masterpieces of French civil stained glass, and on the other hand for having been preserved in its architectural context, which is truly exceptional. The glass ensemble, facing west, is the centerpiece of the grand staircase's décor. When visitors entered the first-floor state room to be received by the masters of the house, they discovered this large glass composition. Three round-headed bays structure the whole, designed as a trellis garden painted in trompe l'oeil.
A. duntze-Ouvry, in La Revue de l'Art, June 2016, PhD E. Oudinot de la Faverie glass artist-painter and the revival of civil stained glass in the xIth century.
"These mosaics date from the time of the construction of the castle. The motifs are those in force in the 1880s. No doubt about it. In view of the workmanship, they were made by Italian mosaicists, originally from Friuli and Veneto. At that time, they were the only ones able to provide such quality work ...
These mosaics are beautiful and I am amazed by their state of preservation. I have rarely seen mosaics in such a beautiful state of preservation."
M. Andrys, author of Le renouveau de la mosaïque monumentale en France - un demi-siècle d'histoire, 1875-1914, Actes Sud, 2007.
