3-043-755 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Chalet Cordier, the residence of M. Thiers at Trouville, [northern France], 1872. 'The Chalet Cordier, in which M. Thiers is now residing, stands high above the shore and village, among the woods, half way up the hill of Hennequeville, near the road to Honfleur. It is a building of light and fanciful structure, in which red brick is combined with carved and varnished wood; the exterior design partaking of the mixed characters of a fifteenth-century manor-house, an Italian palazzo, and a Swiss chalet...The interior of the Chalet Cordier, luxuriously but tastefully decorated in the style of the Renaissance, is rich in pictures and in a collection of objects of art. Especially to be noticed are a Florentine cabinet of the sixteenth century in the entrance-hall, and, in the library, modern vases and ancient bronzes, together with relics of the Roman era from Lisieux. There are Byzantine crosses, works of art by Fragonard, Chardin, Ribera, a Magdalene by Benedetto, and ancient Gothic panelling emblazoned with the arms of the Norman barons who followed Robert Shorthose to the Crusades. In the fine English garden which surrounds the chalet grows the fine plant Vicia Bithynica, discovered in 1850 by M. Durand-Duquesney'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.