The Musée du Louvre in Paris has raised the final €1.3m needed to acquire a painting of a pile of strawberries by the 18th-century French artist Jean Siméon Chardin. The remaining amount came from almost 10,000 individuals who donated more than €1.6m to a fundraising campaign to keep the work in France. The painting, Basket of Wild Strawberries (1761), was sold for €24.3m (with fees)—the highest price paid at auction for an 18th-century French painting—at Artcurial in Paris in March 2022.
The luxury goods conglomerate LVMH contributed almost two-thirds of the amount for the Louvre’s purchase (around €15m); other donors included the patrons group, Société des Amis du Louvre, which contributed around €7.8m. The individual donors meanwhile contributed on average €165 each as part of the Louvre’s “Tous Mécènes (all patrons)!” fundraising campaign.
“A record was broken for Chardin’s Strawberry Basket [campaign]! I wholeheartedly thank the 10,000 donors in our ‘All Patrons!’ campaign who, throughout the country, have chosen to contribute to this acquisition, many of them for the first time,” said Laurence des Cars, the Louvre’s director, in a statement. The museum allocates 20% of its ticketing to acquisitions, normally raising around €13m annually.
“Chardin’s incomparable Basket of Strawberries will, upon its acquisition, be exhibited to the public at the Louvre-Lens museum, from 21 March. After returning in June to be admired in Paris, the work will be presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Brest for the summer (from 2 July) before heading to the Roger-Quilliot art museum in Clermont-Ferrand on 2 October,” a Louvre statement says.
In 2022 the Chardin painting had been sold to the dealer Adam Williams, who was bidding in the room at Artcurial. But the sale of the still-life was thwarted by the Louvre, which blocked the export of the work after the sale. The new owner, represented by Williams at the auction, was later revealed to be the Kimbell Art Museum in Forth Worth, Texas. The Louvre already has 41 works by Chardin in its collection.
