Commune of

A little history :

 

Alexandre de Bary (1854-1899) was one of the great Champagne merchants at the end of the 19th century and one of the promoters of the famous Mumm champagne house, which he helped propel to the top of the Houses before the First World War. From his father, he inherited the Château de Thuisy.

 

“Elvire Boucher, known as “Vénus de Bary”, who would become Duchess Delmas de Grammont, had this mausoleum erected in the castle grounds in 1903 in memory of Alexandre de Bary, her lover.

 

André Maurois (1862/1941), an architect from Reims, built a cul-de-four dome twelve meters wide with a frontal opening of eight meters and fifty. The face of the arch and the underside of the crypt are adorned with striped limestone called Vergelé de Warsens, a material that was also used to embellish many Parisian residences.

 

Thus protected, an allegorical subject in veined white marble, two meters fifty high, sculpted in 1901 by Emile Peynot* (1850/1932), stands to the glory of “Hope in eternal life”.

 

A cherub carries in his hands a medallion with the effigy of Alexandre de Bary. This little cherub presents him to a young woman, draped in a fine, long tunic, sporting at the top, between her open arms, a long, fine tulle stole (now missing). This welcoming young nymph seems to open the gates of Paradise to the soul of the deceased.

 

On either side of the entrance to the mausoleum, the coat of arms of the Bary family stands guard. Inside the dome, in the lower part, alternating with wreaths of flowers, are engraved a few verses taken from the Holy Scriptures. »

 

Excerpt from Alexandre de Bary, from Champagne GHMumm to the Mausoleum of Val-de-Vesle” by André Garcia, 2015.

 

Emile Peynot French sculptor was born on November 22, 1850 in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (Yonne).   In 1867 he entered the studio of the sculptor Pierre Robinet in Paris where he trained for three years. Then Peynot was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1870. In 1880, he obtained the First Prize in Rome, as well as a gold medal at the Universal Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900. He became a professor at the Paris School of Fine Arts. Emile Peynot died on December 12, 1932 in Paris. Part of his monumental works are preserved in Argentina.

 

According to “Emile Peynot, statuary by Roland Cornilleau, 2000, presses of the Nouvelle Imprimerie Laballery”.