Paris salon of Hubert de Givenchy by Pierre Bergian
The other day I visited the gallerist and author Emily Evans Eerdmans at her charming gallery Eerdmans on East 10th Street off of Fifth Avenue. Emily has written numerous books on decorators, including Mario Buatta and Henri Samuel, helped organize the colossal Mario Buatta auction at Sotheby’s last year pre-pandemic, and shows art works in her gallery that celebrate design. We proceeded through her pink ground-floor office, up the emerald green stairs with the zebra print rug, and into the chartreuse-glazed salon with a 13 foot-high ceiling and windows overlooking the rear garden below.
There, Emily is currently showing a selection of iconic interiors painted by the Belgian artist Pierre Bergian. The small paintings are done in oil with pencil, and have the finely wrought feeling of drawings that require an up-close look. The interiors captured are well-known, including the homes of Jayne Wrightsman, Kenny Jay Lane, and Karl Lagerfeld, but the artist has rendered them in a subtle, understated way, without their signature bright colors, like a memory or a dream. Done on wood panels though, they have a solidness to them. Most of the interiors featured here no longer exist so these paintings give permanence to the fleeting.
