L'extraordinaire Hôtel Païva

Exhibition at Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 22 September 2015 - 20 January 2016

Designed by the architect Pierre Manguin and completed in 1866, the Hôtel Païva, on the Champs-Elysées, is one of the few Parisian buildings of the Second French Empire to have kept its original design. Sculptors Dalou and Carrier-Belleuse, painter Paul Baudry, famous artists of the time, contributed in particular to its neo-Renaissance décor.

The Hôtel Païva was built for Thérèse Lachmann, aka la Païva, young Jewish woman born in Moscow ghetto who left to Europe, then Paris, in 1840. La Païva lived there lavishly, receiving writers, journalists and gentlemen.

La Païva and her Hôtel have been subjects of extensive writings, notably by the Goncourt brothers, but so fanciful that it is difficult to sort the truth out. This is, however, the aim of this book: it offers not only a serious historical approach on the life of la Païva, but also an unpublished analysis of the architecture of the building and his décor.