Estimate

1.000 - 2.000

Session 1

14 April 2021

Hammer Price

Description

Birch
Raised decoration of mythological figures
Engraved yellow metal plaques "Sebastian Erard / Patent no. 4449 / 18 Great Marlborough Street, London" and on the opposite face "Harp and Piano forte Maker in Ordinary to her Majesty and the ROYAL FAMILY"
Eight pedals
England, 19th century
(losses, faults and evidence of woodworm)

Height: 171 cm

Category

Objects

Additional Note

THE HARP HISTORY
Like the flute, this is one of the oldest musical instruments, and its origin can be associated with hunting bows that, when they brushed the string, produced sound. Made by a sounding board, column, neck, strings and sometimes pedals or semitone levers, its origins are found in Sumer where it had great importance in the cultural life of the peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Israel.
It was only in the 6th century that the term “Harp” was associated with it. Until then, the civilizations of antiquity gave it various names, such as tibuni, quinor, ugabe, sambuca, cinara, nablo, or trícono, among others.
During the growth of Islam, travels from North Africa to Spain and, throughout the Middle Ages, spreads across the European continent with the reputation of a troubadour instrument, being later adopted as an orchestral instrument.
But it is in the France of the eighteenth-century that its success begins. As Charles-Simon Favart (1710-1792) tells us “La harpe est aujourd’hui l’instrument á la mode; toutes les dames ont la fureur d’em jouer” meaning, this was the musical instrument that all the ladies of the nobility and the upper bourgeoisie had to know how to play, and this is very present in paintings such as that dated from 1775 by Jean-Baptiste André Gaurier d'Agoty (1740-1786), where Queen Marie Antoinette appears to play a harp for a restricted group of courtiers, and in Rose's self-portrait -Adélaïde Ducreux (1761-1802), in which the painter and musicologist portrays herself playing a harp. This taste of the ladies of the nobility and the high bourgeoisie for the harp will endure through the 19th century. As example we have the portrait made by Thomas Lawrence in 1801, today in the Royal Collection Trust, where the wife of the future King George IV, the then Princess of Wales, Carolina of Brunswick, plays a harp in the presence of his daughter, the young princess Carlota.
This musical instrument was originally diatonic, which means that each string had a single sound. However, in the mid-seventeenth century, Tyrolean manufacturers applied several clips to the console, along with the strings of greater tonal importance, which when triggered caused the chromatic halftone to rise. In the year of 1720, the German manufacturer Hochbruckers (1673-1763), guides this mechanism towards a pedal system, which ends up facilitating the introduction of the clamp mechanism and movable easel, adopted by the manufacturer Jean-Henri Naderman (1734-1799) – author of the harp featured in our past auction number 101 in October 2020 – one of the main suppliers of the French court. In fact, his harps are mentioned as the best of their time, both in terms of construction and mechanism, in the memoirs written for the Academie des Sciences et Beaux Arts (signed by Méhul, Bonec, Charles and Prony, on April 17th 1805).
He managed to perfect the harps model with a simple action pedal, it was with the author of the piece that we now bring it up for auction, that the history of the harp was revolutionized when, in 1810, it patented the double action harp with which it became possible to shorten each string by one or two semitones, in order to create a complete tone. This mechanism, still used today by pedal harp manufacturers, allow the harpist to play in any shade or chromatic configuration.

Sébastien Erard (1752-1831)
Sébastien Erard (1752-1831), was a famous French manufacturer of musical instruments, dedicated to the production of pianos and harps. He was born in Strasbourg on April 5, 1752, being the fourth son of the second marriage of the upholsterer of Swiss origin Louis- Antoine Erard (1685-1758). When his father died, Sébastien was only six years old, so the somewhat romanticized reports that the carpenter's skills were acquired in his father's workshop cannot be proven. However, it is known that he grew up in a community of qualified artisans, with uncles, cousins, his godfather, and his older brother, all employed as carpenters, upholsters and gilders, mostly dedicated to the production of church furniture.
It is not known what led him to become a manufacturer of musical instruments, nor is it known where he was taught. His arrival in Paris takes place in the year of 1768, when he was sixteen years old, but again it is impossible to ascertain the account of his arrival. However, it is known that the Duchess of Villeroy (1731-1816) was one of his first patrons, providing him with facilities for a workshop at the Hotel de Villeroy on the rue de Bourbon in Paris.
His willingness to explore the fundamentals of making musical instruments helps him to show his genius for finding ways to get around mechanical problems, a skill that catches the attention of Abbot Roussier and, little by little, his success as a manufacturer of musical instruments he attracts rivals, who often accuse him of working without a license. At that time, he obtains royal protection from King Louis XVI and the license to produce on his own.
The success he achieved in 1779, when he began to explore the new market for five-octave fortepianos, forced him to ask for the help of his older brother Jean-Baptiste Erard (1749-1826). Together they moved to number 109 of the rue de Bourbon and then, in 1781, to number 13 rue du Mail, a place that they acquired in January 1791, and which remain as the company's headquarters until it closes in the 20th century. Through the success they achieved in the 80s of the 18th century, they produce fortepianos for Queen Marie Antoinette and, according to the London Post Office Directory of 1786, open a store on London's Great Marlborough Street. From January 1788, they start to operate under the name Erard frères. That same year, the sales record shows us an annual production of 254 fortepianos, a number that almost doubled in the following year, registering the production of 410 fortepianos.
Until this point, the production of harps by him is unknown, and when in the early 1790s Sébastian was forced to leave France to settle in London – from where he returned for the first time only in 1796 – there is no record of having left any harp behind.
However, in a letter exchanged with his brother, the problem of the harp is addressed, in which he observes that ‘the mechanism is very complicated’.
When he moved to London, he handed the management of the Paris branch to his brother and, in the year of 1792, opened a workshop at No. 18 of Great Marlborough Street. it is here that he focuses on the manufacture of harps, until then all imported from France. In November of 1794, he registered the first British patent for a harp (Improvements in Pianofortes and Harps, patent nº 2016), a single action instrument tuned in E-flat major hat can be played in eight major and five minor tones, through the ingenious mechanism bifurcation that allows the strings to be shortened in semitone. In London, the harp is a notable success and the Erard’s Stock Books, shows us that the aristocracy became interested in these instruments. From November 1800 the sales increased and Her Highness the Princess of Wales, Carolina of Brunswick (1768-1821), was paying £ 75 120 for harp no. 357.
In the year of 1807, at the London branch, a harp cost £ 83 700 and, a set of strings, £ 1 180.
In that same year a new commercial agreement is made between the two brothers and in the following year Sébastian returns to London where he remains for five years focused on the development of the harp.
As previously stated, its single-action harp, despite exhibiting a revolutionary mechanism, was limited to playing only thirteen tones (E flat, B flat, F, C, G, D, A and E major, with three of its minor relatives).
Only in May of 1810 (with London patent No. 3332) did he manage to perfect and patent a double action mechanism. It was such a popular innovation that in September of that year 1,374 harps were sold to clients as Dussek, Krumpholtz and many French refugees. Out of curiosity one of these harps can be seen at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamb
However, in the year of 1813 the commercial and industrial restrictions imposed by the Napoleonic wars compromised the Paris company, and on February 26, it was declared bankrupt. At the same time, between 1811 and until 1820, the London branch sells 3,500 of these harps, with a Greek-style decoration where the column's capital features elements such as winged caryatids (a decorative element that will last in the following decades and which we can see in the example that now we bring for auction), winged lions, griffins, Greek masks, and acanthus leaves. The profits obtained from these sales paid off all external debts incurred by the Paris company and, on April 12th of 1824, the bankruptcy was cancelled.
Meanwhile Sébastian returns to Paris, where in the year 1820 he acquires part of the Château de la Muette, which he orders to be restored and enlarged to house his cellar with 2,047 bottles of wine and also his rich art gallery, with about 260 paintings of exceptional quality. Many of these works of art are in museum collections, such as the portrait of King Philip IV by Velázquez's atelier (today in the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg), the "Adoration of the Magi" by Albert Dürer (today at the Uffizzi Gallery, Florence), the portrait of his mother made by Rembrandt in 1634 (today in the National Gallery of London), as well as paintings by Correggio, Murillo, Teniers and Titian.
It was here that on August 5th of 1831, at the age of 79, he died and his nephew inherited all his assets.

Pierre-Orphée Erard (1798-1855)
Pierre Erard is the son of Jean-Baptiste Erard (1749-1826), and was born in Paris on March 10, 1794, in the middle of the revolutionary period.
The preparation to take charge of the family business, leads him to dedicate his studies to music and harp, as well to the english language. His arrival in London, on May 17th of 1814, to take over the business of the London branch, corresponds to the year after the crisis that hit the Paris branch. But this does not affect his stay in London, ending up there he registered a new patent for the harp, once again perfected in 1822. And at the Paris Exhibition of 1824, he won a gold medal.
With the economic crisis of the beginning of 1830, and with the taxes levied on goods inherited in France and England, he is obliged to sell his uncle's collection of paintings and to temporarily rent the Château de la Muette to Doctor Guérin, who installs an orthopedic clinic there.
He returned to Paris in 1834, the year he was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor, and on June 18th of 1836, he obtained the patent for the so-called "Gothic" harp. At this time, he managed to improve his business situation, and in 1844 he opened new stores at numbers 3 and 87 on rue Saint-Maur-Popincourt. Years later, in 1851, he exhibited at the London World's Fair, where his pianos were elevated to the best, ending up being appointed as a supplier to the young Prince Alberto, the Prince Consort of the young Queen Victoria.
In 1838 he married his second cousin Camille Février and returned to live in the Château de la Muette, where he lived with his three unmarried aunts, his sister Céleste and his brother-in-law, the composer Spontini. In 1853 he acquired the petite Muette (a wing of the castle separated by the destruction of the central body in 1793), and after that he started suffering from Alzheimer's and died on August 15, 1855 with dementia.

Continuation of Maison Erard, post-1855
After Pierre's death, the business passes to his widow who chooses his brother-in-law Antoine Eugène Schaffer (1802-1873) to head the Paris branch, and Mr. Bruzaud to the London branch.
Of the latter, the production of pianos stands out, namely the golden piano ordered on April 30th, 1856 by Queen Victoria and which today is in the Royal Collection in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace.
The London branch ended up being sold at auction in September 1890, with much of the business acquired by J. George Morley, a harp maker, who continues to produce harps on a smaller scale, until it closed definitively in the 1930s.
In 1883, a commercial agreement was reached with Amedé Blondel, and the company started to operate as Erard et Cie and, later under several commercial names such as Blondel et Cie (Maison Erard), Guichard et Cie (from 1935 to 1956), Erard et Cie SA (from 1956), until it ends up merging with Gaveau, starting to produce under the name Gaveau-Erard.
In 1961, it merged with its former competitor, Pleyel and, in 1971, it finally ceased its activity and the German piano manufacturer Schimmel buys the right to use the different brands. In 1978, Salle Gaveau's facilities were eventually acquired by harpist Victor Salvi (1920-2015).

Erard’s Stock Books from the London branch
It is thanks to the Morley family, and their descendants, that today we have the stock management books from the London branch, known as Erard’s Stock Books, which in December 1994 were purchased at auction by the Royal College of Music in London.
These books, which cover the activities of the London branch between the years of 1798 until 1917, during which 6,862 harps were produced, also give us a lot of information and some curiosities about this branch, from the list of costumers to the values of the pieces, as well as the many liters of varnish that was used.
Another information that gives to us concerns the weekly wages of workers, and the expenses in the design of specialized equipment, these show us that the production of Erard frères corresponded to the new “industrial era”, with its workshops being very different from those that until then were associated with the manufacture of musical instruments. An idea that we can also corroborate with the inventories of the Paris branch, which for the year of 1831 registered eighty workers specialized in nineteen different workshops, sixteen dedicated to the piano and only three to the harp, four joiners, one for assembly and one for gilding.

Provenance of this harp
According to Erard's Stock Books, kept in the library of the Royal College of Music in London, we realize that this harp was conceived in the London workshop in April 1831 and sold on the 28th of the same month to a Dublin musical instrument dealer, Mr Edw. MCCullogh.
Through a later note, we find out that this harp was sold at auction by Sullivan & Callaghan in the year of 1906.

Literature:
Alain Roudier – Les origines de la famille Erard, in Sébastien Erard, 1752-1831, ou la rencontre avec le pianoforte. Exhibition Catalogue, Luxeuil-les-Bains, 1993;
Anik Devriès – Sébastien Erard, un amateur d’art du début du XIXe siècle, in Sébastien Erard, 1752-1831, ou la rencontre avec le pianoforte. Exhibition Catalogue, Luxeuil-les-Bains, 1993;
Ann Griffiths – A dynasty of Harpmakers, World Harp Congress Review, Spring 2002;
Robert Adelson - The History of the Erard Piano and Harp in Letters and Documents, 1785–1959, Cambridge University Press, 2015;
Wenonah Milton Govea – Nineteenth and twentieth-century harpists: a bio-critical sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995;

VERITAS Art auctioneers would like to thank the Center Sébastian Erard, in particular to Professor Robert Adelson of the Conservatoire de Nice for his help with the information of this piece.