Edmund de Waal Reconstructs History in “The Hare with Amber Eyes”

Like many moneyed scions, Charles decided against joining the family business, choosing life as an art patron instead. He bankrolled, edited, and wrote for France’s leading art periodical of the day, the Gazette des Beaux-Art, and eventually became interested in the Impressionists, befriending, and buying work from, Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. Such was his importance to their milieu that he’s believed to be the model for the titular character of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, and for the top-hatted gent in the background of Renoir’s painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party.

Most importantly, Charles acquired the hare and hundreds of other figurines like it. Known as netsuke, these ornamental curios were meant to attach to a box containing a man’s personal effects (pipe, tobacco, etc.) to the sash, or obi, of his robe. Their exquisite craftsmanship made them highly desirable, especially during the period craze for Japanese art known as Japonisme, which had a pronounced impact on artists such as Manet, James Whistler, and Mary Cassat. Charles eventually gifted the netsuke to his cousin Viktor, but some sixty years later they’d play a role in the family’s dramatic downfall at the hands of the Nazis.

After the Austrian Anschluss of 1938, and the fall of France two years later, the Nazis confiscated the Ephrussis’ assets—their banks and magnificent homes in Vienna and Paris, and of course, Charles’s art collection, which resided at his own resplendent domicile, the Hôtel Charles Ephrussi on the Avenue d'Iéna in the city’s 16th arrondissement.

However, the netsuke were spared, hidden by a family maid until after the war. By then, members of the Ephrussis had escaped to England, Mexico, and the U.S. In time, De Waal inherited the tiny treasures.

As lengthy as this precis may seem, it’s necessary for appreciating the show, which is less about the art than it is about De Waal’s narrative. The bulk of the proceedings are ensconced in an installation by Highline starchitects Diller & Scofidio. Rich with darkly stained Neo-Gothic details, it suggests a cross between a deconstructed library and Wunderkammer containing artifacts—photographs, books, a Torah mantle, a Second Empire chair—as well as artworks reflecting Charles eclectic tastes, which range here from fleshy Rococo fluff by Fragonard to vigorously gestural portraiture by Berthe Morisot.

Besides the Morisot, inclusions of Charles’s Impressionist paintings are few, since surviving works by higher-profile names are now distributed among various institutions. The omissions include Manet’s still life, A Bunch of Asparagus from 1880: As the story goes, Charles paid Manet more than the agreed-upon amount and, deciding to make up the difference, Manet sent him another canvas depicting a single asparagus stalk.

The exhibit also contains color photos by Iwan Baan of Charles’s home today, which, if not empty, certainly resonates with le temps perdu. The main attractions, though, are the netsuke, 154 of which are divided between two tabletop vitrines. Dating from the early nineteenth-to early twentieth century and fashioned in wood or ceramics as well as ivory, they fancifully depict animals, mythical figures, and comical characters.

Decades of attentive handling have buffed each to a buttery sheen that seems burnished by memory. But in the show, as in the book, De Waal’s meaning finally rests with the hare, whose amber eyes bore witness to events far larger than itself.