Home » Feature » Art and Culture
French Art Deco master left elegant mark on city
Print Edition
LEONARD, Veysseyre & Kruze is an unfamiliar name but the firm’s architectural works, such as the white, classic Okura Garden Hotel and the grand, chocolate-colored Bearn Apartments, are familiar to many local residents.
In the new book “Shanghai Art Deco Master,” Spencer Dodington and co-author Charles Lagrange unveil the life and work of French architect Paul Veysseyre, one of three partners of this prolific firm that had changed the look of the former French concession.
The book is based on family archives kept by two sons of Veysseyre in France as well as a full-page advertisement of the firm in a 1934 local French newspaper, showcasing a galaxy of their best works and profiles of the three name partners and their team.
Veysseyre’s life mirrored that of Park Hotel designer L.E. Hudec. Both were born in the last decade of the 19th century, they learned architectural skills at home, joined armies for World War I but finally made way to the right city at the right time.
Hudec arrived in Shanghai in 1918 and Veysseyre in 1921, just before the city became a paradise for architects during its “golden age” of 1920s-30s.
In Shanghai, Veysseyre first worked for a French company but soon created his own firm — A. Lenard & P. Veysseyre, with Alexandre Leonard, another talented French architect who followed a friend’s advice to go to Shanghai in 1921. The third partner, Arthur Kruze, joined them in 1934.
The new firm began with small villa projects before the new Cercle Sportif Francais project (today’s Okura Garden Hotel) brought huge success in 1925.
Shanghai Tongji University Vice President Wu Jiang uses the word “revolutionary” to describe the design of the firm.
“The interior design of this Baroque-style Renaissance building, from stained glass ceiling, staircase to sculptures, shows ambience of a new style. That echoed the trend proposed by 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. French architects were more active in creating Shanghai’s ‘new-style architecture’,” he indicates in the 1996 book “A History of Shanghai Architecture 1840-1949.”
Dodington, who has renovated many of Shanghai’s Art Deco masterpieces, called the project “the most influential in his career,” after which, “Paul Veysseyre had not much time for little builders.”
“From 1921 to 1937, they received 68 commissions, many of which were remarkable buildings. So we estimate maybe today over 100 buildings are still standing,” said the expert at the Shanghai International Literary Festival at M on the Bund.
“Veysseyre did a lot of things in the French concession. He didn’t care much to work in other parts of old Shanghai. He was a great nationalist. He confined his power, his friendships and business relationships to the French concession, not international settlement, not Chinese parts of old Shanghai,” Dodington added.
The firm turned entirely from classic to Art Deco style when designing Bearn Apartments in 1930. Standing at the corner of Huaihai and Yandang roads, Bearn is a brown and creamy edifice in a grand scale full of vertical and horizontal lines. The firm moved their atelier in the following year.
As one of Shanghai’s first Art Deco practitioners, the firm also designed a rainbow of Art Deco apartments, including the Willow Court Apartments on Fuxing Road and Midget Apartments on Wukang Road, to name just a few.
Dodington found signature elements that the firm had labeled on their architectural works, such as art deco patterns in “groupings of three” or orange tones, dark or light, that fill almost every single house.
“Paul died in 1967 and he didn’t tell his nine children his stories. I always wondered because other art deco architects in Shanghai of the same time didn’t do this,” he says.
Compared with Hudec, newly voted one of the “99 Shanghai Symbols” by local netizens, Veysseyre and his firm are lesser known.
“Hudec was a commercial architect attractive to the general public while A. Leonard & P. Veysseyre catered only to a niche market. So if Hudec was a triple prism that crystallized an important period of Shanghai history, then the French firm was only one side of the prism,” says Tongji University Professor Liu Gang, an expert on the former French concession who has studied the firm.
The professor notes that name partner Leonard was a more interesting man, a genuine internationalist. “He was unaffected by Chinese culture. He was gifted and free-spirited. I believe Leonard was the spirit of the firm,” Liu says.
Leonard, however, disappeared from Shanghai in 1946, along with his records and archives. Veysseyre went to work in Vietnam in 1937, where he did a great job, and enjoyed a happy life with a big family before returning to France.
“Most people working in old Shanghai had to leave in a hurry for one reason or another, or they stayed here and lost lots of things. Because Veysseyre left in 1937, he took it all with him. The two business partners did not leave any records behind. Kruze went to Hanoi and we never heard more of him,” Dodington says, explaining the choice of Veysseyre as focus of his book.
Veysseyre here again resembles Hudec, who recorded everything and whose family preserved his archives, the foundation of Hudec studies that have fueled his popularity in Shanghai over the last several years. It also is believed there were more Hudecs and Veysseyres who were at the right place at the right time, whose destinies merged with that of this city.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
