Through sloppiness and indifference, Ireland is on the verge of losing a role in the preservation of an Irish architectural treasure on the continent, according to Paris-based architect Patrick Mellett.
For the past three years Mellett, who is Irish, has attempted to interest Irish officials in the fate of E.1027, a seaside villa at Roquebrune Cap Martin on the French Riviera. The house was built between 1926 and 1929 by the Co Wexford-born architect Eileen Gray and is considered a seminal work of the post first World War International style.
Born in Enniscorthy, the daughter of James Maclaren Smith, a painter from a middle-class background, and an Anglo-Irish aristocrat named Eveleen Pounden, Eileen's name was changed to Gray in childhood when her mother inherited the Scottish title of Baroness Gray. Eileen Gray's father abandoned his wife and five children to pursue painting in Italy.
To escape from an oppressive home environment, Eileen enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London in 1901, aged 23. She moved to Paris the following year and remained there for the rest of her life. Pictures in a fine biography by Peter Adams show the transition from an Edwardian beauty at the beginning of the century to a short-haired, modern woman by 1926 - the year she began building E.1027.
The name of Gray's villa is a code identifying its proprietors, the Irish designer and her companion, the Romanian architect and publisher Jean Badovici. The "E" stands for Eileen, 10 signifies "J", the 10th letter of the alphabet for Jean, 2 is for "B" and 7 for "G".
The Swiss architect and painter Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris - better known as Le Corbusier - liked E.1027 so much that he built a holiday cabin overlooking it, and enraged Eileen Gray by sneaking in to paint eight frescoes without her permission. The villa follows the five precepts that Le Corbusier laid down for modern architecture: it is built on pilotis or pillars; the roof is reached by a staircase; living space is open-plan; the windows are horizontal and the southern exposure creates an open facade. E.1027 is painted white, with references to naval architecture such as handrails and a life preserver. Being in the house gives one the impression of floating above the sea.
Gray was an independent character who never married and who, according to her biographer, had affairs with both men and women. But her relationship with Jean Badovici endured for more than three decades, until his death in 1956, and E.1027 - with its little jokes stencilled on the walls ("Monsieur qui aime se regarder la nuque" it says next to the magnifying shaving mirror) - was her gift to him. "Like music, a work acquires its value only through the love it manifests," she wrote in a notebook.
The house was conceived as a total project, including the garden, furniture, rugs and light fittings. When she died in Paris in 1976 at the age of 98, it was sold to a Swiss architect, then re-sold to another Swiss man, Peter Kaegi, who died in 1996.
For lack of money, Kaegi was forced to sell the villa's original furniture, all of which had been made by Eileen Gray. It was snapped up by the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert in London.
Eileen Gray's work has attracted a following throughout the world - the French fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent is one of many enthusiastic collectors. At a 1989 Sotheby's sale, for example, a screen she made for Jean Badovici from 44 black lacquer blocks connected by rods sold for $374,000. Another prototype design, a black lacquer, chromed steel and leather armchair, made $231,000. In the last six years of her life, Gray was the subject of exhibitions in Paris, London, Los Angeles, Brussels, Vienna and New York. Interest has continued with Gray exhibitions in Paris, Frankfurt and at Harvard University since 1994.
Mellett is in contact with admirers of Eileen Gray in Japan, Holland, Germany, Italy, Israel and the US - which makes the silence from Ireland all the more surprising. He first tried to interest Dublin in purchasing the Gray villa as part of the 1996 Imaginaire Irlandais festival in France - "as a way of showing Europe that we were part of it," he says. With an asking price of 3 million French francs, (£360,000), the house is not expensive. "It's the cost of a semi-detached house in Blanchardstown - that's what disgusts me!" Mellett says. But E.1027's metal railings are rusted and it was damaged by squatters who were thrown out by police last summer. Renovations will double the cost.
In January 1996, Mellett wrote to the then Minister for Housing and Urban Renewal, Liz McManus. Five months later, he received a response saying that, "while the Minister fully supports the proposal she has no funds at her disposal to assist a project of this nature". McManus's office promised to forward the proposal to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, and Mellett also wrote to the former Minister, Michael D. Higgins, but he never received a reply. The only Irish official who did anything substantive to help was the late Lar Cassidy of the Arts Council in Dublin, who facilitated an Eileen Gray exhibition at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996.
In the meantime, the then President, Mrs Robinson and her husband Nicholas met Mellett in Paris in the summer of 1996. At the time, he proposed turning E.1027 into the Irish equivalent of the French Villa Medici in Rome. Louis XIV bought the villa in Rome in 1666, and it has been used ever since to house exceptional French artists studying in Italy. Fragonard, Ingres, Berlioz, Carpeaux, Bizet and Debussy all stayed there. E.1027 could easily house two Irish artists at a time for one-year stints, Mellett says. Alternatively, he proposed creating an international Irish-sponsored award, whose winners would be invited to live in the villa for specific intervals.
Nicholas Robinson wrote back to Mellett saying "it will not be possible for us to become involved in the project, as funding would be a matter for government and the private sector". The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) - which made Eileen Gray an honorary fellow in 1975, the year before her death - put Mellett in contact with several wealthy Irish businessmen, who chose not to fund the project. Mellett met the Minister for Tourism, James McDaid, last year, but he too was unable to help. And a request from September this year for a meeting with the present Minister of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile De Valera, has not yet been answered.
The French government has taken an option on buying E.1027 by the end of this year. Mellett is pleased the house will be preserved, but he regrets the lack of Irish interest. At this late stage, he hopes only that Ireland will choose to participate in some way, perhaps as a millennium project, and he has made a last-ditch effort by requesting a meeting with the Taoiseach.
"Eileen Gray is one of the great icons of 20th-century design," he says. "It really is crazy the Irish haven't got involved."
How does Mellett account this seeming indifference to the woman he considers the most internationally recognised Irish architect and designer? "I honestly think they don't know anything about her," he says. "They don't recognise her importance. Ireland is a literary society. The Irish love music and have a certain appreciation of art - but architectural heritage doesn't play an important role in their value system."