During his life Bernard Tapie knew the joys of an immense fortune as well as the displeasure of monstrous debts… The late businessman and jack-of-all-trades of show business, who died on October 3, 2021, left behind him several court cases and slates that make up a delicate legacy for his clan. After the sale of his mansion, forcing his widow Dominique to pack up, it is the turn of his furniture to be put up for sale.
As reported by Sunday newspaper in its May 9 edition, an auction will be held on July 6, 2022 at the Atelier Richelieu in Paris. The sale, titled The Bernard Tapie Collection, a French passionwill understand no less than 180 lots (13 paintings, 128 pieces of furniture, 25 lights and 14 carpets), “for a conservative estimate of between 4 and 5 million euros“, specifies the daily which adds that this sum is “doubtless lower than the acquisition value of the set but which reflects the considerable loss of prestige of the 18th century furniture.“It must be said that, nowadays, old furniture is no longer as popular, but some pieces should give rise to great battles because several museums would be interested according to Me Estelle Nguyen-Hong, auctioneer of the Parisian house Artus Auction German Nguyen-Hong, “designated by the courts of Paris and Bobigny to carry out the sale and settle the debt of the Tapie spouses“.
Among the most expensive lots, we find in particular a painting by Hubert Robert dit Landscape with the waterfalls of Tivoli, estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000 euros or a rare Greek chest of drawers known as the Buffon chest of drawers attributed to Martin Carlin, estimated at between 250,000 and 300,000 euros. A property with such sentimental value, because the flamboyant Bernard Tapie – whose life will be brought to the screen by Netflix with Laurent Lafitte in his guise – had set his sights on this piece of furniture from the beginning of his fortune by buying it to the famous antique dealer Bernard Steinitz.
Bernard Tapie’s furniture had a special value for him since it had taken him years to acquire it and liked to present it to his guests in his private mansion on rue des Saint Pères, in Paris. It was seized from him for a time in 1994 because of his conflict with Crédit Lyonnais. “At the end of a Homeric legal procedure, ‘the seizure was canceled for defect of form, but the corporate officer preferred to keep the furniture with regard to the important debts of the companies and the holding company of Bernard Tapie’“, says his former lawyer Maurice Lantourne at JDD. Convinced of winning his legal battle, Bernard Tapie refused to refurnish and he was right, recovering all his furniture in 2008… 14 years later!