Eyre de Lanux: An American Decorator in Paris

Exhibition at the Huybrechts gallery, 11 rue Bonaparte, Paris from September 19 to October 19, 2013

Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux (1894-1996) was born in Pennsylvania, into a cultured and wealthy family. Eldest daughter of Richard Derby Eyre, lawyer, and Elizabeth Krieger, she was the niece of architect Wilson Eyre Jr. (1858-1944) and Louisa Lear Eyre (1872-1953), sculptor, to whom she was very close. She studied drawing and painting at the Art Students League in New York until 1915.

She adopted the pseudonym Eyre de Lanux after her meeting with the diplomat and French writer Pierre Combret de Lanux, whom she married in 1918 before leaving the United States for France at the end of the year.

The couple socialised with leading figures from the literary and artistic worlds: Cocteau, Picasso, Matisse, Joyce, Stein and Man Ray, who would make several portraits of the artist. She became the mistress of Drieu la Rochelle, then of Aragon.

Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux wrote a column in Town & Country, and frequented the company of Romaine Brooks – who painted her portrait under the title Huntress – and the studio of sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

In 1926, she met Evelyn Wyld through Eileen Gray (with whom she had created a weaving workshop in Paris) and drew geometric patterned rugs, which Evelyn Wyld then realised. They participated for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Decorateurs in 1928, where they featured carpets and a monumental table made of a slab of sandblasted glass supported by two blocks of glass, and they were present at the first exhibition of the Union of Modern Artists in 1930.

Eyre de Lanux designed apartments and houses in France and abroad. These include the pied-à-terre of the Dutch art critic Jan Heiliger on Île Saint-Louis; two apartments on rue Gît-le-Cœur; George Sebastian's house in Hammamet, Tunisia; and the house of the modern art collector Isabelle Clow in Lake Forest, a collaboration with architect David Adler.

In 1932, the opening of the Décor boutique and the fitting out of the Le Pavillon Bleu bar in Cannes marked the end of her career. It was in 1989, during the Robin Symes collection sale at Sotheby's New York, that Elizabeth Eyre of Lanux emerged from oblivion.

She used lacquer and straw marquetry, but also materials which were new at the time, like cork, amber or linoleum. Like Jean-Michel Frank, she would call on the Chanaux company to create her furniture.

Text in French only