In January 2023, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris acquired La Partie de bateau (The Boating Party), an 1877 painting by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) hailed as a major work of Impressionism for its bold and dynamic treatment, along with its subject’s carefree nature.

But this wasn’t always so. In fact, “The Boating Party” was long regarded as minor in the history of painting – much like the rest of Caillebotte’s work. The artist had fallen out of fashion before his death, mainly because of the outmoded subjects he dealt with, such as manual labour or idleness.

Caillebotte’s paintings are now of interest to museums and wealthy collectors – so wealthy as to send prices spiralling and alarm institutions. In 2021, Los Angeles’s Getty Museum purchased le Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (Young Man at His Window) for $53 million, breaking the painter’s previous record of $22 million for le Chemin montant (The Ascending Path) at a Christie’s auction in 2019.

The price for The Boating Party was €43 million. When it went on sale, France’s ministry of culture decided to classify it as a national treasure in recognition of its exceptional nature. However, the ministry failed to free up funds to purchase the painting. It also prohibited it from leaving the country for 30 months, triggering a countdown to keep the canvas in France.

The price far exceeded the Musée d’Orsay’s acquisition budget, which is around €3 million per year. To prevent Caillebotte’s work from slipping back into private hands, as had been the case since the death of the painter’s last descendant, a call for sponsorship was launched with an attractive incentive: a tax deduction of 90% of the cost of the painting.

Already a patron of the Musée d’Orsay, the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) luxury group – of which Bernard Arnault is the main shareholder – leapt on the opportunity. True to form, the acquisition was not made discreetly, with the group issuing an inspired press release, which would go on to feature in an AFP dispatch. It is the latter that appears in the press, with no mention whatsoever of the French government’s gift to LVMH.

The fact that a private group is using the purchase of a painting from a public collection for PR purposes is questionable in itself. But the real problem lies elsewhere: it is the taxpayer who is bankrolling LVMH’s communication campaign – precisely 90% of it, due to the tax benefit. For the company, the cost is minimal, and the operation reinforces its image as a “cultural benefactor”, while potentially allowing the private group to exert a diffuse influence within the museum. Indeed, donations often generate an implicit sense of indebtedness.

The Louis Vuitton Foundation, a ‘gift to France’?

The purchase of Caillebotte’s painting is a textbook initiative by the LVMH group. Are these donations selfless? One would be forgiven for asking so, not only in light of the extent of this specific tax deduction, but of the frequency with which Arnault gets away with a low tax rate of 14% – and little press scrutiny to boot. Some have openly questioned the generosity of the patronage carried out by the giant luxury group, which has an annual turnover of €80 billion.

In 2014, for example, when the Louis Vuitton Foundation was built in Paris, LVMH was able to slash construction costs by 60% by deducting them from its taxes thanks to the Aillagon law of 2003 on patronage. That’s a €518 million tax rebate. That year, the cost of the foundation (“a gift to France”, according to Arnault) alone accounted for 8% of the country’s tax breaks, forcing the French parliament to impose limits on the law for the first time.

When, following the fire at Notre Dame de Paris in 2019, LVMH pledged millions to restore the cathedral while stressing it would not benefit from the law, this was hardly out of the goodness of its heart. Quite simply, the firm’s donation ceiling had been largely reached.

Above all, Arnault wanted his €200 million donation for the cathedral to dwarf the €100 million donation of his long-time rival, Kering, the world’s second-largest luxury goods group founded by François Pinault.

Caught in its own trap, LVMH had no choice but to double the stakes and, of course, communicate extensively about the operation. This attracted a lot of criticism, which brought Arnault out of his usual reserve: addressing the camera during a meeting with shareholders, he defended himself by arguing that in some countries, he would be congratulated rather than criticised for such an act.

La Partie de bateau on tour in French museums

To celebrate its arrival in public collections, La Partie de bateau has gone on a rock-star tour. It is being exhibited from one museum to the next (an unusual practice) in order to present it to as wide an audience as possible: first at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then in Marseille and finally in Nantes. Unknown masterminds then came up with a peculiar idea: to transport the painting by boat from city to city, pushing it along the country’s canals and rivers. After all, it’s a boat trip, so what could be better than taking it on a boat trip?

This is something that is never done. For simple reasons of time, cost and security, paintings are always transported in their crates, by lorry and aeroplane and under the watchful eye of conveyors so as to minimise the risks of transit. The idea of ferrying an exceptionally expensive painting across the country several times by a slow (it would have taken several weeks) and potentially submersible means of transport raises the question of capital risk in relation to the rather dull metaphor.

Even more oddly, the crate in question had to be decorated with a particular motif for this tour – a detail that sheds light on the logic at work behind the scenes of patronage.

Masterpiece in a luxury trunk

Starting from a certain insurance value, a work of art is stored and transported in a wooden crate that protects it. Waterproof, insulated, varnished: there are crates for all uses, made to measure or available for hire. In general, there is little fantasy in their appearance; on the contrary, they must remain discreet, if not anonymous. Some museums, particularly those that lend out a lot of works, have these crates painted in specific colours so that they can be easily identified in their overcrowded storage rooms.

In the case of La Partie de bateau, the crate had to be specially designed to protect the star of the art world during its dangerous aquatic journey. Louis Vuitton reportedly offered to transport the painting in one of its famous, exorbitantly priced trunks, thereby securing prestigious publicity in addition to the extensive media coverage already generated by the acquisition of the work.

In the end, the museum’s curators opted for speed and sent the painting in a crate. But there were other instances when LVMH had the last word. In 2018, for example, Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid left the Rijksmuseum for the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo in a Louis Vuitton trunk.

The trunk carried a work that didn’t belong to the trunk maker, but never mind. Coincidence? Again, one would be forgiven for doubting it so, given that this is a group that never shies away from mixing advertising with patronage, deliberately blurring the boundaries by skirting the limits of the law, but not those of ridicule.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Tanguy Gatay, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris Lumières

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Tanguy Gatay ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.