The Fondation Napoléon is parting with more than sixty objects from the collection of its founder, industrialist Martial Lapeyre, in order to sharpen the focus of its holdings. The pieces will be offered by Millon in Paris on 19 and 20 November, in two sales titled Souvenirs Historiques and La Face des Rois, held in room 9 at the Hôtel Drouot with viewing on 17 and 18 November.

None of the lots has a direct connection to Napoleon. They are gold boxes, enamel portraits, watches and miniatures dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and the foundation is selling them so that its acquisition budget can be devoted exclusively to the First and Second Empires. Lapeyre, who lived from 1904 to 1984, collected for almost forty years, buying at auction, from families and through dealers including the Galerie Kugel. His bequest led to the creation of the Fondation Napoléon, recognised as a public-interest foundation in 1987, and every lot in the sale carries that provenance.

A substantial part of the offering consists of enamel portraiture. Around ten of the boxes carry portraits by, attributed to or after Jean I Petitot, the seventeenth-century enameller sometimes called the Raphael of enamel painting. The highest estimate in the sale, €15,000 to €20,000, is on a gold snuffbox set with an eighteenth-century enamel portrait of a young man by Christian Friedrich Zincke, the German-born enameller who worked for the British court. Probably made in England in the early nineteenth century, the box frames the portrait in silver set with 39 old-cut diamonds.

Another highlight is a Paris gold box by Adrien-Jean-Maximilien Vachette, dated 1809 to 1819, holding a portrait of Marie-Louise d'Orléans, queen of Spain, estimated at €8,000 to €12,000. This is not the first time the foundation has thinned its collection in this way. In December 2019 it sent 271 objects from outside the Napoleonic periods to Artcurial, where most of them sold for nearly €920,000, with the proceeds earmarked for Napoleonic acquisitions.