A new art gallery will open at Chateau Mouton Rothschild this summer to permanently house the travelling exhibition Mouton Rothschild: Paintings for the Labels.
Lucien Freud’s 2006 label
The new display space, separate to Mouton’s Museum of Art in Wine, forms part of major renovations at the Pauillac First Growth, due for completion in June 2013.
This will be the first time that all original artworks commissioned for the labels, first by Baron Philippe and now Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, will be on display at the estate.
The first label Baron Philippe commissioned was in 1924, from poster designer Jean Carlu, to celebrate the chateau’s move to estate-bottling.
He then returned to more traditional labels until 1945, when he celebrated the end of the war and his return to his property with the famous V for Victory label by Philippe Jullian.
Almost every great – or controversial – artist of the last 70 years has been commissioned to design a Mouton label. The list includes Picasso, Chagall, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Lucien Freud, Anish Kapoor, Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, Jeff Koons, Chinese calligrapher Gu Gan, and Prince Charles.
The artists are paid with 10 cases of Mouton Rothschild (five from the year of their label, plus five of different vintages).
‘The art work created for every label from 1924, and then 1945 to 2010, will be on display,’ Baroness Philippine told Decanter.com. ‘The exhibition will be housed at Mouton, but will continue to visit other cities for temporary exhibitions as it has done in the past. The exhibits within the Museum of Art in Wine have been kept as they were before the renovation work and a new space is being dedicated to this major collection.’
Mouton Rothschild: Paintings for the Labels has been shown in 42 cities since 1981, in museums such as the Pushkin in Moscow, the Hermitage in St Petersburg, the Victoria and Albert in London, and at Sotheby’s in New York.
Mouton Managing director Philippe Dhalluin told Decanter.com they expect 50,000 visitors per year once the chateau reopens in late June.
Written by Jane Anson in Bordeaux
