Man’s Relationship to Animals Explored Through Finely Crafted Objects at Hôtel de la Marine in Paris

When Sheikh Hamad Abdullah Al-Thani sold off the Hotel Lambert in Paris and its extraordinary contents in 2022, the depth and extent of his collecting became a thing of legend. A soup tureen gifted to Catherine the Great by Count Orloff; a gilded candelabra commissioned by Marie Antoinette; a hand-painted screen of the Bay of Naples that had belonged to Coco Chanel… it took five distinctive lots to deliver this unparalleled treasure trove of decorative arts to the market. The sale made $76.56 million, and the house—an early baroque palace by architect Louis Le Vau with interiors by Charles le Brun and Eustache Le Sueur—sold for $226 million to the French businessman and art collector Xavier Niel. Actually not bad for a mini-Versailles: the same design team went on to make the most famous palace in the world.

But Sheikh Hamad, a key member of the Qatari royal family who is still shy of 40, has not stopped collecting. Since 2021, carefully curated exhibitions at the Hôtel de la Marine in Paris have shown highlights from The Al Thani Collection, which now contains over 5,000 works of art, including very contemporary paintings by artists including Issy Wood and Adrian Ghenie. The latest exhibition, called “Animalia,” offers a look at man’s relationship to animals through the medium of finely crafted objects, from Neolithic times to 1900.

“Sheik Hamad has the mind and the eyes of a falcon,” Giambatista Valli, the couturier who is a friend of the prince, told me at the time of the Hotel Lambert sale. “He is passionate about beauty first and foremost. He is driven by a curiosity which is backed up by incredible knowledge.”

The four galleries, which The Collection has agreed to rent from the Hôtel de la Marine until 2028, occupy just a part of the building. The hotel itself (palace is a better translation) is handsomely positioned on the Place de la Concorde and, built in the 1750s as part of the consolidation of Louis XV’s power, once contained the royal carpets, furniture, jewels and other grand effects. Later, once the revolution took hold, its capacious loggia overlooking the Place became the site of royal beheadings. For years after, the building had various government functions.

The twice-yearly exhibitions are curated by Amin Jaffer, who is also the director of The Al-Thani Collection. Here, he has selected nearly 130 objects that demonstrate a virtuosity with materials and making that seems part of the human condition and crosses civilizations and centuries. The first room begins with a small gaming piece carved from red jasper in the form of a panther, inscribed with the name of the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut (1460 BC), and seven objects later ends with a cockatoo fashioned by Fabergé from white quartz in 1900. “Sheikh Hamad is not interested in the banal,” says Jaffer with notable understatement.

While nothing here is less than astonishing, there are standout works nonetheless. An imperious Egyptian bronze cat (600-400 BC) represents a cultural viewpoint in one crisp statuette. “It crystallizes the feline character of independence, distance and intelligence, and with its gold earring helps us to understand the reverence Egyptians had for cats, not just for their physical properties—their stealth of movement, their ability to see in the dark—but the way they approach us on their own terms,” says Jaffer. (He confesses to being a dog person himself.)

A towering bird mask created from wood by the African Senafu people in 1900 was made to be worn by a shaman and to synthesize man with the bird themselves. “It was designed to transfer the authority of the bird to the human,” says Jaffer. “Birds are creatures that travel from earth to the sky. They can reach the celestial domain.” A Japanese wooden deer evokes the reverence that culture held (and still holds) for the animal and its tantalizing antlers. A glittering cane head by Fabergé has all the mystery and venom of the serpent, the major player of many myths, as well as a creature to be feared in real life.

“Today we live a very separate life from animals, but humans have shared the planet with animals since the beginning,” says Jaffer. “In the past, humankind lived among many animals who were invested with many properties—they were hunted, eaten, venerated, mythologized, and domesticated. They were a very present and powerful force, sometimes dangerous as well as essential for survival.” He would like to remind us of those deep connections and make visitors consider once again the interdependence of man and beast. “It’s not new to ask if animals have rights, or a capacity to reason,” says Jaffer.

Jaffer was born in Africa to Indian parents and has lived all over the world (current addresses include Paris and Venice), and brings this internationalism to the show. As it crosses continents, it is the power of objects that provokes the questions, and might lead to the odd answer. Apart from that, the exhibition offers a joyous feast of simply wonderful things, beautifully lit and exquisitely installed. There’d be nothing wrong in just reveling in the workmanship and what drives man to create such beauty (as their owner clearly does). Meanwhile, the opening night attracted a very upscale Parisian crowd, including Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon des Deux Siciles. Perhaps she doesn’t know what happened on the loggia in 1793.