Le Château De Saint-Georges-Motel

Le Chateau de Saint-Georges-Motel, situated in Northern France, was built in the early 17th Century by René de Pilliers and Charlotte de Trousseauville. Following Consuelo Duchess of Marlborough’s divorce from the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1921, she married Colonel Jacques Balsan and they purchased the Château as a summer house, employing Maison Jensen to redesign the interior.

In her autobiography, The Glitter and The Gold, Consuelo describes the Maze family staying at the Château; Here at St George Motel, we were privileged to become hosts to a number of friends to whom we lent small houses on the estate. This group of artists, musicians and writers centred around Paul Maze. Paul is an artist not only in oils and pastels, but also in his truly bohemian mode of life. He faced life with the same equanimity as he had during the war and lived gaily in the moulin with his Scottish wife and their two children and the six already born to her. They lived there during the summers and gathered around them painters such as Dunoyer de Segonzac, Simon Levy and the lovely Odette des Garets. (Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and The Gold, New York, 1952)

Consuelo Vanderbilt, Later Duchess Of Marlborough (1876–1964)

Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877–1964) was an American heiress and socialite who became one of the most famous figures of the Gilded Age. Born in New York City into the enormously wealthy Vanderbilt family, she was the daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt and Alva Vanderbilt. Her family’s wealth came largely from the railroad empire built by her grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Consuelo grew up surrounded by luxury, but her childhood was also shaped by strict expectations surrounding social status and marriage.

And so, in 1895, at the age of eighteen, Consuelo married Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in New York. Consuelo was secretly engaged to Winthrop Ruherfurd and initially refused. It was only when her mother claimed that her health was suffering that she agreed to the marriage and so became the greatest of the “Dollar Princesses” by marrying the most eligible bachelor in England and bringing to the union her substantial fortune which in turn allowed the Duke to restore and maintain the majesty of Blenheim Palace.

Consuelo and the Duke had two sons, John and Ivor, but their marriage was never a happy one and they separated in 1906, eventually divorcing in 1921.

After her divorce, Consuelo married Jacques Balsan, a French aviator and businessman. Unlike her first marriage, this relationship was based more on personal affection and companionship. The couple lived between England, the United States and France where they resided at the Château de Saint-Georges-Motel. They would invite artists, musicians and close friends to come and stay. Paul and Margaret Maze lived at the Mill in the grounds of the Chateau and frequent guests included Sir Winston Churchill, who Consuelo had grown close to while married to his cousin the Duke. Winston would come and paint at the Chateau with Paul Maze and other fellow artists such as Edouard Vuillard, Andre Denoyer de Segonzac and Jean Marchand.

This idyllic life abruptly came to an end with the outbreak of World War II. The Balsans fled to America, never to return to Saint-Georges-Motel and settled in Palm Beach Florida. Consuelo died in 1964 and is buried in St Martin’s Church, Bladon, in Oxfordshire, next to her younger son, Ivor Spencer-Churchill.

Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill (1898-1956)

Born in London on 14 October 1898, Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill was the younger son of Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, and Consuelo Vanderbilt. His elder brother, John, later became the 10th Duke of Marlborough. Educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, Ivor joined the Royal Army Service Corps in 1917 and served as a lieutenant. He was decorated with the French Legion of Honour for his wartime service.

From an early age Ivor had been drawn towards the arts, and, influenced by writings of Roger Fry, he developed a particular interest in Modern French painting. Paul Maze recounts that It was through his mother’s introduction that we became friends. He then had only an oil by Steer. We went to Paris together and I took him round galleries and introduced him to painters. He was a man of rare sensitivity and distinction and, as he started acquiring impressionists, his inborn appreciation and judgment never led him astray…. He was eventually to own some of the most famous Impressionist pictures. Humble about his possessions, he never had an intellectual approach to them – he just loved and understood painting…

(Paul Maze, interviewed by Wolfgang Fischer, Marlborough Gallery, 22nd March
1967.) 

Through his love of art, Ivor became a member of the Contemporary Art Society and served as Honorary Secretary for over 15 years in the 1930s and 40s. Personally he built up a wonderful collection of 19th and 20th Century French paintings and is most fondly remembered for his philanthropy, gifting twenty-one works to public galleries including paintings by Bonnard, Cezanne, Degas and Gauguin.

In Ivor’s obituary Lord de la Warr wrote: If one could sum up so complex a character in one word, I would think it would be “quality”.

Paul Maze Through the Eyes of Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill

“Maze delights especially in painting London which he understands as no other living painter. What may be termed the dramatic moments in the city’s life, its ceremonies, its ritual and its pageantry, stir and kindle his imagination. The black and scarlet of a guardsman’s uniform seen against a warm grey background of architectural detail, the veridian green of plane trees lining the paved and yellow Mall; these and other everyday sights of London have an irresistible attraction for his eye.” - Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, 1939

“It is perhaps in his own native Normandy and in the neighbouring Ile de France that his exquisite feeling for tone and atmosphere find freest play. Those regions, blest with clearer, purer light than any other part of northern Europe, provide him with the surest opportunity of excelling in direct, spontaneous, plein-air painting…In this genre he is supreme.” - Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, 1939

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Auction Details

Wednesday 21 October, 11.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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