Violin: 12290
Unlabeled.
Length of back: 35.7 cm
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In around 1876, Count de Chaponay sold the violin back to the Silvestres’ nephew, Hippolyte Chrétien who then sold it to the Englishman Henry Benjamin Merton together with an Amati violin for a total price of 5,000 Francs.
We learn from Arthur Hill that Luigi Tarisio sold this violin in 1836 to Pierre and Hippolyte Silvestre, dealers in Lyon, for 1,500 Francs. The Silvestre brothers subsequently sold it to the Lyonese violinist, instrument collector and bibliophile, Count Alexandre-Henri de Chaponay.
Merton brought this violin to London and consigned it for sale at Foster’s auction house together with the 1740 ‘Ysaye’ Guarneri and the 1690 ‘Payne’ Stradivari.
William Ebsworth Hill bought the three violins at auction and sold the ‘Heifetz, Piel’ to John Clarke Crosthwaite McCaul (1831–1903), his friend and long-time customer. McCaul owned a number of other important instruments including an Amati violin, two Guadagnini violas and a Bergonzi. The ‘Heifetz, Piel’ was his most important acquisition and one of his last.
In 1879 the violin came back to Hills and was subsequently sold to Edmund Janson, a city banker, who lived at Speldhurst, Kent. Upon his death in 1906, his son sold the violin to the J & A Beare firm in London who in turn sold it to Emil Hamma of Stuttgart. Two years later, Michael Piel purchased it from Hamma, possibly upon the advice of Louis Otto, a violinmaker and dealer from his native Düsseldorf.
The Piel family are reported to have owned a number of other important instruments including an Amati and a Guarneri. Rudolf Piel and his older brother, Otto Andrew, are recorded as violinists. Rudolf studied at Philips Andover and then Harvard and Columbia Universities.
Otto Andrew appears to have had a different career path that warrants further investigation. The 1910 United States census lists Michael Piel, his wife, eight children and six servants living in their home on West 72nd Street. Michael’s profession is given as “Brewer” and the only child with a profession listed was his twenty-four year-old son, Otto Andrew, who was listed as a “manufacturer of violins”.
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