Château de Jouac: Fin De Siècle Eclecticism and Surrealist Echoes

Jouac, with its 180 inhabitants, former uranium mine, stone houses and the church of St Peter and St Paul, also has a leafy château dominating the village: a large building built in 1875 by a cavalry captain. Almost a century later—in 1966 to be exact—René and Alice Lambert became its owners, dividing their time between the Limousin and their house in L'Isle-Adam, near Paris. For Alice, it was a return to her roots, as her mother's family came from the Haute-Vienne. Her father, the painter Clovis Trouille (1889-1975), only went there occasionally, preferring his unobtrusive house in Gisors and small private mansion at 57, Avenue Mathurin-Moreau near the Buttes-Chaumont to the lavishly furnished Château de Jouac. An anarchist with furniture evoking the Ancien Régime: now there's a surprise! Kept in the family until now, the château's contents are now up for sale, as is the building itself. On the menu are portraits of prominent figures as still lifes with flowers from the 19th-century French school, as well as bronze lamps, porcelain in the…