MAISON D'ART

Step into the captivating world of French gallerist Amélie du Chalard, for whom life, art and history are in perfect harmony.

- JEREMY CALLAGHAN

A mélie du Chalard's home in Paris's 9th arrondissement is testament to her transformation from banker to gallerist. A fortuitous architectural discovery of this light-filled volume, once a private library and later an artist's studio, provided the shell for a kind of cosmic continuity towards its current incarnation as a harmonious home, blending life and art.

According to Amélie, that is exactly as it should be: "I believe that art belongs in living spaces, not [somewhere] hidden away.

Amélie, Maison d'Art is a gallery designed like a home - it's a warm and inviting space that is alive," she says.

The daughter of a banker and an artist, Amélie had been gifted art from an early age. When she began buying it, her grandfather suggested always buying two works from the same artist: one to keep and one to sell, which she did, displaying her acquisitions in her first apartment. Banking colleagues, described by Amélie as "not types to ever set foot in a gallery", would "ooh" and "aah" at her impressive collection.

That's when the penny dropped, and the banker jumped ship to open her own gallery.

It was while working with architect Rebecca Benichou on the gallery concept - to be housed on the ground floor of a Parisian building that Amélie discovered an abandoned space above it.

Nine-metre-high ceilings and a huge skylight funnelled abundant natural light into the level, clues that they had uncovered something special. The remnants of a post-WWII library lined the expansive walls, but it wasn't hard to imagine them blank the canvas that Amélie had been looking for to paint a family life with art, and a physical embodiment of the philosophy she'd been working towards.