A violin by Antonio Stradivari

It is thought that the 1727 ‘ex-Reynier’ could have been owned by the Gorchakov family in St Petersburg in the late 18th and early 19th century. From them, it passed to M. Mozcinski, who sold the violin to Léon Reynier, from whom it received its name, in 1866. Reynier was a well known, French virtuoso violinist in the 19th century who has two strads named after him. He famously received the 1681 ‘ex-Reynier; Comte de Chenais’ strad as a gift from Napoleon III, second emperor of France and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Reynier owned this violin until his death in 1895, at which point it was sold by W.E. Hill & Sons to Rev. Albert Willan of York, who also bought the 1693 ‘ex-Gould’ strad around the same time. Rev. Willan took the violin to the 19th century London auctioneers, Puttick and Simpson, a year later, where it went unsold so they returned to W.E. Hill & Sons, from whom it was bought by Captain John Audley Harvey. Captain Harvey was an amateur violinist and collector, thought to have owned at least three strads as well as a 1658 Nicolò Amati.

Jules owned the violin until his death in 1938, when it was sold privately to Jack Albert Billmeir, a millionaire shipping magnate who established the Stanhope Steamship Co. Ltd, named after his home on Stanhope Road. All his ships were subsequently named with the prefix ‘Stan’. In 1938, the same year he bought the ‘ex-Reynier’, he also purchased the Chestfield Manor Estate from George Reeves. Far from the developer’s dream 90-acre estate, which he had thought it would be, Billmeir fought a 22 year battle and eventually settled for around 10 acres of development in 1960. He died just 3 years later and the estate was auctioned off, while the violin passed to his wife who owned it until 1973, when it was sold at auction to Gijs Joost van der Grinten of Amersfoort, The Netherlands.

Van der Grinten was an architect until 1971 when, at the age of 44, he resigned from his firm and devoted himself to violin making. He sold the ‘ex-Raynier’ through Sotheby’s to Jacques Français, one of the leading violin experts of the 20th century in 1979. Français kept it for five years before selling it to an anonymous buyer in West Germany, from whom it was bought by the Italian violinist and conductor, Salvatore Accardo, in c1987. Accardo founded the Accardo Quartet and co-founded the Walter Stauffer Academy, a school working to preserve the tradition of the Italian school of string instruments, but he was most famous for his interpretations of Niccolò Paganini’s music. In c1994 Accardo sold the ‘ex-Reynier’ anonymously and it was bought by its current owner, Fondation Louis Vuitton, in 1997.