The Melbourne Club brushes French art scandal
The chairs fooled Versailles. The man fooled Melbourne.
Guillaume Dillée cuts a compelling figure as a new member of the Melbourne Club. Third generation scion of the Cabinet Dillée, a dynasty of French art consultants, he authenticated works for the Louvre, curated pieces from the Musée d'Orsay, and was appointed a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 2004. When the family sold its three generation collection at Sotheby's in 2015 – realising €8.4 million ($12.2 million) – he already called Melbourne 'home'.
Dillée's arrival excited the top of the social pile. The Australian Financial Review marked the occasion with a story headlined, "Respected European art expert is moving to Australia". Former ANZ Banking Group chairman Charles Goode and his wife Cornelia threw a cocktail party. He was introduced to leading philanthropists including Hugh Morgan, Lady Primrose Potter and Justin O'Day. Samantha Baillieu hosted a private dinner at her Merricks Art Gallery on the Mornington Peninsula following an exhibition of Dillée's landscapes. The National Gallery of Victoria's director Tony Ellwood moved promptly to enlist his expertise in acquiring several works for the gallery.
What Melbourne's establishment did not then know was that Dillée had departed France as a figure in one of the most sensational art fraud investigations in decades – what became known as 'the Versailles fake chair scandal'.
