THE LOIRE VALLEY, France—The “garden party” sales that Vendôme, France–based auctioneer Philippe Rouillac holds each June at the 17th-century Château de Cheverny, 100 miles southwest of Paris, have become a summer highlight on every French connoisseur’s social calendar. More than mere buzzy fetes, the auctions are important showcases for Loire Valley heirlooms. Past highlights have included Charles Wilson Peale’s 1782 portrait of George Washington, which sold for €5.2 million ($8.2 million) in 2002 and is now hanging in the dining-room corridor at the White House in Washington, D.C. This year’s sales, held June 6, 8 and 9, are likely to appeal once more to U.S. patriotism, with 100 lots from the archives of the Comte de Rochambeau (1725–1807), the French general who helped Washington’s troops defeat the British in the Battle of Yorktown. Among the offerings are coded letters from Louis XV (€3,000–5,000; $4,700–7,900 each), and the bergère in which Rochambeau died (est. €60,000–80,000; $95,000–126,000). The sale also includes 75 late 18th-century French swords and sabers valued between €100,000 and €150,000 ($158–237,000); a cache of 250 17th-century French gold coins unearthed last year by a 22-year-old Portuguese mason in Montrichard, south of Vendôme (est. €100– 200,000); and a recently discovered 10-foot-high lifesize drawing by the Neoclassical artist Pierre- Paul Prud’hon. The picture depicts the silver, mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli mirror that the French silversmith Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot designed for the city of Paris in honor of Marie Louise of Austria’s marriage to Napoléon, in 1810, and that the widowed, penniless empress had melted down in 1823. The drawing is expected to fetch between €10,000 and €15,000 ($15,800–23,700).

By Simon Hewitt