“I WOKE uP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND WALKED INTO MY
kitchen to have a bowl of cereal. As I looked out through my
new floor-to-ceiling windows I noticed a wonderful warm light
being drawn in from the snow reflecting the moon. I said to
myself, ‘Where am I? How did I get here?”
For this homeowner, it all began with a postcard. she
received a mailing from J. Berault Designs one day and rather
than tossing it, tucked it away with no clear intention. “It just
looked like me,” she recalls.
Almost four years later she found herself ready for a change,
but hesitant to leave the home in which her two boys had
grown up. “I built this house in 1985 and it just didn’t reflect
my taste anymore,” the owner says. It was the home’s art that
tipped her off. she has been a collector of museum-quality
art, mostly 19th century paintings, for years. While some of her
pieces are signed by legendary artists such as Rembrandt,
others were purchased simply because they fit her personality.
As a mother, she gravitates toward paintings of children with
playful expressions, like her favorite, Girl and Child by French
portrait master William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Looking around,
the owner knew it was time to surround her artwork with
an interior design of the same caliber. she began digging for
that postcard.
standing in the home’s newly renovated kitchen, interior
designer Josephine Berault points to the living room. “It’s hard
to imagine, but there used to be a white leather Barcalounger
right there,” she says. Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to picture.
Berault lays photos out across the new limestone counter
