Due in part to the confidence in his competence shown by Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville, from 1750 Augustin Blondel held the post of general treasurer of the Caisse des Amortissements that was intended to pay down the king's debts and from April 1752[5] that of supervisor of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, responsible for ephemeral decorations for all the fêtes of the court of Louis XVI.
[12] Setting off the gilding of frames and the dark patination of bronze statuettes and the white of small marbles, green damask that Hester Thrale noticed covered the walls in at least one of the salons.
Of the rich furnishings, by ébénistes of the calibre of Bernard II van Risamburgh,[13] little has been securely identified, not even Blondel de Gagny's gilt-bronze cartel clock by Charles Cressent a Rococo sculptural composition surmounted by Father Time with his scythe.
[18] Augustin Blondel de Gagny's own refined taste in paintings ran to Flemish and Dutch old masters of the 17th and 18th century (a Van Dyck Young Man Playing a Lute, Gabriel Metsu,[19] Nicolaes Berghem, Philips Wouwerman,[20] David Teniers the Younger' Prodigal Son[21]), Among his French paintings were Nicolas Poussin's Nourriture de Jupiter and Claude Lorrain's View of the Campo Vaccino, and a port capriccio,[22] all now at the Louvre.
[23] His cabinet, distributed among eleven rooms of the hôtel, was also celebrated for the number and quality of the small bronze sculptures interspersed with porcelains on tables and commodes and chimneypieces.