Léon de Brondeau was born in 1820 in Senelles. He completed brilliant medical studies in Montpellier and Giessen (Germany) but, at the end of his course, he preferred to devote himself to family farming and writing. In particular, in 1848 he published a book entitled De l’Amélioration du Sort des Classes Poor, which is part of the Republican family heritage. Brondeau divides his time between Senelles, Paris and Nice. As a collector, he notably acquired a large number of ceramics. It would seem that it was in the 1880s that he decided to adorn the facades of the house of Senelles. In 1892, an article in L’écho de Gascogne mentioned: “For more than twenty-five years, he had also been busy collecting paintings, bronzes and other works of art […]. In 1880, he found that he had too many enamels, too many dishes, too many plates in his interior. It was then that he came up with the idea of applying them to the exterior of the house in Senelles…”. This is how some six hundred and fifty dishes, plates and other ceramic plates are still on display before our eyes today.
The iconographic arrangement of these ceramics owes nothing to chance. Léon de Brondeau would have designed a real decorative program. The main facade alone paints the portrait of the owner. We notice for example on a plaque decorated his initial "B" mixed with the "M" of the name of his wife; or even Urania, muse of astronomy, revealing Brondeau's passion for the stars. By small touches, we also note the tastes and ideas of the owner. Caricatures by André Gill bear witness to the political scandals of the time: Lesseps and the Panama Canal, Naquet and the law on divorce... A plate with a Masonic decor suggests that Brondeau was a member of the lodge of Villeneuve... For Sébastien Quéquet, doctor in art history, "these talking earthenware attest to the owner's desire to make his facade a space for interaction and dialogue
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