Isaac de Camondo

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Comte Isaac de Camondo, photograph by A. Bert, Paris, around 1890

Comte Isaac de Camondo (born July 3, 1851 in Constantinople , † April 7, 1911 in Paris ) was a banker , musician , art collector and patron . He came from a Jewish banking family and lived in France from the end of the 1860s, where he worked in the Paris branch of the family business from 1874. He later became involved in other companies. As a diplomat he represented the Ottoman Empire for several years as consul general in Paris. Camondo admired the music of Richard Wagner and composed himself, including the opera Le Clown , which was performed in France and abroad. Over several decades, he amassed an important collection of works of art from different eras and cultures. Outstanding is his importance as a collector of Impressionist works, one of whose earliest patrons he was. Camondo donated his extensive art collections to the Louvre , some of them during his lifetime . His collection of impressionist paintings can now be seen in the Musée d'Orsay .

family

The Camondo family originally came from Spain. After the Spanish Jews were expelled , they settled in Venice. After the opening of the ghetto in 1797, the Camondos moved as Austrian citizens to Constantinople, where Isaac Camondo, the brother of their great-grandfather, ran the banking house Isaac Camondo & Cie. In 1802 . founded. After his death in 1832, the bank was passed on to his great-grandfather Abraham Salomon Camondo. He became one of the most important financiers of the Ottoman Empire and created a considerable fortune with the banking and real estate business, which later passed to his grandsons, Behor Abraham Camondo and Nissim Camondo .

Isaac de Camondo was born in 1851 as the second child of Behor Abraham Camondo and his wife Régina Baruch (1833-1905) in Constantinople. His older sister was Clarisse de Camondo (1848–1917), whose later marriage to Léon Alfassa (1849–1920) resulted in six children. The members of the Camondo family gave up Austrian citizenship in 1865 and took on Italian citizenship . The Italian King Viktor Emanuel II raised Abraham Salomon Camondo and his descendants to the rank of count in 1867. Since then, the family members have been using the name de Camondo . In 1869 the entire family moved to Paris, but lived temporarily in London during the Franco-Prussian War . From 1871 to 1875 Isaac's father had the architect Denis-Louis Destors build a palace that is still standing today at 63 Rue Monceau, right on Parc Monceau , in one of the most expensive residential areas in Paris. His uncle bought the neighboring property, Rue Monceau No. 61, on which his cousin Moïse de Camondo later built a villa in the style of the 18th century, which is now the Museum Nissim de Camondo and shows his art collections.

Life

The drawing room in Isaac de Camondo's apartment at 82 avenue des Champs-Élysées, around 1910

Isaac de Camondo grew up in Constantinople and learned French as well as Turkish. He and his family moved to Paris in 1869, where he completed his Baccalauréat . Isaac de Camondo lived in his parents' house in a wing until the villa was sold in 1893. He then moved into three connected apartments on Rue Gluck before moving into a spacious apartment at 82 avenue des Champs-Élysées in 1907 , in which he lived until his death in 1911. Unlike other family members, Isaac de Camondo never emerged as a builder. He had only rented the Château de Sainte-Assise near Melun, which was inhabited on hunting trips from 1885 to 1894 .

Isaac de Camondo never married. Two children emerged from his liaison with the opera singer Lucy Berthet : the writer Jean Bertrand (1902–1980) and the actor Paul Bertrand (1903–1978). Isaac Camondo commissioned a portrait of Jean Bertrand from the painter Henri Lebasque in 1910 . The artist also created a posthumous portrait of Isaac de Camondo in 1912.

Professional career and international recognition

In 1874, Isaac de Camondo officially joined the Isaac Camondo & Cie. a. Although he only visited his native Constantinople once again in 1882, he and his family had excellent connections to the Ottoman financial market and were involved in arranging investments in the modernization of the local infrastructure. For these activities he received numerous awards and medals from various governments. In addition, the Ottoman Empire appointed him consul general in Paris for the period from 1891 to 1895. In addition to his father Behor Abraham de Camondo and his uncle Nissim de Camondo, Isaac de Camondo served as president of the Italian committee of the world exhibition of 1889 .

After Isaac de Camondo withdrew more and more from the operational business of the banking house Isaac Camondo & Cie. In the 1890s . withdrew, he took on managerial positions in other companies. In 1901 he was elected to the board of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas and also served as President of the Compagnie Générale du Gaz pour la France et l'Etranger (gas company) and the Compañía de los Ferrocarriles Andaluces (Andalusian railways). In 1909 he was President of the Société Nationale , which later became the Crédit Foncier Ottoman investment bank .

The music lover and composer

Title page of the program booklet for the opera Le Clown , 1908

Isaac de Camondo was a great music lover and was already composing his own pieces in his youth. His favorite composers were initially Johann Strauss (son) and Jacques Offenbach before turning to Richard Wagner's music. In August 1876 he attended the first performance of the entire tetralogy of Der Ring des Nibelungen under the direction of the composer in Bayreuth . He traveled there again in 1882 to see the premiere of Parsifal with his friends, the composer Léo Delibes and the cellist Franz Fischer .

The apartment in Rue Gluck, which Camondo moved into in 1893, was directly opposite the Opéra Garnier , of which he was a long-term subscription and which he supported financially. In 1904 he founded the Société des Artistes et Amis de l'Opéra (Society of Artists and Friends of the Opera) and became its first president. He had also been a shareholder in Opéra-Comique since 1898 and financially supported his friend Gabriel Astruc , the editor of the Musica magazine .

As an amateur, Camondo took composition lessons from the composer Gaston Salvayre . Some of his songs and instrumental works were performed in the Salle Erard in 1904 . His best-known work is the opera Le Clown , which premiered in 1906 at the Nouveau Théâtre in Paris with the American soprano Geraldine Farrar . The libretto was by Victor Capoul . Further performances of the opera took place in 1908 and 1909 at the Opéra-Comique and also in 1909 in Marseille . Performances followed in 1910 in Vichy , 1911 in Antwerp and 1912 in Cologne.

The art collector and patron

In his family environment, Isaac de Camondo got to know interiors with exquisite handicrafts as a child. According to the taste of the family and the time, he furnished his apartments with valuable oriental carpets, French furniture from the 18th century and sculptures from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. At two major auctions, Isaac de Camondo purchased large quantities of objects for his handicraft collection. From the collection of Baron Pichon numerous silver works came into his possession in 1878 and at the auction of Baron Léopold Double in 1881 Camondo mainly acquired art from the 18th century. Century, including in particular the Trois Grâces clock probably created around 1770 by Etienne-Maurice Falconet (today in the Louvre). As early as 1874 he was also collecting East Asian art. He acquired Japanese sculptures, lacquer work, ceramics and, on a large scale, prints by Japanese artists. He was one of the earliest collectors of Japonism in France. Camondo was one of the founders of the Société des Amis du Louvre (Friends of the Louvre) in 1897 and was elected to the board of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1899 .

His collection of paintings is of particular importance, starting with the purchase of five works by the painter Jean-François Millet in 1875. This was later followed by paintings such as Chevaux arabes se battant dans une écurie and Passage d'un gué au Maroc by Eugène Delacroix , Voiliers , Baigneurs sur la plage de Trouville and La jetee de Deauville by Eugène Boudin , Jeunes filles au bord de la mer by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , L'atelier de Corot and Jeune fille a sa toilette by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and En Hollande, les barques près du moulin by Johan Barthold Jongkind .

At the beginning of the 1890s, Camondo acquired works of French Impressionism on a large scale. In 1892 Fin d'Arabesque by Edgar Degas was added to his collection, which was to be followed by around 30 more works by this artist, so that he could later dedicate his own room in his apartment to this painter. In addition to ballet scenes and pictures of the racecourse, this group of works included the paintings Les repasseuses , Après le Bain and the well-known double portrait L'Absinthe , as well as various pastels and drawings.

  • Édouard Manet:
    Le fifre
    1866
    Musée d'Orsay

  • Alfred Sisley:
    L'Inondation à Port-Marly
    1876
    Musée d'Orsay

  • The Degas room in Isaac de Camondo's apartment at 82 avenue des Champs-Élysées, around 1910

  • Edgar Degas:
    Fin d'Arabesque
    1877
    Musée d'Orsay

Another block of works in the Camondos collection includes paintings by Claude Monet , whom he repeatedly visited at his home in Giverny . One of the earliest Monet in his collection is the winter landscape La Charrette, route sous la neige à Honfleur from 1867, followed by pictures taken on the Seine in the 1870s , such as Le bassin d'Argenteuil from 1872, or Les Barques, Regates a Argenteuil from 1874, the year of the first group exhibition of the Impressionists. Also in his collection were later landscapes created in Vétheuil and Port-Villez (today: Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer ). Of the series of photos from the artist's late creative phase, he owned a view of the London Parliament building and four of the five paintings today in the Musée d'Orsay with the motif of Rouen Cathedral . From Monet's time in Giverny, Camondo's collection includes Bras de Seine près de Giverny from 1897, as well as two pictures with water lily motifs ( Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie bleue and Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie blanche ).

Camondo also put together a group of important works by Édouard Manet . These include the works Lola de Valence and Le fifre from the 1860s , as well as Madame Manet au piano , Clair de lune sur le port de Boulogne and Branche de pivoines blanches et secateur . From Manet's late work, Camondo owned the painting Le citron and the pastels Buste de femme nue and La femme au chapeau noir (Portrait d'Irma Brunner, la Viennoise) .

Another artist represented in the collection on a larger scale is Alfred Sisley . From him Camondo acquired, for example, the landscape paintings L'Inondation à Port-Marly , La barque pendant l'Indonation , La neige a Louveciennes and Moret, bords du long . There are also three portraits of women by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , including the picture Femme se peignant from around 1907 . He also acquired Effet de neige a Eragny and Jeune fille à la baguette from Camille Pissarro .

Several works by Paul Cézanne from the Late Impressionists are among the highlights of the Camondo Collection. In addition to the still lifes Dahlias , Le vase bleu and Pommes et oranges , the collector also bought such well-known paintings as La Maison du pendu and a version of Les Joueurs de cartes . There are also individual works by Vincent van Gogh (Couronne impériale dans un vase de cuivre) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (La clownesse Cha-U-Kao) .

  • Claude Monet:
    La cathédrale de Rouen
    1893
    Musée d'Orsay

  • Paul Cézanne:
    Les Joueurs de cartes
    around 1894–1895
    Musée d'Orsay

  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:
    La clownesse Cha-U-Kao
    1895
    Musée d'Orsay

  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
    Femme se peignant
    around 1907
    Musée d'Orsay

In addition to the collection of paintings, Camondo also brought together a considerable collection of drawings and other graphic works. These include works by Jean-Louis Forain , Jean-Honoré Fragonard , Paul Gavarni , Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , Johan Barthold Jongkind , Maurice Quentin de La Tour , Charles Meryon , Jean-François Millet , Pierre Paul Prud'hon , Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , Théodore Rousseau , Augustin de Saint-Aubin , Antoine-Louis Barye , François Boucher , Charles-Nicolas Cochin , François de Cuvilliés the Elder , Honoré Daumier , Jean Charles Delafosse and Antoine Watteau .

Camondo began donating parts of his collection to the Louvre in 1897. Further donations followed in 1903, 1906, and after his death in 1911. In his will, written in 1908, he had decreed that his collection must be shown in the Louvre for 50 years as a closed ensemble and that the space provided for it should bear his name. Since 1914 the collection was presented accordingly in the Louvre. Today the collection is divided between different museums. These include the Musée d'Orsay, which shows the Impressionist collection, the Museum Guimet , where the collection of Asian works of art went, the Musée de l'Histoire de France , the Musée national de la Marine and the Louvre, where the works are, for example by Delacroix from the Camondo collection. The Salle de la donation Camondo in the Louvre still commemorates the generous donor.

Awards

literature

  • Gaston Migeon: Le comte Isaac de Camondo . Lahure, Paris 1913.
  • Gaston Migeon: La collection Isaac de Camondo au Musée du Louvre . Librairie Van Oest, Paris 1914.
  • Gaston Migeon, Carle Dreyfus: Meubles et objets d'art de la Collection Camondo . Albert Lévy, Paris 1921.
  • Paul Vitry: Catalog de la Collection Isaac de Camondo . Musées Nationaux, Paris 1922.
  • Frédérique Patureau: Le Palais Garnier dans la société parisienne: 1875–1914 . Pierre Mardaga éditeur, Liège 1991, ISBN 2-87009-402-7 .
  • Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy: the passions of a Paris collector . Thames & Hudson, London 2008, ISBN

0-500-51410-0.

  • Anne Hélène Hoog: La Splendeur des Camondo, de Constantinople à Paris (1806-1945) . Skira-Flammarion, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-0812-2893-1 .

Web links

Commons : Isaac de Camondo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy, page 305.
  2. ^ A b c Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy page 306.
  3. ↑ a b c d Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy page 309.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy page 311.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy, page 308.
  6. ^ A b c Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy, page 312.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy, page 307.
  8. ^ A b Marie-Noël de Gary: The Camondo legacy, page 310.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 11, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Camondo, Isaac de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Camondo, Isaac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Entrepreneurs, musicians, art collectors and patrons
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Constantinople
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1911
Place of death Paris