Edouard André
Édouard André (* 1833 ; † 1894 ) was a French politician and art collector.
Life
As the son of Ernest André (1803–1864), Édouard André was born into a Protestant banking family that came from southern France and had its heyday in the Second Empire . With the backing of Emperor Napoléon III. Open to the ideas of Henri de Saint-Simon , the André family benefited from the financial investments made in the modernization of France and the large companies of the Empire.
Édouard André lost his mother at the age of two. He was destined for a military career. At the age of 18 he entered the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr and later belonged to the emperor's personal elite regiment. He fought in Italy and Mexico before leaving the army in 1863. He began building a collection of furniture, paintings, and objets d'art. From 1864 to 1870 he followed his father as a member of the Gard department . After the end of the Second Empire, he became involved in the National Guard in 1871. He made efforts with the Rothschilds to secure the required amount of reparations payments from France to the German Empire . Then he turned away from political life disappointed and devoted himself exclusively to his collections.
In 1868 he had the architect Henri Parent build a feudal city palace on 5,700 m² of land in Paris at 158 Boulevard Haussmann , which cost 1,520,000 francs . The construction work lasted from 1869 to 1875. The palace now houses the Musée Jacquemart-André .
In 1872 he bought the Gazette des Beaux-Arts and became president of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs . In the same year his bust of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and his portrait of Franz Xaver Winterhalter were completed. He had another portrait made by the painter Nélie Jacquemart , whom he finally married in 1881.
The couple went to Italy every year to buy works of art to expand their collection. In this way they assembled one of the finest private collections of Italian art in France. They also acquired important works by French artists such as Nattier , Vigée-Lebrun , Fragonard and David .
After the death of Eduard Andrés in 1894, Nélie Jacquemart expanded her collecting activities over Italy to the Orient in order to expand the collection with valuable handicraft objects. True to the intentions of her late husband, she bequeathed the house on Boulevard Hausmann, including the collection, to the Institut de France with the aim of setting up a museum there. This museum opened in 1913.
literature
- Virginie Monnier: Edouard André. Un homme, une famille, une collection . Editions de l'Amateur, Paris 2006, ISBN 978-2-85917-439-2 .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | André, Édouard |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French politician, member of the National Assembly and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1833 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1894 |