Armand Doria

Armand Doria at the age of 73

Armand François Paul Desfriches, Comte Doria (born April 24, 1824 in Paris ; died May 7, 1896 in Orrouy ) was a French art collector and local politician. He was one of the earliest collectors of the works of French Impressionism .

Life

The Doria family belongs to the old French aristocracy and owned large amounts of land. Armand Doria's parents were the Marquis Stanislas Philippe Henri Doria and his wife Pauline Mélanie Louise, née Bignon. His older brother Arthur inherited the title of Marquis, Armand Doria carried the title of Comte . The family seat was the Chateau de Cayeux in Cayeux-en-Santerre .

Château d'Orrouy, Armand Doria's country house

Armand Doria married Marie-Berthe de Villiers on June 30, 1851, who died in 1855. There were two children from this marriage. The daughter Marie-Luce was only 20 years old, the son François (1853–1935) inherited the title Comte and later, like his father, built up an art collection. Armand Doria lived in an apartment in Paris on rue de la Perle in the Marais district and lived in the country in the Château d'Orrouy in the commune of Orrouy in the Oise department, inherited from his grandparents . Armand Doria served as the mayor of Orrouy for several decades.

Art collection

Armand Doria began building an art collection in 1856, which later comprised around 7,000 works. After his death, the collection was auctioned in May 1899 in the gallery of Georges Petit in Paris for around one million francs . Doria had mostly acquired works from contemporary artists. He bought these at auctions in the Hôtel Drouot , from art dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel or directly from the artists.

At the beginning Doria mainly acquired works by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , of whom he owned 69 paintings and 77 drawings. These included, for example, the oil paintings The Roman Campagna with the Claudian Aqueduct ( National Gallery , London) or View of Olevano ( Kimbell Art Museum , Fort Worth). Other early acquisitions came from painters such as Johan Barthold Jongkind , Philippe Rousseau and Charles-François Daubigny . By Honore Daumier there was in the collection of the painting Doria Il Trovatore ( Cleveland Museum of Art ) and a version of the subject A car of the Third Class ( National Gallery of Canada , Ottawa). By Eugène Delacroix Doria had the painting Head of a Woman with red turban ( Bristol Museum and Art Gallery ), by Jean-François Millet the picture La tricoteuse ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris). There were also pictures by artists such as Adolphe-Félix Cals , Gustave Colin , Stanislas Lépine , Victor Vignon and Eugène Boudin , as well as sculptures by Antoine-Louis Barye .

Armand Doria achieved special importance as an early collector of Impressionist works . Shortly after the first group exhibition of the Impressionists, shown in the rooms of the photographer Nadar in 1874 , Doria bought the painting The House of the Hanged Man, Auvers ( Musée d'Orsay , Paris) from Paul Cézanne . He was the first ever to buy a Cézanne painting and one of the few collectors who bought one of the works on display immediately after the exhibition. He later bought the picture Snow Melt in Fontainebleau ( Museum of Modern Art , New York) from the same artist . At the second group exhibition of the Impressionists in 1876, Doria bought three paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , ten of which were later in the collection. These included, for example, the paintings Seated Woman / La Pensée ( Barber Institute of Fine Arts , Birmingham), Le Grands Boulevards ( Philadelphia Museum of Art ) and Glaïeuls dans une vase (private collection). The collection includes the portraits of women Femme à l'epingle d'or (private collection) and Young Woman with Pelerine ( Musée des Beaux-Arts , Lyon) by Édouard Manet , and Claude Monet's view of the Seine with boats entitled Péniches à Asnières (private collection) and Alfred Sisley's La neige à Louveciennes winter landscape (Musée d'Orsay, Paris). There were also of Edgar Degas the painting Dancer at the Photographer ( Pushkin Museum , Moscow), by Berthe Morisot women representation Femme cousant ( Albright-Knox Art Gallery , Buffalo), from Armand Guillaumin the winter landscape Crozant, Première neige (private collection) and Camille Pissarro the landscape views Le Potager du manoir d'Ango, Varengeville, soleil couchant and Matinée de printemps, Pontoise (both private collection).

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  Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot: View of Olevano

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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir: La Pensée

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  Édouard Manet: Young woman with a cape

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  Paul Cézanne: The house of the hanged man near Auvers

literature

• Anne Distel: Les collectionneurs des impressionistes, amateurs et marchands . La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-85047-042-2 .