George Despret

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Signature of George Despret, 1906.

George Paul Joseph Despret (born December 7, 1862 in Binche , Belgium , † December 24, 1952 in Paris , France ) was a Belgian-French glass artist , engineer and industrialist .

Georges is sometimes incorrectly mentioned as his first name .

family

George Despret came from a long-established family of blacksmiths and glassmakers from the province of Hainaut in the cities of Anor (France) and Chimay (Belgium). Among the ancestors is also the Général de brigade Albert Victoire Despret (1745-1825).

He was the son of the master blacksmith Edouard Despret (* Chimay 1833, † Brussels 1906) in Anor, who was director of the Société générale de Belgique bank from 1883 until his death in 1906 . In addition, his father was the founder and president of the Compagnie du Congo pour le Commerce et l'Industrie (CCIC), where he was instrumental in the economic development of the Congo Free State , which is privately owned by the Belgian Minister for Colonial Business Albert Thys Belgian King Leopold II . His older brother Maurice Despret (* 1861 in Binche , 1933 in Spa ) was a senator, lawyer at the Belgian Court of Cassation and president of the Banque de Bruxelles , the second largest bank in Belgium at the time.

George Despret had a son, Edouard-Hector, who died at the age of 14. His daughter Madeleine married Fernand Doumer, the son of French President Paul Doumer . George Despret was Belgian but took French citizenship on January 18, 1896.

Life

As an industrialist

George Despret was introduced to glassmaking as a child by his uncle Hector Despret, who brought him up to his successor as head of the glass factories he founded in Floreffe in Belgium and Jeumont in France . George Despret was trained as an engineer at the École spéciale des mines et des arts et de manufactures de Liège when he had to accept this role in 1884 at the age of 22 after his uncle died on June 2nd at the age of 62. George Despret immediately began optimizing the tools and began manufacturing specialty glass in Jeumont in March 1885, including mirrors, glass wall cladding, tiles and panes of glass. For this he took over two more glassworks.

In 1887 he received an export permit, according to which his glass factories prospered and gained importance in the glass industry. The Jeumont glass factory was merged with the Recquignies factory in 1893 and with that of Boussois in 1908, creating the Réunion des Glaces et Verres spéciaux du Nord de la France . After the First World War , in which the industrial facilities were largely destroyed, Despret centralized the reduced production in 1920 to the location in Boussois, which is still in operation today. During the war, George Despret volunteered as head of the technical service to the French Minister of Commerce. During this time he helped found the French Institute for Optics (today Ecole Supérieure d'Optique ).

Despret applied for numerous patents. He made it possible for his brother-in-law, the Belgian engineer Émile Fourcault , and Émile Gobbe to develop their process for the production of glass panes in furnace furnaces , with which they achieved international success after the First World War. From 1931 to 1940 he was President of Banque Transatlantique , one of the oldest private banks in France. With the award of the Grand Cross on January 8, 1935, the Legion of Honor accepted him . He closed the glassworks in 1937. George Despret died on December 24, 1952 in his Parisian house on Quai des Orfèvres 61. He was buried in the family crypt in Anor.

As a glass artist

  • Mask of the ballet dancer Cléo de Mérode, around 1907. Fin-de-Siècle Museum .

  • Mask of a faun, between 1900 and 1910.

After taking over the two glassworks, Despret soon began to experiment with the production of pâte de verre . His experiments lasted more than ten years before he was able to develop a suitable binder for the glass paste that did not disintegrate or crack during production. He exhibited his work at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin . He made several copies of Tanagra figures based on models from the Musée du Louvre , but soon employed a number of sculptors for new designs, including Gérard Nicollet , Charles Toché , M. de Glori, Jean Goujon, Alexandre Charpentier , Yvonne Serruys and Pierre Le Faguays .

He produced a range of monochrome and multi-colored masks, with the early pieces re- fired for each color added and the later ones fed to the kiln in a single burn for all colors at once . His largest mask was a portrait of the ballet dancer Cléo de Mérode . He also created vases and bowls that looked like hard stone or marble, and others that were reminiscent of oriental ceramics. Many of his works were of an opaque quality, reflecting light with apparent translucence, others were done with subtle colored nuances or monochrome.

Despret regularly showed his pieces from Pâte de verre at exhibitions, for example at the Société nationale des beaux-arts in 1900 , at the Franco-British Exhibition in London in 1908, the art glass and crystal exhibition in Paris in 1910 and the Turin World Exhibition in 1911 . When his glassworks were destroyed in World War I, the collection of his most beautiful pieces was also destroyed, as was the documentation that he had given to the Jeumont Municipal Museum, which was also bombed. His last major exhibition took place in 1930 in Liège, Belgium .

His works were initially in the Art Nouveau style , later in the Art Deco style.

Works (selection)

  • Bust of the Princess Irène de Byzance
  • Mask of a toddler
  • Mask of an Italian woman
  • Coupe de forme libre reposant sur un piédouche , 1900
  • Une vestale à l'amphore , 1910
  • Femme nue s'appuyant contre un mur , 1910
  • Nu couché
  • Coupe haute
  • Nu féminin allongé , 1925
  • Mère et enfant , 1925
  • Buste de faune
  • Venus

literature

Web links

Commons : Georges Despret  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See birth certificate in Base Léonore .
  2. ↑ a b Abbé Trelcat: La famille Despret, 1512-1929. Verriers, maîtres de forge, metallurgists, soldiers. Lille 1929.
  3. ^ Gouverner la Générale de Belgique. Essai de biography collective . De Boeck Université, 1996, pp. 90-94
  4. ↑ G. Kurgan Van Hentenryck: Nouvelle Histoire de Belgique. 1905-1950, Michel Dumoulin - Emmanuel Gérard . Editions Complexe, 2006.
  5. ↑ Mariages . In: Le Figaro , issue 212 of July 30, 1912
  6. ↑ Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modern . Ministre d'État à l'Industrie et au Commerce, 1925.
  7. ↑ Helmut Ricke: Glass art. Reflecting the centuries. Masterpieces from the Glasmuseum Hentrich in Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. Glasmuseum Hentrich, Prestel, 2002, ISBN 3-79132-793-3 , p. 180f.
  8. ^ Frédéric Barbier, Jean-Pierre Daviet: Le Patronat du Nord sous le Second Empire. Une approche prosopographique. École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1989, p. 200.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f Victor Arwas : The Art of Glass. Art Nouveau to Art Deco. Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery, Papadakis Publisher, 1996, ISBN 1-90109-200-3 , pp. 55f.
  10. ↑ a b Notice LH n ° 19800035/138/17515, Georges Paul Joseph Despret . In: Base Léonore , p. 21f.
  11. ↑ Georges DESPRET, maître verrier. Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur . In: Bulletin trimestriel de l'Association. Racines et Patrimoine of December 30, 2017, p. 8.
  12. ↑ Janine Bloch-Dermant: The Art of French glass, 1860-1914. Vendome Press, 1980.
personal data
SURNAME Despret, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Despret, George Paul Joseph (maiden name); Despret, Georges Paul Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian-French glass artist, engineer and industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Binche , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1952
Place of death Paris , France