Léo Drouyn

Self-portrait 1839

François-Joseph Léo Drouyn (born July 12, 1816 in Izon , † August 4, 1896 in Bordeaux ) was a French painter, graphic artist, architect and archaeologist. 40 years before photography became possible to document in the form of drawings, engravings, etc., he recorded the cultural heritage around the Gironde . His work includes more than 5000 drawings and 1500 prints. Before the Néoromantisme era, he belonged to the generation of the Romantic movement, which honored and preserved the rediscovery of medieval values.

life and work

Saint André Cathedral , Bordeaux, 1865
below: Detail of the entrance portal of the Abbey of Saint-Maurice de Blasimon , 1883

Léo Drouyn came from a respected family of the lower nobility , his father, Franz Joseph Drouyn (1775-1824), was Esquire , commandant of the navy and later port director of Bordeaux. At the age of almost 40, he married Fanny Marie Bontemps Mensignac in February 1815 . Of the three children, Léo was the oldest.

The son was sent to the Collège Royal in Nancy (today: Lycée Henri-Poincaré ), where he made his first experiences with drawing from nature and portraits. The family's wish that he should study law came to nothing. Instead he apprenticed to a trader for some time, albeit without personal benefit. It was there that his calling as an artist awoke. At first he learned from Jean-Paul Alaux dit Gentil in Bordeaux , but soon he was unable to teach him anything. At the end of August 1838 he married Anne Marie Montalier (1813–1895). In 1840 Drouyn went to important painters in Paris in order to improve his artistic skills in private lessons. For three years he learned and worked in the workshops of Paul Delaroche (drawing), Jules Coignet (painting) and Louis Marvy (etching), before returning to Bordeaux. From 1843 he began to gain a foothold in his homeland and turned to archeology . He researched and published about regional gems. At the same time he made a series of ten engravings with contemporary images of the research sites.

From his marriage to Anne Marie came Léon Drouyn (1839–1918), who married into the Godart family and later had large descendants himself.

A very creative time began in Drouyn's life. He joined the Société française d'archéologie pour la conservation et la description des monuments (Archaeological Society for the Conservation and Description of Monuments), published a typification of the most remarkable types of medieval architecture in the Gironde department , from a collection of fifty prints and was accompanied by historical-descriptive commentaries by Léonce de Lamothe (1812–1874), Chairman of the Committee on Historical Monuments. In 1846 Drouyn began his Périgord sketchbook for the registration of the monuments of this region, which was eventually published by Arcisse de Caumont . The revolution abruptly ended his work in the Périgord. With around 500 drawings from his album going to press in 2001, his work at that time was not recognized until very late.

In 1850 Drouyn became a member of the Académie des Sciences Belles Lettres et Arts in Bordeaux and a member of the archaeological society. He now turned back to painting, drawing and watercolors, which he was able to improve at the Barbizon painting school . He was represented in several exhibitions with individual works, for example in 1851 with the painting Bords du Ciron .

His albums of drawings, notes and sketches are now an invaluable source of information for the knowledge of French architectural heritage before major restorations began, such as that of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and others, which he strictly refused. His extensive oeuvre between 1842 and 1849, especially that of medieval architecture, is perhaps due to the actionism of other leading specialists in medieval architecture. Drouyn created etchings on the most important sights of the region (churches, castles, monasteries) in order to explain his written statements. He also supported the work of his friend Alexis Vicomte de Gourgue (1801–1885) in the Dordogne , who was active in the same mission as he was. With the eye of a photographer, he also depicted small heirlooms such as old farms in his studies with ethnographic accuracy.

His activities for art history continued. In 1853 he was appointed curator of the Museum of Antiques in Bordeaux. Around 1860 he belonged to the Société des antiquaires de France , which he had joined a year earlier, along with Charles des Moulins (1798–1875) and Victor Raulin (1815–1905) to the leading figures who advanced the organization. In 1859 he became head of the Archives communales de la Gironde (until 1871), in 1860 he became a drawing teacher at the Lycée in Bordeaux. Over the years, he also published regularly in smaller papers such as the Revue d'Aquitaine , Revue d'art chrétien or the Revue catholique de Bordeaux . In 1885 he was still publishing sketches about the customs of artists and scientists of the seventeenth century.

In 1870 Drouyn was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor ; In the last years of his life he received numerous other honors. He died in his children's house on Rue Des Fourniels , which today bears his name.

Works (selection)

• Bordeaux vers 1450. Descreption topographique. Imprimerie G. Gounouilhou, Bordeaux 1874

literature

• Paul Bonnefon: Un artiste provincial: Léo Drouyn. In: L'Artiste: journal de la littérature et des beaux-arts. Paris, 1892, pp. 41-56

Web links

Commons : Léo Drouyn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of Drouyn on the parish website of Izon (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Bonnefon
2. ^ ^{A b c} Michel Boyé: La modernization du monde rural en Aquitaine: actes du LIe Congrès d'études régionales de la Fédération historique du Sud-Ouest tenu à Pont-du-Casse, les 25 and 26 avril 1998. Fédération historique du Sud -Ouest, Volume 51, 1999,
3. ↑ Center de philologie et de littératures romanes, Strasbourg (editor): Études gobiniennes , 1966, p. 30.