Marie Adrien Persac

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Bois de Flèche Plantation (1861)
French Opera House (1859)
Port and City of New Orleans (1858)
Interior of the Main Cabin of the Steamboat Princess / Imperial (1861)
Balzamine (1857)

Marie Adrien Persac (born December 14, 1823 in Saumur , † July 21, 1873 in Manchac , Louisiana ) was a French painter, cartographer and photographer who lived in Louisiana.

Life

Persac was born in 1823 in the French city of Saumur , the son of landowner Pierre Edouard Persac and his wife Pauline Sophie Marie Falloux . He was the third of four children, had two brothers and a sister. His paternal grandfather was mayor of Saumur and owned the Beaugrand estate, after which he and his descendants such as Adrien Persac sometimes called themselves (de Beaugrand). His maternal grandfather, Paul AE Falloux, was mayor of Charcé and owner of the Châteaufort estate.

No reliable details are known about Persac's training. He traveled to Lyon and may have lived there for some time. Around 1842 he went to America, where he worked as an artist, photographer and cartographer. He was also believed to have worked as an engineer and architect, using his mother's capital to run an apple orchard in Jefferson County , Indiana .

On December 8, 1851, he married Odile Daigre, daughter of a farmer, in Baton Rouge and initially lived with their family in Manchac , Louisiana. Her three sons were born there (* 1852, 1854, 1866).

In 1856, Persac and William G. Vail ran a short-lived photo studio ( daguerreotype ) in Baton Rouge . He undertook extensive trips, including for his later published map of the Mississippi River .

Persac came to New Orleans around 1859 , where he made transparent watercolors of houses and land for the city's notarial archives. While he initially stayed with his family frequently, from 1865 he lived most of the time in New Orleans. That year he opened a photo shop for artistic photography using the ambrotype process with Legras . Since Persac retained French citizenship throughout his life and did not apply for American citizenship, he was not drafted during the Civil War.

An inheritance enabled Persac to speculate on real estate and a trip to France, where he stayed from 1867 to 1868.

From 1867 Persac was listed in the City Directory of New Orleans as an architect, later as an artist and finally in 1873 as an engineer. In 1869 he founded a drawing and painting school, where he taught portrait and landscape painting in oil and watercolor.

At the age of 50 Persac died of illness in 1873 in the Daigres house in Manchac. His grave is in the Catholic cemetery in Baton Rouge.

plant

Persac was best known for his Norman's Chart of the Lower Mississippi River , a five-foot-long map that documents the lower Mississippi River. Based on Persac's four gouache templates, the colored steel engraving was printed by JH Coulton in New York and published in 1858 by Benjamin Moore Norman as the first part of an unfinished series of three. The map, framed by tendrils, shows the boundaries and names of the owners on the Mississippi plantations, as well as views of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, a sugar cane and cotton plantation.

Of particular importance for Persac's oeuvre are around thirty gouache pictures with depictions of plantations and public buildings in Louisiana, which he made for private customers. As far as they are dated and known, they were all created between 1857 and 1861. The landscapes are presented from a panoramic perspective, are accurate and rich in detail. Typical of Persac's works are the collage- style figures (people and animals), which he often cut out of magazines and books, but sometimes also designed himself.

Persac also created watercolors, lithographs and photographs. He signed some of his works with A. Persac .

Works (selection)
  • Norman's Chart of the Lower Mississippi River (map of the region around the lower course of the Mississippi from Natchez to New Orleans), 1858, steel engraving on paper (based on Persac's gouache templates), 162.6 × 86.4 cm, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans
  • Balzamine (Plantation in Terrebonne Parish ), 1857, 39.69 × 44.45 cm, gouache / collage on paper
  • Port and City of New Orleans , 1858, 22.23 × 33.02 cm, gouache on paper
  • French Opera House (opera house of the same name in New Orleans), 1859, 40.32 × 59.69 cm, gouache / collage on paper, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans
  • Ile Copal (Plantation of Governor Alexander Mouton in Lafayette Parish ), 1860, 38.42 × 52.71 cm, gouache / collage on paper
  • Bois de Flèche Plantation (Plantation in St. Martin Parish ), 1861, 41.91 × 57.15 cm, gouache / collage on paper, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans
  • Interior of the Main Cabin of the Steamboat Princess / Imperial (interior of the steamboat Princess ), 1861, 43.18 × 58.26 cm, gouache / collage on paper, Louisiana State University Museum of Art
  • Shadows-on-the-Teche (Plantation in Iberia Parish ), 1861, 43.18 × 55.88 cm, gouache / collage on paper
  • Orange Grove (also: Olivier Plantation ; Plantage im St. Mary Parish ), 1861, 40.01 cm × 55.88 cm, gouache / collage on paper, Louisiana State Museum
  • Palo Alto (Plantation in Ascension Parish ), 43.18 × 58.42 cm, gouache / collage on paper
  • Daigre House (estate of Odile Daigre's family in Manchac), 29.53 × 44.13 cm

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1868: Paris
  • 1872: Uter's Store
  • 2000: Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge (solo exhibition)
  • 2001: Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans (solo exhibition)

literature

  • H. Parrott Bacot, Sally Kittredge Reeves, et al. a .: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. Exhibition catalog. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 2000, ISBN 0-8071-2642-X .
  • Persac, Marie Adrien. In: John A. Mahe, Rosanne McCaffrey: Encyclopaedia of New Orleans Artists 1718-1918 The Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans 1987, ISBN 0-917860-23-3 , pp. 299-301.

Web links

Commons : Marie Adrien Persac  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ H. Parrott Bacot: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. 2000, pp. 1-2.
  2. ^ H. Parrott Bacot: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. 2000, p. 5.
  3. ^ H. Parrott Bacot: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. 2000, p. 58.
  4. ^ H. Parrott Bacot: Marie Adrien Persac: Louisiana Artist. 2000, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Persac, Marie Adrien
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Persac, Adrien
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter, cartographer and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Saumur
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1873
Place of death Manchac , Louisiana