Thomas W. Evans

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Thomas W. Evans , photographer unknown
Thomas W. Evans , painting by Henri Gervex

Thomas Wiltberger Evans (born December 23, 1823 in Philadelphia , † November 14, 1897 in Paris ) was an American dentist and patron . He brought innovative dental treatment methods to Europe and counted the French imperial family and several heads of state among his patients. He donated large parts of his fortune to the University of Pennsylvania .

Life

Family and education

Thomas Wiltberger Evans was born in Philadelphia as the fifth of six children to a Quaker family. His father was William Milnor Evans and his mother Catherine Ann Wiltberger. At the age of 14 he began training as a silversmith . He then worked for the dentist John De Haven White and studied medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. After completing his studies, he practiced from 1843 for some time with a dentist in Baltimore and then in a practice in Lancaster (Pennsylvania) . Within a few years he gained a reputation as a specialist in dental fillings with gold foil, for which he received an award from the Franklin Institute in 1847 .

First years in Paris

In November 1847 Evans came to Paris at the invitation of the American dentist Christopher Starr Brewster (1799-1870). Brewster had lived there since 1833 and treated famous patients in his practice, including artists and writers such as Eugène Delacroix , George Sand , Prosper Mérimée and Honoré de Balzac as well as the French King Louis-Philippe and the Russian Tsar Nicholas I. Evans, the initially did not speak French, initially became a partner in Brewster and in 1850 he set up as an independent dentist in the Rue de la Paix . Evans quickly made a name for himself in Paris as a dentist who was known for his masterful gold fillings and used the latest treatments. The use of vulcanized rubber as a basis for dentures, which was new in Europe, later contributed to its fame . He was also one of the first to use nitrous oxide as an anesthetic and a Doriot rod in his treatments. Along with Levi Spear Burridge and Newell Sill Jenkins , he was one of the most popular American dentists in Europe in the 19th century.

Confidante of the French imperial family

In 1850 Evans was called for the first time as a dentist to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who was French President at the time and from 1852 France as Emperor Napoleon III. ruled. He appointed Evans in February 1854 retrospectively to January 1853 dentist of the French imperial family. Even rulers from other courts were treated by Evans. Bavaria's King Maximilian II was the first monarch to see Thomas Evans as a dentist, who was soon followed by the King of Siam Mongkut , the Swedish King Oskar I and other regents. The noble patients thanked Evans, some with precious gifts, and awarded him numerous awards. This included membership of the French Legion of Honor , an award that Evans was the first American to receive on July 22, 1853.

Evans soon became a confidante of Emperor Napoleon III. and traveled to the United States in 1864 as an informal advisor to the emperor on a diplomatic mission. The official reason for the trip was to observe the work of the United States Sanitary Commission . Evans should also sound out the profit prospects of the northern states in the American Civil War for the French emperor . In the United States, he met for talks with both President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward . His reports to Napoleon III. about the strength of the northern states may have contributed to the fact that the emperor refrained from any intervention by France in favor of the southern states during the civil war .

Evans learned early on of the plans to redesign Paris by Napoleon's urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann . With the appropriate knowledge, he took part in property speculations in Paris and thereby acquired a considerable fortune. This enabled him to have a lavish lifestyle, which included building a representative house. The Villa Bella Rosa , built for Evans and his wife Agnes Josephine Doyle, was located on Avenue de l'Impératrice, today's Avenue Foch . For the stately marble staircase, Evans commissioned the architect Charles Garnier , who was building the Paris Opera at the same time .

At the Paris World's Fair of 1867 Evans designed part of the exhibition space in the United States. There he showed a new type of American ambulance and presented modern treatment methods for war wounded that had proven themselves in the civil war. Evans published several papers on the latest medical findings. In 1868 Evans helped found the American Register , the first American newspaper published in Paris.

Henri-Louis Dupray: Départ incognito , 1884 - The painting shows the escape of Empress Eugénie from the villa of Thomas Evans on September 5, 1870

In the Franco-Prussian War , after the Battle of Sedan, which France had lost, the monarchy was overthrown in early September 1870. Evans helped the Empress Eugénie de Montijo to escape by taking her to safety in his Paris villa in his carriage from the Palais des Tuileries and later accompanying her to Deauville on the Channel coast, from where she took a boat into exile in England. Evans, who was a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross , financed an American ambulance during the siege of Paris .

Evans also kept in touch with the exiled imperial family and visited after the death of Napoleon III. In 1873 the Empress repeated it on her country estate. When the son of the imperial couple, Napoléon Eugène Louis Bonaparte , died in the Zulu War , Evans was tasked with identifying the corpse that had been brought from Africa to England, since as a dentist he knew the teeth of the former crown prince. Among the numerous gifts from the imperial family to Evans was a bracelet with diamonds and emeralds that Evans' wife Agnes received from Empress Eugénie. Arthur Hugenschmidt , as his possible father Napoleon III. applies, Evans became a student and later a successor in his Paris practice.

Life in the Belle Époque

Evans maintained a close relationship with his homeland throughout his life. His fortune enabled him to purchase expensive property in New York City in 1873 . In doing so, he acquired an entire block between 89th and 90th Street on Broadway in Manhattan . In 1876 he attended the World's Fair in his native Philadelphia. He supported the American community in Paris financially in purchasing the property for the Cathédrale américaine de Paris, built from 1881 on avenue d'Alma, today's avenue George-V .

In 1888 Evans was called to a group of doctors who treated the seriously ill Prussian-German Crown Prince Friedrich . While the Crown Prince was in the northern Italian seaside resort of Sanremo , Evans advised the English doctor Morell Mackenzie and his German colleague Fritz Gustav von Bramann . When Bramann decided to perform a tracheostomy on the Crown Prince , Evans made a tube out of silver on site that was used as a breathing cannula for the patient to keep him from suffocating.

Thomas Evans's circle of friends included several artists. The actress Méry Laurent became Evans' lover, whom he supported with generous monthly payments and to whom he made an apartment in Paris on Rue de Rome and a house on Boulevard Lannes near the Bois de Boulogne available. Through Méry Laurent he had contact with the writers François Coppée and Stéphane Mallarmé and through them he met the painters James McNeill Whistler and Édouard Manet . Evans had two paintings by Manet in his art collection, including a still life of flowers in a crystal vase with a dedication to Evans. In 1884 Evans tried himself as an author and wrote the foreword to the English translation of Heinrich Heine's memoirs , which appeared in London as The Memoirs of Heinrich Heine .

Evans died in Paris in 1897. He was buried in The Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia with his wife Agnes, who died a few months before him. Thomas Evans' memoirs were published from the estate in 1905 by his friend Edward A. Crane.

legacy

The estate of Thomas Evans was estimated at around 25 million francs (equivalent to around 60 million euros in 2006). Evans and his wife Agnes had no children. Relations with his closest relatives, especially his nephew John Henry Evans, who had worked for him for a while, were strained. Therefore his relatives were not considered in the will. On January 8, 1898, the Paris newspaper Le Figaro reported that the city of Paris, which had raised hopes for the inheritance, had also missed out. Instead, Evans had ordered the majority of the assets to be used in Philadelphia to build a dentist training facility and a museum for his collections. The relatives omitted in the will led a multi-year inheritance dispute that initially blocked the property.

University of Pennsylvania Thomas W. Evans Building

In the meantime, Evans' Villa Bella Rosa in Paris served as a guest house for the French government during the 1900 World's Fair and housed heads of state such as King Oskar II of Sweden and the Shah of Persia Mozaffar ad-Din Shah . The Villa Bella Rosa was sold a little later and demolished in 1907. In 1909 Evans' New York real estate was also sold for $ 1.25 million (around $ 36.2 million in today's purchasing power). After the long-lasting inheritance dispute with the family, the Thomas W. Evans Museum and Dental Institute was finally founded in Philadelphia in 1912 . Today it belongs to the Dental School of the University of Pennsylvania . The university already had a school of dentistry, but Thomas Evans' legacy allowed it to expand significantly. The new institute, which opened in 1915 and was built in neo-Gothic style as the Thomas W. Evans Building on a plot of land donated by Evans on Spruce Street at the corner of 40th Street, was used for this purpose.

Part of the foundation was the Thomas W. Evans Museum , which was housed in the same building as the Institute of Dentistry. The collection included the art collection and numerous personal memorabilia from Thomas Evans. These included royal gifts such as goldsmith's work, Sèvres porcelain or a secretary in the style of André-Charles Boulle . In addition, the largest exhibit was the carriage with which Evans had helped Empress Eugénie to escape. The art collection included sculptures such as a bust of Empress Eugénie by Alfred Émilien de Nieuwerkerke and a portrait bust of Evans in marble by Élisa Bloch . The paintings included a portrait of Evans by the painter Henri Gervex and military pictures by Henri-Louis Dupray and Gustave Neymark . The museum closed in 1967 to make room for more rooms in the Dental School and the collections were put into storage. In 1979, while looking through the inventory, two paintings by Édouard Manet were discovered , which were auctioned in 1983 at Christie's auction house for the benefit of the Dental School. Other parts of the art collection now belong to the University of Pennsylvania art collection. The Arthur Ross Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania showed parts of the collection of Thomas W. Evans in a special exhibition in 2015.

Awards

The more than 200 awards Evans has received in connection with his work as a dentist include the following medals and appointments:

Publications

  • La commission sanitaire des États-Unis son origine, son organization et ses résultats, avec une notice sur les hopitaux militaires aux États-Unis et sur la réforme sanitaire dans les armées Européennes. Dentu, Paris 1865.
  • Essais d'hygiène et de thérapeutique militaires présentés à la commission sanitaire des Etats-Unis. Masson, Paris 1865.
  • Notice sur la Commission sanitaire et sur les hôpitaux militaires des Etats-Unis. Paris 1865.
  • Lettres d'un oncle à son neveu sur le gouvernement des Etats-Unis, pouvoir législatif, pouvoir exécutif, pouvoir judiciaire des états, Constitution des Etats-Unis. Dentu, Paris 1866.
  • Les institutions sanitaires pendant le conflit austro-prussia-italy, suivi d'un essai sur les voitures d'ambulance et d'un catalog de la collection sanitaire américaine de l'auteur. Masson, Paris 1867.
  • De la Découverte du caoutchouc vulcanisé et de la priority de son application à la surgery. et aux operations dentaires. S. Raçon, Paris 1867.
  • History of the American ambulance established in Paris during the siege of 1870-71. S. Low, London 1873.
  • The memoirs of Dr. Thomas W. Evans; Recollections of the second French empire. TF Unwin, London 1905.

literature

  • Gerald Carson: The dentist and the empress, the adventures of Dr. Tom Evans in gas-lit Paris. Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1983, ISBN 0-395-33122-6 .
  • Henri Lamendin: Thomas W. Evans, 1823–1897: le dentiste de Napoléon III. Harmattan, Paris 2012, ISBN 2-336-00351-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ De la valeur des choses dans le temps
personal data
SURNAME Evans, Thomas W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Evans, Thomas Wiltberger (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dentist and patron
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1897
Place of death Paris