Pierre Laurent Family
Géricault Life
Contrat de travail (marché passé) entre Pierre-François Laurent et Pierre Audouin, (Contract agreement) May 17, 1792, Private collection.
Pierre Laurent Family
We begin here our first discussion of Pierre-François Laurent and Théodore Géricault. In his critical 2019 study “Le Chasseur à cheval et la manufacture: Géricault à la Manufacture de tabac” (Revue de l’Art, n° 203/2019-1, pp. 29-40), Jean-François Belhoste describes Géricault’s early connections with Pierre Laurent and Louis Robillard de Peronville and the Musée français. Elsewhere in the November issue, I discuss Louis Robillard de Peronville’s arrival in Paris with his family in 1797, and the links connecting Théodore Géricault to the Saint Domingue Robillards and the Barras family.
Let us start with a brief account of the facts: archival evidence tying Laurent and his family to that of Louis Robillard de Peronville. We also examine similar hitherto unknown family connections between Pierre Laurent and Pierre Audouin, the two engravers identified in the contract of 1792 above. Our primary source is the Inventaire après le décès de M. Laurent (the inventory of Pierre Laurent’s estate, see below), recorded on August 7, 1809. We then conclude with a brief discussion of Géricault and Laurent.
Pierre-François Laurent was born in Marseilles in 1739 and died at his home in Paris on June 30th, 1809, probably of some sort of circulatory problem. The inventaire confirms that Pierre-François Laurent married twice. Laurent’s first marriage produced two children, a boy and a girl.* His first wife died. Pierre Laurent then remarried. The second marriage produced one son. When Pierre Laurent died in 1809 he was survived by his second wife and their adult son, and by his two adult children from his first marriage.
Pierre Laurent and Marie-Thérèze Barras
Inventaire après le décès de M. Laurent, (detail) August 7 1809, MC/ET/XIX/935. Image courtesy of Archives Nationales (France)
Pierre Laurent married Marie-Thérèze Barras in Marseilles on April 28, 1764. As noted above, the couple had two children: Charles-Henri Laurent and Anne Laurent. That Pierre Laurent’s first marriage ended with the death of Marie-Thérèze Barras is confirmed by the reference to Laurent as “le défunt Laurent veuf ” (the deceased Laurent, widower). Marie-Anne-Charles de Barras married Louis Robillard de Peronville in Saint Domingue in 1788. We do not know whether Marie-Anne-Charles de Barras (younger and born in the Caribbean) and Marie-Thérèze Barras ever met.
Pierre Laurent and Henriette-Thérèze Ogier
Inventaire après le décès de M. Laurent, (detail) August 7 1809, MC/ET/XIX/935. Image courtesy of Archives Nationales (France)
We cannot confirm the exact date of Pierre Laurent’s second marriage to Henriette-Thérèze Ogier, only that it occured sometime between 1764 and 1769. The inventaire identifies Henri Laurent as the only child of Pierre Laurent and Henriette-Thérèze Ogier. The inventaire also confirms that Pierre Laurent’s daughter from his first marriage, Anne Laurent, was married to Pierre Audouin; and that the couple lived on the rue Neuve Saint-Marc at the time of Pierre Laurent’s death in 1809. Audouin was one of many celebrated engravers Laurent commissioned to produce reproductions of objects housed at the Louvre. We will discuss the foundations of Laurent’s enterprise, which date from 1791, in our December issue.
Inventaire après le décès de M. Laurent, (detail) August 7 1809, MC/ET/XIX/935. Image courtesy of Archives Nationales (France)
Géricault and Laurent
When Pierre-François Laurent died in 1809 the family home was located on the rue de la Concorde n°. 9, a street also known as the rue Royale. The rue de la Concorde address is important to our understanding of Théodore Géricault for several reasons. Théodore Géricault’s Saint Domingue cousin Zoé Robillard de Peronville also lived at n°. 9 rue de la Concorde with her parents Louis Robillard de Peronville and Marie-Anne-Charles de Barras. (See earlier articles on this family.) Other Barras family members also visited, or lived at n°. 9 rue de la Concorde. Jean-Baptiste Caruel, Theodore’s maternal uncle, living at the Hotel de Longueville, and other family members almost certainly visited the Laurent and Robillard de Peronville apartments often. Indeed, the home of Robillard de Peronville and his Barras and Laurent relations was a cultural site of considerable importance during Géricault’s formative years, as we shall see.
Contemporary documents and archival evidence confirm that the Robillard de Peronville and Laurent art business, the Musée français/Musée Napoléon, was based at n°. 9 rue de la Concorde. The documents confirm that Cherubini, Isabey and other celebrities attended parties there. Laurent and Robillard de Péronville employed the finest artists and engravers in France, and from abroad. Our view is that this community of individuals, their enterprise, Pierre Laurent, Robillard de Peronville, their Barras relations, and the artists working at n°. 9 rue de la Concorde played a critical and essential role in Théodore Géricault’s early life and career. The Musée français was a family business, – even more so than the Robillard tobacco concern. The tobacco business was an enterprise based from the start on the participation of both family and non-family partners and investors. As such, the Laurent and Robillard de Peronville family and working apartments on the Rue de la Concorde are perhaps even more important to Théodore Géricault’s early development as an artist than the family residences on the rue de l’Université, the rue de Belle Chasse, and the Hôtel de Longueville.
We will begin a detailed examination of Pierre Laurent’s professional career and how his efforts transformed Théodore Géricault’s life in our December issue.
Rue de la Concorde, Maire Map, plate 6b, 1808.
* The inventaire includes a reference to an acte de décès for a daughter: Marie-Augustine-Amélie, who died on April 24th, 1786. Laurent’s first son Charles was born in 1764, and his second son Henri was born in 1769. We do not know Marie-Augustine-Amélie’s date of birth, or the identity of her mother.