1802 Acte de Société:
Robillard de Péronville & Laurent
Géricault Life
1798? Napoleon on the Bridge of Arcole, (Detail) Antoine-Jean Gros, study for 1801 Salon painting, Louvre.
Introduction
In my November issue, I established that Théodore Géricault’s family was intimately involved in the many of France’s most important artists while Géricault was still a youth. This art business was known as the Musée français and was founed and operated by two Géricault relations by marriage: Louis Robillard de Peronville, a refugee plantation owner from Saint-Domingue; and Pierre Laurent, a prominent artist and engraver living in Paris. This article explores the foundation of the Géricault family art enterprise.
Louis Robillard de Peronville married Marie-Anne-Charles de Barras in Saint Domingue in 1788. This marriage connected the engraver Pierre Laurent, a Barras relation, with Louis Robillard de Peronville the slave plantation owner in Saint Domingue. Robillard de Peronville arrived in Paris with his family in 1797. Peronville was very familiar with Laurent’s difficulties securing funds for his project to produce high-quality engravings of the paintings, statues, and bas-reliefs in the national art collection. Indeed, Robillard de Peronville wrote of his long-standing reservations regarding Laurent’s enterprise. What prompted Robillard de Peronville to change his mind in and fund the Laurent project in 1802?
Peace. Napoléon Bonaparte seized power in 1799 and soon began initiating a series of domestic reforms. Some of these involved the arts. Laurent, however, was unable to win support for his enterprise even in this new climate. However, in the fall of 1801, Napoleon and Britain began peace negotiations. On March 25th, 1802, France and Britain signed an agreement in Amiens to end hostilities. Visitors from Britain, keen to exploit the economic opportunities peace would bring, began arriving in France months before the agreement was actually signed. The Rev. W. Hughes during his own visit to France in 1802 (elsewhere in this issue) remarked on English entrepreneurs operating a textile manufactory outside Lisieux in Normandy. Robillard de Peronville rightly guessed that once France made peace with Britain and Europe throngs of well-heeled visitors would flock to France to visit the Museum Central des Arts, as the Louvre was then called, to view the national collection. Robillard de Peronville waited until the final negotiations had been all but concluded, and then on March 9, 1802, signed an agreement to reproduce the art treasures housed in the Muséum central des Arts with his relation Pierre Laurent.
Acte de Société Robilard de Peronville et Laurent of 1802
18 Ventose Year 10, Acte de Société entre Le Cn. Laurent et le Cn. Robillard-Peronville, (March 9, 1802, detail). Image courtesy of the Archives Nationales (France) MC/ET/XIX/920.
Articles one and two of the act describe the purposes and duration of the society. The Entreprise De La Gravure De La Galerie du Musée Central des Arts à Paris, had for its object to ‘draw and engrave the paintings, original drawings, statues bas-reliefs, cameos and other rare and precious objects comprising the Museum Central des Arts, to describe the history of the prints which make up each cahier (individual collection of prints), and finally to everything possible to bring perfection to the enterprise. This Société is established as ‘Robillard Peronville and Laurent.’ The society would last nine years.
Robillard de Peronville would own a 3/4 stake in the enterprise and provide funding; Pierre Laurent would own a 1/4 part of the enterprise. The art work, drawings, engraving etc. already completed by Laurent or under his direction were valued at 50,000 francs. I will discuss these matters in more detail in issues to come.
18 Ventose Year 10, Acte de Société entre Le Cn. Laurent et le Cn. Robillard-Peronville, (March 9, 1802, detail). Image courtesy of the Archives Nationales (France) MC/ET/XIX/920.
The Acte de Sociéte of 18 ventôse An 10 (March 9, 1802) was signed by Pierre Laurent and Louis-Nicolas-Joseph Robillard de Peronville and recorded by Alexandre Delacour, the notary who did much of the notarial work for the Robillard family. Notarial documents, however, only provide part of the story. Private contracts were common. Gericault scholars have long known that family members held shares in the Robillard tobacco concern. Did Louis Robillard de Peronville and Pierre Laurent offer shares in their enterprise to family members and others? We have noted that Pierre Laurent awarded work to his son-in-law Pierre Audouin, and that his second son Henri Laurent worked on the Musée Français. We also know that Pierre-Antoine Robillard, based in Dieppe, played a major part when his brother Jean-Guillaume Robillard purchased of the Bonnet plantation in Saint Domingue years before.
I will discuss the active role different figures in Théodore Géricault’s circle played in the Musée Français in my January issue.