Ignace Schott
Encyclopedia
Ignace Schott de Dabo generally known by the name Ignace Schott, he was a French born artist, etcher and teacher. Born in Dabo, Moselle
in the Lorraine
region of France, he was a successful ecclesiastic decorator. He worked mostly as a mural painter but also in stained glass and many of his creations have survived to this day. Much of his work from the mid 19th century was created in and around Saverne
not far from Dabo, France but the last thirteen years of his life and career Ignace worked in the Detroit, Michigan
area of the United States. Perhaps he is best known as the father Leon Dabo
and Theodore Scott-Dabo
.
Much of Ignace's known works are ecclesiastic murals. Apparently one of Ignace's first teachers, Eugène Delacroix
worked for many years in Paris on a number of mural commissions beginning in 1833. Ignace would have been fifteen years old then, an appropriate time for an apprenticeship. Paul Delaroche taught painting in Paris until 1843, and the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre took over Delaroche's studio and opened it to students twice a week for instruction. It is known that by 1846 Ignace was in Saverne and worked fairly extensively in the area through to 1869, he painted several mural works for the religious community there. The General Inventory of Cultural Heritage for Alsace lists a number of signed works on the walls of Ste Leger Church in Reinhardsmunster, Ste Gall Church in Siltzhiem, Ste Florent Church in Weislingen, as well as a convent and bishop's residence near Saverne.
A professor in Saverne from 1849 to 1869, Ignace seems to have also been a professor of aesthetics in Nancy at some point during these two decades. In the late 1850's Ernest Delannoy and James McNeill Whistler
traveled to Alsace-Lorraine
, their friend of Dabo joined them on a few sketching excursions. It is possible that it was Ignace's workshop in Saverne where Whistler made some of the first etchings for The French Set. In the 1860s Charles-François Champigneulle worked in stained glass and had his workshop in Metz, just north of Nancy and west of Dabo and Saverne, Ignace was in the right place at the right time to be involved with Champigneulle’s work restoring church windows that had been damaged during the revolution.
Ignace's relatives from Nancy, the writer, literary and art critic team of Edmond
and Jules de Goncourt
made their home in Paris, which naturally allowed Ignace access to such literary figures on the liberal Republican left as Victor Hugo
and Jules Valles
. Through his association with people like Hugo and Valles, then of course his connection to the politically liberal Gleyre, Ignace became very involved in the political arena. The university setting within which he had begun to work may have also stimulated his political activism. Ignace’s son Leon would later write “my father founded with Jules Valles a republican newspaper secretly, and was in other ways obnoxious to the Emperor.” An obituary of Ignace in the Boston Evening Transcript, states that he was "made a life sentence by Louis Napoleon."
It is probably due to his association with people like Valles, whom by 1868 the government of Napoleon III imprisoned twice for press violations and Ignace's need to support his young family, that he began to feel uneasy with staying in France. During the early 1860s Ignace had married a young woman, Madeleine Oberle. Their first child, Leon, was born in 1864, Theodore followed the next year and their first daughter, Leontine came in 1867, and by 1868 Madeleine was pregnant once again. Escaping the political unrest of the Franco-Prussian War, Ignace and his young family fled to America, arriving in New York City on January 5, 1870. To assimilate more easily the Schott family went first to French-speaking Canada, but by June 1870 they had settled in the French-founded city of Detroit, Michigan.
In America, Ignace continued to make his living through ecclesiastic decorative work, some of his work can still be seen in the churches of St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church
, Most Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church and St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Detroit, St. Alphonsus in Windsor, Ontario and St. Bonafice of All Saints Parish in New Riegel, Ohio. Several known mural works by Schott, that have since been either removed or destroyed, were chronicled in the Detroit Free Press. In 1875 he painted a scene from Hamlet on a ten by twenty-eight canvas framed in an ornate cornice over the proscenium arch at Whitney’s Opera House. He did two large canvases for the sanctuary at St. Vincent de Paul's church, one being a depiction of the Holy Family the other was the death of St. Joseph, both paintings were completed for the reopening of the church at the Easter celebration in 1880. Later that same year Schott executed work at Holy Cross Church in Marine City and he or his eldest son painted the Stations of the Cross for St. Stanislaus Kostka church in Bay City. Schott was also employed for many years by the stained glass firm of Friederichs and Staffin, later known as the Detroit Stained Glass Works. There he created works like the imposing window The Trinity and The Redemption that is above the main altar of Most Holy Trinity Church. Ignace did non-ecclesiastic work as well and at least two of his paintings were in the private collection of Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd
, the Alsatian Girl and Hebe, after Ary Scheffer
. Early in 1876, Mr. Lloyd loaned the paintings to the Detroit Art Association for their first exhibition.
In order to keep his identity somewhat hidden, Ignace would invariably alter the spelling of his name. Not only would he and his family use Ignace, but also Ignatius, Ignatz, Ignaz and even Enoch and Engus. The family's surname has appeared as Schott, Schoote, Scott, de Dabo, D. Dabbo, Schott-Dabo, and Scott-Dabo. However, most if not all of his work is either signed Ignace Schott or marked with his monogram
, an insignia made with his initials apparently forming an anchor, much the way his young friend James McNeill Whistler would come to use his butterfly.
The eldest two of Ignace and Madeleine's eight children followed their father's profession and were artists of rare talent. Leon Dabo had a long and accomplished career both in America and Europe, yet his younger brother Theodore Scott-Dabo, though talented, left almost no legacy. Ignace's sons received their initial artistic instruction from their father and both Leon and Theodore would also use a mongram to sign their work.
One Sunday early in March 1883, the Detroit Free Press listed on page one in the obituary column, “Died: SCHOTT – March 3, 7p.m., Ignace Schott, artist, aged 64 years 7 months and 4 days. Funeral from his late residence Monday morning at 9:30, and from St. Anne’s Church at 10 o’clock.”
Dabo, Moselle
Dabo is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.An informal Franco-German summit between President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl took place in Dabo July 19, 1983....
in the Lorraine
Lorraine (région)
Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...
region of France, he was a successful ecclesiastic decorator. He worked mostly as a mural painter but also in stained glass and many of his creations have survived to this day. Much of his work from the mid 19th century was created in and around Saverne
Saverne
Saverne is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France. It is situated on the Rhine-Marne canal at the foot of a pass over the Vosges Mountains, and 45 km N.W...
not far from Dabo, France but the last thirteen years of his life and career Ignace worked in the Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
area of the United States. Perhaps he is best known as the father Leon Dabo
Leon Dabo
Leon Dabo was an American tonalist landscape artist best known for his paintings of New York, particularly the Hudson Valley. His paintings were known for their feeling of spaciousness, with large areas of the canvas that had little but land, sea, or clouds...
and Theodore Scott-Dabo
Theodore Scott-Dabo
Theodore Scott-Dabo casually known as Scott Dabo, was a French/American tonalist landscape artist thought to be from Detroit, Michigan but is now known to have been born in Saverne, France. Active both in New York and Paris, he was the younger brother of Leon Dabo...
.
Life
None of his personal records are known to exist, thus little of Ignace's early life or artistic training is more than conjecture. Yet there are a few clues. One obituary states that he was a pupil of Paul Delaroche. His eldest son Leon, also an artist who wrote and lectured on art, once wrote an article stating that in Detroit there was a talented Frenchman, Ignace Schott, who was a pupil of Delacroix. He also mentioned in some correspondence that his father was a fellow student of Whistler’s at Gleyre’s studio. In a magazine article on stained glass, Leon wrote that Friederichs and Staffin of Detroit had a French designer in the 1870s (Leon's father) who had been trained by Champigneulle. These few hints do fit the timeline of when Ignace would have been studying and beginning his career.Much of Ignace's known works are ecclesiastic murals. Apparently one of Ignace's first teachers, Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
worked for many years in Paris on a number of mural commissions beginning in 1833. Ignace would have been fifteen years old then, an appropriate time for an apprenticeship. Paul Delaroche taught painting in Paris until 1843, and the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre took over Delaroche's studio and opened it to students twice a week for instruction. It is known that by 1846 Ignace was in Saverne and worked fairly extensively in the area through to 1869, he painted several mural works for the religious community there. The General Inventory of Cultural Heritage for Alsace lists a number of signed works on the walls of Ste Leger Church in Reinhardsmunster, Ste Gall Church in Siltzhiem, Ste Florent Church in Weislingen, as well as a convent and bishop's residence near Saverne.
A professor in Saverne from 1849 to 1869, Ignace seems to have also been a professor of aesthetics in Nancy at some point during these two decades. In the late 1850's Ernest Delannoy and James McNeill Whistler
James McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...
traveled to Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
, their friend of Dabo joined them on a few sketching excursions. It is possible that it was Ignace's workshop in Saverne where Whistler made some of the first etchings for The French Set. In the 1860s Charles-François Champigneulle worked in stained glass and had his workshop in Metz, just north of Nancy and west of Dabo and Saverne, Ignace was in the right place at the right time to be involved with Champigneulle’s work restoring church windows that had been damaged during the revolution.
Ignace's relatives from Nancy, the writer, literary and art critic team of Edmond
Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...
and Jules de Goncourt
Jules de Goncourt
Jules de Goncourt , born Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, who published books together with his brother Edmond.- Works :With Edmond de Goncourt:* Sœur Philomène...
made their home in Paris, which naturally allowed Ignace access to such literary figures on the liberal Republican left as Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
and Jules Valles
Jules Vallès
Jules Vallès was a French journalist and author.-Early life:Vallès was born in Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire. His father was a supervisor of studies , later a teacher, and unfaithful to Jules' mother. Jules was a brilliant student...
. Through his association with people like Hugo and Valles, then of course his connection to the politically liberal Gleyre, Ignace became very involved in the political arena. The university setting within which he had begun to work may have also stimulated his political activism. Ignace’s son Leon would later write “my father founded with Jules Valles a republican newspaper secretly, and was in other ways obnoxious to the Emperor.” An obituary of Ignace in the Boston Evening Transcript, states that he was "made a life sentence by Louis Napoleon."
It is probably due to his association with people like Valles, whom by 1868 the government of Napoleon III imprisoned twice for press violations and Ignace's need to support his young family, that he began to feel uneasy with staying in France. During the early 1860s Ignace had married a young woman, Madeleine Oberle. Their first child, Leon, was born in 1864, Theodore followed the next year and their first daughter, Leontine came in 1867, and by 1868 Madeleine was pregnant once again. Escaping the political unrest of the Franco-Prussian War, Ignace and his young family fled to America, arriving in New York City on January 5, 1870. To assimilate more easily the Schott family went first to French-speaking Canada, but by June 1870 they had settled in the French-founded city of Detroit, Michigan.
In America, Ignace continued to make his living through ecclesiastic decorative work, some of his work can still be seen in the churches of St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church
St. Mary Roman Catholic Church (Detroit, Michigan)
St. Mary Roman Catholic Church, formally the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the third oldest parish in Detroit, Michigan. It is located at 646 Monroe Street in heart of Greektown Historic District within Detroit's downtown area. It is often called Old St. Mary's...
, Most Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church and St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Detroit, St. Alphonsus in Windsor, Ontario and St. Bonafice of All Saints Parish in New Riegel, Ohio. Several known mural works by Schott, that have since been either removed or destroyed, were chronicled in the Detroit Free Press. In 1875 he painted a scene from Hamlet on a ten by twenty-eight canvas framed in an ornate cornice over the proscenium arch at Whitney’s Opera House. He did two large canvases for the sanctuary at St. Vincent de Paul's church, one being a depiction of the Holy Family the other was the death of St. Joseph, both paintings were completed for the reopening of the church at the Easter celebration in 1880. Later that same year Schott executed work at Holy Cross Church in Marine City and he or his eldest son painted the Stations of the Cross for St. Stanislaus Kostka church in Bay City. Schott was also employed for many years by the stained glass firm of Friederichs and Staffin, later known as the Detroit Stained Glass Works. There he created works like the imposing window The Trinity and The Redemption that is above the main altar of Most Holy Trinity Church. Ignace did non-ecclesiastic work as well and at least two of his paintings were in the private collection of Detroit architect Gordon W. Lloyd
Gordon W. Lloyd
Gordon W. Lloyd was an architect of English origin, whose work was primarily in the American Midwest. After being taught by his uncle, Ewan Christian, at the Royal Academy, Lloyd moved to Detroit in 1858. There he established himself as a popular architect of Episcopal churches and cathedrals in...
, the Alsatian Girl and Hebe, after Ary Scheffer
Ary Scheffer
Ary Scheffer , French painter of Dutch and German extraction, was born in Dordrecht.-Life:After the early death of his father Johann Baptist, a poor painter, Ary's mother Cornelia, herself a painter and daughter of landscapist Arie Lamme, took him to Paris and placed him in the studio of...
. Early in 1876, Mr. Lloyd loaned the paintings to the Detroit Art Association for their first exhibition.
In order to keep his identity somewhat hidden, Ignace would invariably alter the spelling of his name. Not only would he and his family use Ignace, but also Ignatius, Ignatz, Ignaz and even Enoch and Engus. The family's surname has appeared as Schott, Schoote, Scott, de Dabo, D. Dabbo, Schott-Dabo, and Scott-Dabo. However, most if not all of his work is either signed Ignace Schott or marked with his monogram
Monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series of uncombined initials is properly referred to as a...
, an insignia made with his initials apparently forming an anchor, much the way his young friend James McNeill Whistler would come to use his butterfly.
The eldest two of Ignace and Madeleine's eight children followed their father's profession and were artists of rare talent. Leon Dabo had a long and accomplished career both in America and Europe, yet his younger brother Theodore Scott-Dabo, though talented, left almost no legacy. Ignace's sons received their initial artistic instruction from their father and both Leon and Theodore would also use a mongram to sign their work.
One Sunday early in March 1883, the Detroit Free Press listed on page one in the obituary column, “Died: SCHOTT – March 3, 7p.m., Ignace Schott, artist, aged 64 years 7 months and 4 days. Funeral from his late residence Monday morning at 9:30, and from St. Anne’s Church at 10 o’clock.”