Joseph Marie Terray was a Controller-General of Finances

Controller-General of Finances

The Controller-General of Finances was the name of the minister in charge of finances in France from 1661 to 1791. The position replaced the former position of Superintendent of Finances , which was abolished with the downfall of Nicolas Fouquet.- History :The term "contrôleur général" in...

 during the reign of Louis XV of France

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

, an agent of fiscal reform, cut short by his death.

Terray, tonsure

Tonsure

Tonsure is the traditional practice of Christian churches of cutting or shaving the hair from the scalp of clerics, monastics, and, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, all baptized members...

d but not a priest, was appointed in 1736 an ecclesiastical counsellor in the Parlement of Paris, where he specialized in financial matters. In 1764 he was made abbot in commendam

In Commendam

In canon law, commendam was a form of transferring an ecclesiastical benefice in trust to the custody of a patron...

of the rich abbey of Molesme. The support of his uncle, physician in ordinary to the duchess of Orléans, mother of the Regent, eventually rendered him rich, enabling him to set aside his former circumspect style of life and openly seat his mistresses at his table. His genuine capacity attracted the attention of Louis XV's chancellor, René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou

René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou

René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou was a French politician, chancellor of France, whose attempts at fiscal reform signalled the failure of enlightened despotism in France.-Biography:...

, who made him controller general in December 1769. His first big venture was helping Mme du Barry's partisans to bring down the minister of foreign affairs, Étienne François, duc de Choiseul

Étienne François, duc de Choiseul

Étienne-François, comte de Stainville, duc de Choiseul was a French military officer, diplomat and statesman. Between 1758 and 1761, and 1766 and 1770, he was Foreign Minister of France and had a strong influence on France's global strategy throughout the period...

 the very next year by demonstrating that the government could not afford to go to war with Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

. "Intelligent, plain-speaking, hard-working and rich", Terray spent the next few years stabilizing the finances of the country by repudiating part of the national debt, suspending payments on the interest on government bonds, and levying forced loans. These reforms aroused mass protest among nobles and commoners alike, which forced Maupeou to strip the Parlement

Parlement

Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

s of their political power in 1771, so that further reforms could be enacted.

Terray continued his overhaul of the financial system by reforming the collection of both the vingtième (a five percent tax on income) and the capitation (head tax) of Paris and renegotiating more advantageous agreements with the farmers general, the financiers who held the right to collect indirect taxes. These measures were responsible for a large increase in government revenue; however, he continued to face opposition, particularly over his restriction of free trade of grain, which opponents charged was part of a "Pact of Famine" with Louis XV designed to allow the king to profit from artificially high grain prices. When Louis XV died in May 1774, his successor Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France

Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....

 bowed to pressure and dismissed both Terray and Maupeou.

Terray's position enabled him to become a lavish patron of the arts. His rebuilding of his hôtel in rue Nôtre-Dame-des-Champs, c. 1769-74, was the last commission of Antoine-Mathieu Le Carpentier (1709—1773), who did not live to see its completion. The Hôtel Terray, "notable for the good arrangement of its rooms", later housed the Collège Stanislas and was demolished in 1849, when the rue Stanislas was extended through its garden, leaving an isolated pavilion

Pavilion

In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...

. Pairs of paintings he commissioned from from Nicolas Bernard Lépicié

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié

Nicolas Bernard Lépicié was a French painter , the son of two reputed engravers at the time, Francois-Bernard and Renee-Elisabeth, was introduced to the artistic and cultural environment by his parents.- Life :...

 in 1775 (an Interior of a Customs-house and a Interior of a Market) and from Claude-Joseph Vernet in 1779, displayed a strong didactic bias reflecting Terray's concerns with the economics of commerce, rather than a choice by the artists From the history painter Nicolas-Guy Brenet

Nicolas-Guy Brenet

Nicolas-Guy Brenet was a French history painter who studied in the atelier of François Boucher but abandoned his master's rococo manner in the 1760s, to paint in a conscious revival of the academic classicism of Nicolas Poussin...

 he commissioned two subjects, equally referrent to his official position; one, Cincinnatus Made Dictator was a clear reference to the enlightened despotism under which he operated; the other made a less open reference to his reputation as a speculator in grain: The Roman Farmer, in which Caius Furius Cressinus was wrongly accused of sorcery on account of the abundance of his crops: it had been exhibited at the Salon of 1775

Paris Salon

The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...

. Not all subjects of his commissions were so severe: from Jean-Jacques Caffiéri

Jean-Jacques Caffieri

Jean-Jacques Caffieri was a French sculptor. He was appointed sculpteur du Roi to Louis XV and later afforded lodgings in the Galeries du Louvre. He designed the fine rampe d'escalier which still adorns the Palais Royal...

 he commissioned a pair of table bronzes in 1777, on galante

Galante

-People:* Galante , a family of Jewish scholars which flourished in the Middle Ages** Abraham ben Mordecai Galante , kabalist and author** Mordecai Galante , rabbi of Damascus** Moses Galante , rabbi of Damascus...

subjects: Cupid Vanquishing Pan (Wallace Collection

Wallace Collection

The Wallace Collection is a museum in London, with a world-famous range of fine and decorative arts from the 15th to the 19th centuries with large holdings of French 18th-century paintings, furniture, arms & armour, porcelain and Old Master paintings arranged into 25 galleries.It was established in...

, London) and Friendship Surprised by Love (Toledo Museum of Art

Toledo Museum of Art

The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio, United States. The museum was founded by Toledo glassmaker Edward Drummond Libbey in 1901, and moved to its present location, a Greek revival building designed by Edward B....

). A small marble Bartholomew by Pierre Le Gros the Younger

Pierre Le Gros the Younger

Pierre Le Gros was a French sculptor, active almost exclusively in Baroque Rome. Nowadays, his name is commonly written Legros, while he himself always signed as Le Gros; he is frequently referred to either as 'the Younger' or 'Pierre II' to distinguish him from his father, Pierre Le Gros the...

 was purchased from the estate of the painter Jean-François de Troy, the head of the French Academy in Rome. Among the rich furnishings of the Hôtel Terray was a secretary desk by Bernard II van Risamburgh

Bernard II van Risamburgh

Bernard II van Risamburgh, sometimes Risen Burgh was a Parisian ébéniste of Dutch and French extraction, one of the outstanding cabinetmakers working in the Rococo style. "Bernard II's furniture is brilliant in almost every respect...

. His funeral monument was sculpted by Clodion.

After his death the collection was dispersed by his nephew at auction in 1779.