Émilien de Nieuwerkerke
Encyclopedia
Count Alfred Émilien O'Hara van Nieuwerkerke (16 April 1811, Paris - 16 January 1892, Gattaiola, near Lucca
) was a French sculptor of Dutch descent (his grandfather was the illegitimate son of a minor stadholder) and a high-level civil servant in the Second French Empire
. He is also notable as the lover of Mathilde Bonaparte
, after her estrangement from her husband Anatole Demidov
.
, and Louise-Albertine de Vassan (? - 1854), from a noble family from the Soissonnais. After having become a page of Charles X
in 1825, he then entered the école royale de cavalerie at Saumur
in 1829. However, as a legitimist, he abandoned his career on Charles X's fall in July 1830 during the July Revolution
of 1830.
On 30 June 1832, aged 21, he married count Auguste de Monttessuy's daughter Marie Técla (1810-1886 ?) at Auguste's château de Juvisy (the town's town hall since 1900 - Auguste had been the commune's mayor from 1823 to 1835). Marie's brother Adolphe-Gaston was mayor of Juvisy
and married Pauline de Wurtemberg, illegitimate daughter of Prince Paul - uncle of Mathilde Bonaparte - and of Lady Wittingham. However, the couple quickly separated on grounds of incompatibility of temperaments.
Vigorous, majestic and with a certain air to him, to which he joined physical presence, a great amenity, well-spokenness and the art of compliment - he thus became known as the "beautiful Batavian" ("beau Batave"). He was adored by women (one declared "He has the air of a resting lion"), as the Goncourts affirmed in their Journal of 10 November 1863 - "he at once resembles Charlemagne and a handsome chasseur behind the cars". In 1834, during a six month stay in Italy, he discovered and became passionate about ancient sculptures. He also became fascinated by the work of the famous sculptor Félicie de Chauveau, who he met in Florence
, and thus decided to become a sculptor himself on returning to France. He thus took classes in the studios of Pradier and baron Carlo Marochetti
and attempted a statuette of his cousin Horace de Viel-Castel, who became curator of the "Musée des Souverains" at the Louvre in February 1853 and a chronicler of the imperial court. Sculpting also suited him due to the freedom that attached to it and meant that he did not have to find another.
He took on official commissions and exhibited at the Paris Salon
from 1842 with a marble bust of the comte Charles de Ganay. One of those commissions was a 4.65m high "Equestrian statue of Napoleon I", inaugurated on 20 September 1852 in the sculptor's presence by the Prince-President on 20 September 1852 on the largest square on the Perrache peninsula (now called place Carnot) in Lyon
. This was destroyed between November 1870 and February 1871 and the only surviving copy of it is that inaugurated on 20 August 1854 at the centre of place Napoléon in La Roche-Sur-Yon (the former "Napoléon-Vendée"), main town and prefecture of this Napoleon-founded department. However, in 1860 the Susse foundry did cast copies in five different metals (one such copy is now at the château de Compiègne, and another was sold at Compiègne on 17 March 2001 for 30,000 francs). One of his best known other works is "The battle of the duke of Clarence", bronze copies of which were cast by the Susse foundry from 1839 to 1875 - one copy entered the English royal collection at Osborne House
in 1901, and another was sold at public auction
at Chartres
on 23 March 2003.
In 1845, during a trip into Italy with Henri de Bourbon, comte de Chambord, he visited the collection of the Russian millionaire
Anatole Demidoff and became the lover of Demidoff's wife Mathilde-Létizia Bonaparte (niece of Napoleon I). The following year she left Demidoff and moved to lodgings found for her by Nieuwerkerke at a hôtel at 10 rue de Courcelles in Paris - their liaison lasted until August 1869. Following the elimination of the Republican civil-servants, he was made director-general of museums on 25 December 1849 and installed in the Louvre the following day.
A Colonel d'État-Major of the National Guard
, he supported the coup d'état of 2 December 1851. Made a free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts on 19 November 1853, on 5 July 1853 he became intendant des Beaux-Arts of the Emperor's Household and finally in 1870 surintendant of the Imperial Museums. Until the fall of the Second French Empire
, he played a highly important rôle, acting as a kind of minister of cultural affairs. It was at his request that the painter William Wyld
(of English birth but resident in Paris) was allowed to exhibit in the French section of the 1855 Exposition Universelle
(the second after that in London in 1851). He was responsible for four museums (Louvre, Luxembourg, Versailles, then the Saint-Germain-en-Laye), for the objets d'art in the imperial palaces, for imperial commissions of paintings, sculptures and engravings and for the organisation of the Paris Salon
. With difficulty, he also reformed the École des Beaux-Arts
. He also became a senator and conseiller général for the Aisne
. He was the subject of several attacks by artists and critics due to his taste veering more to old art and academicism
than contemporary art - he refused to acquire works by some already-acclaimed artists such as Camille Corot who he did not appreciate.
In Paris he lived in a hôtel particulier in the Monceau quarter at 13 rue Murillo (8th arrondissement), where he lived and had his gallery and studio "that does not draw the eye". He had had it built by the imperial architect Lefuel on a parcel of land acquired from the Péreire brothers in May 1869 and completed a year later - three months before the fall of the imperial regime. That fall forced him to submit his resignation to Gambetta. Sick and fearing his arrest, he got on a train to Boulogne-sur-Mer
alone in an attempt to flee to the United Kingdom. However, he was found unconscious in the train compartment and transported to Valéry-en-Caux (Somme), where he asked for safe conduct from princess Marie Cantacuzène (1821–1891), who he had met in 1862 at the house of princess Mathilde. Nieuwerkerke and his daughter Olga (1843–1929) then moved to London, where in October he tried to sell the some of the smallest of his objets d'art to the South Kensington Museum. These came from Nieuwerkerke's extraordinary collection (for which no list or inventory survives) of more than 800 historic art objects, in metal and gold, sculptures, ceramics, painted enamel, glass and furniture. It also included Medieval and Renaissance arms and armour, including 100 swords, 60 daggers, 50 helmets, 15 sets of armour or demi-armour, and the only known complete example of Gothic armour for man and horse (now in the Wallace Collection
).
In April 1871 he sold his Paris hôtel to the American collector William Henry Riggs for 188,500 francs and at the end of July he gathered his collection in Paris for transport to London, where he sold it "at a costly price" (400,000 francs) to the rich English collector Sir Richard Wallace, a friend of the deposed French emperor and his wife - it is thus now in the Wallace Collection
. In July 1879, on coming to assist at the funeral of the prince imperial (killed in June 1879 in Zululand) Nieuwerkerke visited Wallace. The money raised by selling his collections and hôtel allowed him to move into exile in Italy, where in May 1872 he acquired the 16th century "villa Burlamacchi" at Gattaiola near Lucca. There he lived the last 20 years of his life with his friends the Cantacuzène princesses, even starting a smaller collection of Renaissance Italian works (though he quickly had to re-sell his acquisitions). He died aged 80 and was buried in the cemetery at Lucca where, at Olga's request, the funerary chapel was ornamented with a bust of him by the sculptor Barré. One of his obituaries was written by Philippe de Chennevières (1820–1899), his closest collaborator and director of the Beaux-Arts (resigning in 1878).
The current owner of the "villa Rossi" held many reminders of the count - anonymous photographs of his official marble busts of the imperial couple made to produce biscuit-porcelain medallions (1853), those of Olga Cantacuzène (1863) and of her husband prince Lorenzo Altieri (1876 ?), those of a Lucca peasant couple (1881) and official portraits, and one of the empress (possibly of a copy of that by Winterhalter).
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...
) was a French sculptor of Dutch descent (his grandfather was the illegitimate son of a minor stadholder) and a high-level civil servant in the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
. He is also notable as the lover of Mathilde Bonaparte
Mathilde Bonaparte
Mathilde Laetitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte, Princesse Française , was a French princess and Salon holder. She was a daughter of Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte and his second wife, Catharina of Württemberg, daughter of King Frederick I of Württemberg.- Biography :Born in Trieste, Mathilde Bonaparte...
, after her estrangement from her husband Anatole Demidov
Anatole Demidov
Count Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidov, 1st Prince of San Donato , was a Russian industrialist, diplomat and arts patron of the Demidov family.-Early life:...
.
Life
Of Dutch descent - his grandfather was the illegitimate son of a minor stathouder - Émilien de Nieuwerkerke was the son of the Dutch Legitimist officer Charles de Nieuwerkerke (Lyon, 1785 - Paris, 1864), who returned to Paris with Louis XVIII in 1815 after the Hundred DaysHundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
, and Louise-Albertine de Vassan (? - 1854), from a noble family from the Soissonnais. After having become a page of Charles X
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
in 1825, he then entered the école royale de cavalerie at Saumur
Saumur
Saumur is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.The historic town is located between the Loire and Thouet rivers, and is surrounded by the vineyards of Saumur itself, Chinon, Bourgueil, Coteaux du Layon, etc...
in 1829. However, as a legitimist, he abandoned his career on Charles X's fall in July 1830 during the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830.
On 30 June 1832, aged 21, he married count Auguste de Monttessuy's daughter Marie Técla (1810-1886 ?) at Auguste's château de Juvisy (the town's town hall since 1900 - Auguste had been the commune's mayor from 1823 to 1835). Marie's brother Adolphe-Gaston was mayor of Juvisy
Juvisy-sur-Orge
Juvisy-sur-Orge is a commune in the Essonne department in Île-de-France in northern France.Inhabitants of Juvisy-sur-Orge are known as Juvisiens.-Geography:Neighboring communes:* Athis-Mons* Draveil* Savigny-sur-Orge* Viry-Châtillon...
and married Pauline de Wurtemberg, illegitimate daughter of Prince Paul - uncle of Mathilde Bonaparte - and of Lady Wittingham. However, the couple quickly separated on grounds of incompatibility of temperaments.
Vigorous, majestic and with a certain air to him, to which he joined physical presence, a great amenity, well-spokenness and the art of compliment - he thus became known as the "beautiful Batavian" ("beau Batave"). He was adored by women (one declared "He has the air of a resting lion"), as the Goncourts affirmed in their Journal of 10 November 1863 - "he at once resembles Charlemagne and a handsome chasseur behind the cars". In 1834, during a six month stay in Italy, he discovered and became passionate about ancient sculptures. He also became fascinated by the work of the famous sculptor Félicie de Chauveau, who he met in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, and thus decided to become a sculptor himself on returning to France. He thus took classes in the studios of Pradier and baron Carlo Marochetti
Carlo Marochetti
Baron Carlo Marochetti was a sculptor, born in Turin but raised in Paris as a French citizen.-Life:Carlo Marochetti was born on 4 January 1805. His first teachers were François Joseph Bosio and Antoine-Jean Gros in Paris. Here his statue of A Young Girl playing with a Dog won a medal in 1829, and...
and attempted a statuette of his cousin Horace de Viel-Castel, who became curator of the "Musée des Souverains" at the Louvre in February 1853 and a chronicler of the imperial court. Sculpting also suited him due to the freedom that attached to it and meant that he did not have to find another.
He took on official commissions and exhibited at the Paris Salon
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...
from 1842 with a marble bust of the comte Charles de Ganay. One of those commissions was a 4.65m high "Equestrian statue of Napoleon I", inaugurated on 20 September 1852 in the sculptor's presence by the Prince-President on 20 September 1852 on the largest square on the Perrache peninsula (now called place Carnot) in Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
. This was destroyed between November 1870 and February 1871 and the only surviving copy of it is that inaugurated on 20 August 1854 at the centre of place Napoléon in La Roche-Sur-Yon (the former "Napoléon-Vendée"), main town and prefecture of this Napoleon-founded department. However, in 1860 the Susse foundry did cast copies in five different metals (one such copy is now at the château de Compiègne, and another was sold at Compiègne on 17 March 2001 for 30,000 francs). One of his best known other works is "The battle of the duke of Clarence", bronze copies of which were cast by the Susse foundry from 1839 to 1875 - one copy entered the English royal collection at Osborne House
Osborne House
Osborne House is a former royal residence in East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK. The house was built between 1845 and 1851 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a summer home and rural retreat....
in 1901, and another was sold at public auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...
at Chartres
Chartres
Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...
on 23 March 2003.
In 1845, during a trip into Italy with Henri de Bourbon, comte de Chambord, he visited the collection of the Russian millionaire
Anatole Demidoff and became the lover of Demidoff's wife Mathilde-Létizia Bonaparte (niece of Napoleon I). The following year she left Demidoff and moved to lodgings found for her by Nieuwerkerke at a hôtel at 10 rue de Courcelles in Paris - their liaison lasted until August 1869. Following the elimination of the Republican civil-servants, he was made director-general of museums on 25 December 1849 and installed in the Louvre the following day.
A Colonel d'État-Major of the National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
, he supported the coup d'état of 2 December 1851. Made a free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts on 19 November 1853, on 5 July 1853 he became intendant des Beaux-Arts of the Emperor's Household and finally in 1870 surintendant of the Imperial Museums. Until the fall of the Second French Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
, he played a highly important rôle, acting as a kind of minister of cultural affairs. It was at his request that the painter William Wyld
William Wyld
William Wyld was an English painter.-Life:Born to a family that had produced rich merchants for several generations, he gained a pronounced taste for drawing very young. On the death of a young uncle after a fall from a horse when William was aged 6, William inherited his drawing materials...
(of English birth but resident in Paris) was allowed to exhibit in the French section of the 1855 Exposition Universelle
Exposition Universelle (1855)
The Exposition Universelle of 1855 was an International Exhibition held on the Champs-Elysées in Paris from May 15 to November 15, 1855. Its full official title was the Exposition Universelle des produits de l'Agriculture, de l'Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855.The exposition was a major...
(the second after that in London in 1851). He was responsible for four museums (Louvre, Luxembourg, Versailles, then the Saint-Germain-en-Laye), for the objets d'art in the imperial palaces, for imperial commissions of paintings, sculptures and engravings and for the organisation of the Paris Salon
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...
. With difficulty, he also reformed the École des Beaux-Arts
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
The École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts is the distinguished National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.The École des Beaux-arts is made up of a vast complex of buildings located at 14 rue Bonaparte, between the quai Malaquais and the rue Bonaparte, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près,...
. He also became a senator and conseiller général for the Aisne
Aisne
Aisne is a department in the northern part of France named after the Aisne River.- History :Aisne is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Île-de-France, Picardie, and Champagne.Most of the old...
. He was the subject of several attacks by artists and critics due to his taste veering more to old art and academicism
Academic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
than contemporary art - he refused to acquire works by some already-acclaimed artists such as Camille Corot who he did not appreciate.
In Paris he lived in a hôtel particulier in the Monceau quarter at 13 rue Murillo (8th arrondissement), where he lived and had his gallery and studio "that does not draw the eye". He had had it built by the imperial architect Lefuel on a parcel of land acquired from the Péreire brothers in May 1869 and completed a year later - three months before the fall of the imperial regime. That fall forced him to submit his resignation to Gambetta. Sick and fearing his arrest, he got on a train to Boulogne-sur-Mer
Boulogne-sur-Mer
-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....
alone in an attempt to flee to the United Kingdom. However, he was found unconscious in the train compartment and transported to Valéry-en-Caux (Somme), where he asked for safe conduct from princess Marie Cantacuzène (1821–1891), who he had met in 1862 at the house of princess Mathilde. Nieuwerkerke and his daughter Olga (1843–1929) then moved to London, where in October he tried to sell the some of the smallest of his objets d'art to the South Kensington Museum. These came from Nieuwerkerke's extraordinary collection (for which no list or inventory survives) of more than 800 historic art objects, in metal and gold, sculptures, ceramics, painted enamel, glass and furniture. It also included Medieval and Renaissance arms and armour, including 100 swords, 60 daggers, 50 helmets, 15 sets of armour or demi-armour, and the only known complete example of Gothic armour for man and horse (now in the 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...
).
In April 1871 he sold his Paris hôtel to the American collector William Henry Riggs for 188,500 francs and at the end of July he gathered his collection in Paris for transport to London, where he sold it "at a costly price" (400,000 francs) to the rich English collector Sir Richard Wallace, a friend of the deposed French emperor and his wife - it is thus now in the 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...
. In July 1879, on coming to assist at the funeral of the prince imperial (killed in June 1879 in Zululand) Nieuwerkerke visited Wallace. The money raised by selling his collections and hôtel allowed him to move into exile in Italy, where in May 1872 he acquired the 16th century "villa Burlamacchi" at Gattaiola near Lucca. There he lived the last 20 years of his life with his friends the Cantacuzène princesses, even starting a smaller collection of Renaissance Italian works (though he quickly had to re-sell his acquisitions). He died aged 80 and was buried in the cemetery at Lucca where, at Olga's request, the funerary chapel was ornamented with a bust of him by the sculptor Barré. One of his obituaries was written by Philippe de Chennevières (1820–1899), his closest collaborator and director of the Beaux-Arts (resigning in 1878).
The current owner of the "villa Rossi" held many reminders of the count - anonymous photographs of his official marble busts of the imperial couple made to produce biscuit-porcelain medallions (1853), those of Olga Cantacuzène (1863) and of her husband prince Lorenzo Altieri (1876 ?), those of a Lucca peasant couple (1881) and official portraits, and one of the empress (possibly of a copy of that by Winterhalter).