Bound volume, format 24 x 32 cm, 304
pages, four-colour random frame, glossy paper, hardback,
nearly 300 illustrations, 200 of which are in colour.
French text.
Published 02/06/2010. Price : 99 € ttc
N° ISBN 978-2-7466-0515-2
NEW PRICE : 69€ ttc
Industrialist and philanthropist, shipowner
and regatta competitor, living between Rouen, his home base,
Paris and Swansea in Wales, where he owned an anthracite mine,
the man that the upper middle class of Rouen called “the
coalman” was also a prolific inventor, taking out several
patents for his machines, and an author.
A connoisseur, keen collector, he owned between
1880 and 1920 nearly six hundred paintings, from Courbet to
Dufy including the impressionists which had his preference.
The names, among other, of Sisley, Monet, Pissarro,
Guillaumin, Renoir, Lebourg, Caillebotte, Morisot, Toulouse-Lautrec
and Gauguin figured within his collection. He was
also an ardent champion of the School of Rouen, supporting
notably Delattre and Pinchon by organizing exhibitions in Paris
to make them better known.
It is impossible today to imagine how the officials of the
time could refuse at first to accept the donation of his collection
of paintings to the Museum of Rouen. It was apparently out
of the question to let the creators of “degenerate” art
into the museum in their lifetime.
The dissolution of a marriage where the property had to be
divided equally meant auctioning off his collections. There,
under his own name or through dealers - Durand-Ruel, Bernheim,
Rosenberg, … - he bought back some of his own canvasses
and lamented the others that he saw disappearing at high prices.
The story had started, recognition of the impressionists was
growing from day to day.
Then came the day that the authorities accepted his donation,
a pale reflection of those that they had let go. Despite everything,
the Fine Arts museum of Rouen can today boast of possessing
some masterpieces.
With the passing of time, the name of Depeaux was forgotten
but his paintings continued to live, changing hands, passing
from collectors to dealers, and for many, having the honour
of being hung in the largest museums in the world from Paris
to Washington, from Berlin to Saint Petersburg, from Zurich
to Tokyo.
YACHTING CLASSIQUE n° 84 juillet-août-septembre 2020 Article de François Chevalier La Dame Blanche de Rouen. Fourniture du cliché du tableau d'Albert Lebourg représentant la Dame Blanche.
