Paul Raffet. Project For A Town Hall And School For The Hermites (indre-et-loire). 19th Century.

Brown ink and pencil on tracing paper. 29 x 53.2 cm, mounted on a 33.5 x 53.6 cm sheet. The title is on the support (“(Indre & Loire), Commune des Hermites, Projet de Mairie & d’École des Garçons, Façade sur la Place à 0m,02c”). Signed to the right of the title: “Projet drawn up in Tours on 12. 9bre 1879 by the undersigned architect [Paul] Raffet” (the first name has been cut). Les Hermites is a commune in Indre-et-Loire, located north of Tours, near Château-Renault, on the border with Loir-et-Cher. The current town hall of Les Hermites is very close to the project in our drawing, except for an additional clock and a bell tower and the two chimneys missing. It is highly likely that Paul Raffet built this town hall. Paul Léon Marie Raffet was born in Tours (Indre-et-Loire) on April 28, 1846 and died in the same city in January 1902. The son of a baker, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1864 in the studio of Simon Constant-Dufeux, but he was unable to complete his studies. He had a successful career as an architect in his hometown, where he built many private houses (including his own). He worked mainly in Indre-et-Loire but also in Sarthe, Loire-Atlantique and Loir-et-Cher, building hotels, villas, town halls, schools, factories, etc. He received first prize in the competition for the construction of the town hall of Le Mans in 1880. Paul Raffet exhibited at the Salon des artistes français from 1875 and received several exhibition medals: Exposition des Beaux-arts de Tours in 1881 and 1892, Angers in 1895, Bourges in 1897, Le Mans in 1899, Versailles in 1900, etc., as well as medals at the Universal Exhibitions of Paris in 1889 and 1900. He published in the Revue générale de l'architecture et des Travaux publics, in the Semaine des constructeurs, in the Annales de la construction moderne, in Architecture pour tous, in the Croquis d'Architecture, and was a member of the Société centrale des architectes, the Caisse de défense mutuelle des architectes, the Société des architectes de la Touraine, and the Société des Artistes français. Paul Raffet is the father of Georges Raffet, born in 1883, who was also a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the studio of the architect Marcel Lambert (between 1908 and 1912). Ref. A10-25