Paul Jamot (1863 - 1939) - Twilight In Flanders, Circa 1900

TWILIGHT IN FLANDERS, CIRCA 1900
Paul JAMOT (1863-1939)
24.5 x 41 cm (37 x 55 cm with frame)
Oil on canvas
Signed lower right

Former student of the École normale supérieure, agrégé de lettres (1887 ) 1, he was then a member of the French School of Athens (1887). He explored Argolis and the valley of Sperchios. He led the excavation campaigns in the valley of the Muses in Thespies between 1888 and 1891. He collected many inscriptions including that of the so-called stele of Hesiod. He published a travelogue: In Greece with Charalambos Eugénidis. He became curator of the national museums, member of the Institute, commander of the Legion of Honor, honorary curator of the Louvre museum, director of the Reims museum from 1927 to 1939. He bequeathed to the City a rich collection of paintings, represented by Corot, Carpeaux, Courbet, Delacroix, Maurice Denis, Forain, Ingres, Picasso, Renoir, etc. and valuables, as well as the Louvre, Luxembourg and Carnavalet2 museums. A room in the Musée d'Orsay bears his name. In September 1913, he organized the room of the new museum of fine arts in Reims and, in 1938, the artistic part of the inauguration celebrations of Notre-Dame as well as the Trésors de Reims exhibitions at the Orangerie des Tuileries and the Musée des Fine Arts of Reims. Paul Jamot imposed only one condition on the City of Reims by ending his will, with this sentence: “Finally, I bequeath to the Museum of Reims the jewels that I had made for my wife by René Lalique; I ask that they be placed in the room where we will group the paintings bequeathed by me, as close as possible and if possible, below the portrait of my wife by Ernest Laurent ”. This wish was not respected. Paul Jamot is also the author of several collections of poetry: Préludes (1912), Voices in the night (1918), Sacrifice du soir (1929). He rests in Paris, in the Montparnasse cemetery, under the monument that he had erected by the architect Auguste Perret and Maurice Denis for his wife Madeleine Dauphin-Dornès in 1913. Albert Besnard painted a portrait of the latter in pastel3. Ernest Laurent painted a portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Jamot, as well as a Portrait of Madame Paul Jamot, née Madeleine Dauphin-Dornès (1864-1913). The two paintings are kept at the Musée d'Orsay4. In 1922 the sculptor Paul Paulin produced the bust of Paul Jamot, also in the Musée d'Orsay.