Louis Hautecœur

Louis-Eugène-Georges Hautecœur (11 June 1884 – 17 November 1973) was a French civil servant and art historian. He was the last curator of the Musée du Luxembourg and played an important role in the foundation of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in the Palais de Tokyo.

Biography

Louis Hautecœur was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. A student at the École normale supérieure (1905), he was awarded first place in the agrégation in history (1908), a member of the École française de Rome (1908–1910), and a Doctor of Letters (1912). He was given a mission and excavations in Tunisia by the Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres (1909). He was appointed professor at the Lycée de Laon (1910–1911), at the French Institute of Saint Petersburg (1911–1913), and at the Lycée d'Amiens (1913–1914). Mobilized during the World War I, he served as a second lieutenant in the 152nd infantry division (colonial division), then was assigned to the Ministry of War (service of the Allied Armies) and to the Presidency of the Council (1916–1918) and sent as head of the diplomatic information service in Lugano (1917).

After the war, he became a professor of art history at the University of Caen (1919–1931) and at the École du Louvre (1920–1940), and held the chair of history of architecture at the École des beaux-arts (1920–1940). At the same time, he pursued a career as a curator and civil servant in the Fine Arts administration: assistant curator in the paintings department of the Louvre Museum (1919–1927), curator of the Luxembourg Museum (1927–1937), director of Fine Arts in [Egypt]] (1927–1931), delegate to the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (1929), and general commissioner for France at the Venice Biennale (1932–1938). He was also editor-in-chief of the magazine L'Architecture (1922–1939).

At the 1925 and 1937 international exhibitions, he was a member of the selection committee for the architecture section, and director of art works, responsible for monitoring the construction of the Palais de Tokyo (Museum of Modern Art), a museum he directed from 1937 to 1940.

In July 1940, he was appointed Director General of Fine Arts, replacing Georges Huisman, who was hostile to the Vichy government. Sent as a plenipotentiary to Spain to negotiate the exchange of works of art (1941), he became Secretary General of Fine Arts/Counselor of State from March 1941 to March 1944. Under his direction, the law of February 25, 1943, known as the "Loi des abords" (the law of approaches) was prepared. He was dismissed on the orders of Hermann Göring for "permanent refusal to collaborate" and became director of studies at the V Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (March 1944–February 1945).

After the war, he was reinstated in his position as Secretary General of Fine Arts on April 19, 1946. Hautecœur was Professor of Art History at the University of Geneva (1946–1949), Member of the Institute (February 27, 1952), Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts (July 6, 1955), President of the French Committee for the History of Art (CFHA), Member of the Commission of Historical Monuments, Vice President of the Commission of Old Paris, and the first director of the Revue de l'art (founded by André Chastel).

A specialist in French classical and neo-classical art, he has published a large number of works on architecture, painting and art in general, from the Middle Ages to the modern era. He also published works on oriental art (Les mosquées du Caire, 1932). His main work is entitled History of classical architecture in France, which he published between 1943 and 1957 in several volumes (divided by reigns of sovereigns, reissued in the 1960s), a synthesis marked by a nationalist vision of French architecture, but based on a large mass of archival and iconographic documents and remained unmatched for forty years. Legend has it that volume 4, devoted to the "Louis XVI style" (1750–1792) and considered to be the best volume, was written from memory, after his notes were destroyed during the war.

Member of the Académie de Saint-Luc in Rome (1931), of the Society of French Art History (president: 1932, 1955, 1959), of the Académie d'architecture (1958), of the Royal Academy of Belgium (1959). Commander of the Legion of Honor (1938), Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, the Order of Saint-Sava, the Order of Malta, Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy, the Order of the Nile, Commander of the Crown of Romania, holder of the Francisque, etc. He was also a member of the Association for the Defence of the Memory of Marshal Pétain.

Works

• Rome et la Renaissance de l'Antiquité à la Fin du XVIIIe siècle (1912; awarded the Charles-Blanc Prize by the Académie française in 1913)
• Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1913)
• Madame Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1920)
• Le Louvre et les Tuileries (1924)
• Considérations sur l'Art d'aujourd'hui (1929)
• Musée National du Luxembourg. Catalogue des Peintures et Sculptures (1931; with Pierre Ladoué)
• Les Primitifs Italiens (1931)
• De l'Architecture (1938)
• Littérature et Peinture en France du XVIIIe au XXe siècle (1942; awarded the Charles-Blanc Prize by the Académie française in 1943)
• Histoire de l'architecture classique en France (1943–1957)
• Les Peintres de la Vie Familiale (1945)
• Les beaux-arts en France, passé et avenir (1948)
• Édouard Castres (1950)
• Mystique et Architecture: Symbolisme du Cercle et de la Coupole (1954)
• Diego Vélasquez: 1599-1660 (1954)
• Histoire de l'Art (1969; 3 volumes)
  • I: De la magie à la religion
  • II: De la réalité à la beauté
  • III: De la nature à l'abstraction
• Au temps de Louis XIV (1967)
• Paris (1972; 2 volumes)
  • I: Des origines à 1715
  • II: De 1715 à nos jours
• L'Artiste et son œuvre: essai sur la création artistique (1972–1973)
• Georges Seurat (1974)
• Architecture et aménagement des musées (1993)

References

• C. Poulain, L'action de Louis Hautecœur au secrétariat général des Beaux-arts (1940-1944). La permanence des beaux-arts dans la fracture de Vichy. thèse de doctorat, École nationale des chartes (2001).
• Antonio Brucculeri, L'Architecture classique en France et l'approche historique de Louis Hautecœur : sources, méthodes et action publique, thèse de doctorat en architecture. Université de Paris VIII / IUAV (2002).
• Antonio Brucculeri, Du dessein historique à l'action publique. Louis Hautecœur et l'architecture classique en France. Paris: Picard (2007).

External links

• Works by Louis Hautecœur at Gallica