Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director and producer. He is best remembered for his work in the film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques. Clouzot directed films, including The Mystery of Picasso. Clouzot was an fan of the cinema and, desiring a career as a writer. He was hired by producer Adolphe Osso to work in Berlin, after being fired from German studios due to his friendship with Jewish producers, Clouzot returned to France, where he spent years bedridden after contracting tuberculosis. Upon recovering, Clouzot found work in Nazi occupied France as a screenwriter for the German-owned company Continental Films, at Continental, Clouzot wrote and directed films that were very popular in France. His second film Le Corbeau drew controversy over its harsh look at provincial France, as a result of his association with Continental, Clouzot was barred by the French government from filmmaking until 1947. After the ban was lifted, Clouzot reestablished his reputation and popularity in France during the late 1940s with successful films including Quai des Orfèvres.
After the release of his comedy film Miquette et sa mère, Clouzot married Véra Gibson-Amado, in the early and mid-1950s, Clouzot drew acclaim from international critics and audiences for The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques. Both films would serve as material for remakes decades later. After the release of La Vérité, Clouzots wife Véra died of an attack and Clouzots career suffered due to depression, illness. Clouzots career became less active in years, limited to a few television documentaries. Clouzot wrote several unused scripts in the 1970s and died in Paris in 1977, Henri-Georges Clouzot was born in Niort, France, to mother Suzanne Clouzot and father Georges Clouzout, a book store owner. He was the first of three children in a middle-class family, Clouzot showed talent by writing plays and playing piano recitals. In 1922, Clouzots fathers bookstore went bankrupt and his moved to Brest, France. In Brest, Henri-Georges Clouzot went to Naval School, but was unable to become a Naval Cadet due to his myopia, at the age of 18, Clouzot left for Paris to study political science.
While living in Paris, he became friends with several magazine editors and his writing talents led him to theater and cinema as a playwright and adaptor-screenwriter. The quality of his work led producer Adolphe Osso to hire him and send him to Germany to work in Studio Babelsberg in Berlin, throughout the 1930s, Clouzot worked by writing and translating scripts and occasionally lyrics for over twenty films
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan was a French-Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six and his career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of studies in all the major keys. The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano and Concerto for Solo Piano, Alkan emerged from self-imposed retirement in the 1870s to give a series of recitals that were attended by a new generation of French musicians. Alkans attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work and he was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. This work, like many of his compositions, is now lost. Alkan never married, but his presumed son Élie-Miriam Delaborde was, like Alkan, following his death Alkans music became neglected, supported by only a few musicians including Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri and Kaikhosru Sorabji.
From the late 1960s onwards, led by Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith, many pianists have recorded his music, Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange on 30 November 1813 at 1, Rue de Braque in Paris to Alkan Morhange and Julie Morhange, née Abraham. Alkan Morhange was descended from a long-established Jewish Ashkenazic community in the region of Metz, Charles-Valentin was the second of six children – one elder sister and four younger brothers, his birth certificate indicates that he was named after a neighbour who witnessed the birth. Alkan Morhange supported the family as a musician and as the proprietor of a music school in le Marais. At an early age, Charles-Valentin and his siblings adopted their fathers first name as their last. His brother Napoléon became professor of solfège at the Conservatoire, his brother Maxim had a career writing music for Parisian theatres. His brother Ernest was a professional flautist, while the youngest brother Gustave was to publish various dances for the piano and he entered the Conservatoire de Paris at an unusually early age, and studied both piano and organ.
The records of his auditions survive in the Archives Nationales in Paris, at his solfège audition on 3 July 1819, when he was just over 5 years 7 months, the examiners noted Alkan as having a pretty little voice. The profession of Alkan Morhange is given as music-paper ruler, at Charles-Valentins piano audition on 6 October 1820, when he was nearly seven, the examiners comment This child has amazing abilities. Alkan became a favourite of his teacher at the Conservatoire, Joseph Zimmermann, who taught Georges Bizet, César Franck, Charles Gounod, at the age of seven, Alkan won a first prize for solfège and in years prizes in piano and organ. At the age of seven-and-a-half he gave his first public performance, appearing as a violinist and playing an air, Alkans Opus 1, a set of variations for piano based on a theme by Daniel Steibelt, dates from 1828, when he was 14 years old
Montparnasse Cemetery
Montparnasse Cemetery is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, part of the citys 14th arrondissement. Created from three farms in 1824, the cemetery at Montparnasse was originally known as Le Cimetière du Sud, cemeteries had been banned from Paris since the closure, owing to health concerns, of the Cimetière des Innocents in 1786. At the heart of the city, and today sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is Passy Cemetery, Montparnasse Cemetery is the resting place of many of Frances intellectual and artistic elite as well as publishers and others who promoted the works of authors and artists. There are graves of foreigners who have made France their home, as well as monuments to police. The cemetery is divided by Rue Émile Richard, the small section is usually referred to as the small cemetery and the large section as the big cemetery. Although Baudelaire is buried in this cemetery, there is a cenotaph to him, because of the many notable people buried there, it is a highly popular tourist attraction.
Divisions 5 and 30 were originally Jewish enclosures and contain many Jewish graves, the main entrance to the cemetery is on Boulevard Edgar Quinet which leads to the big cemetery. There are smaller entrances to both the big and small cemeteries on Rue Émile Richard, list of burials at Montparnasse Cemetery A list of many buried at the cemetery Montparnasse Cemetery at Find a Grave Information and help in touring Montparnasse cemetery In English
Lili Boulanger
A Parisian-born child prodigy, Boulangers talent was apparent at the age of two, when Gabriel Fauré, a friend of the family and one of Boulangers teachers, discovered she had perfect pitch. Her parents, both of whom were musicians, encouraged their daughters musical education and her father was 77 years old when Lili was born and she became very attached to him. Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, was a Russian princess who married her Paris Conservatoire teacher and her grandfather Frédéric Boulanger had been a noted cellist and her grandmother Juliette a singer. She sang and played piano, violin and harp and her teachers included Marcel Tournier and Alphonse Hasselmans. In 1912 Boulanger competed in the Prix de Rome but during her performance she collapsed from illness and she returned in 1913 at the age of 19 to win the composition prize for her Faust et Hélène, becoming the first woman composer to win the prize. Lili was greatly affected by the 1900 death of her father, many of her works touch on themes of grief and her work was noted for its colorful harmony and instrumentation and skillful text setting.
Aspects of Fauré and Claude Debussy can be seen in her compositions, les sirènes is written for solo soprano and three part choir. The topic, uses a text by Charles Grandmougin, the work is dedicated to Madame Jane Engel Bathori. Bathori, a soprano, was known for her concert organisation, Bathori supported many new artists and composers. Boulanger composed three psalms, Psalms 24,129 and 130 and she composed Psalm 24, entitled La terre appartient à l’Eternel, in 1916 while she was resident in Rome. The work is dedicated to Monsieur Jules Griset, who was the director of Choral Guillot de Saint-Brice, durand published the work in 1924. The work is scored for choir, accompanied by organ and brass ensemble, Psalm 129 was composed in 1916 in Rome. This psalm is much longer than Psalm 24 and is composed for full orchestra, the premiere performance was held at the Salle Pleyel in 1921, conducted by Henri Busser. Du fond de l’abîme, is composed for voice & orchestra, Boulangers psalms convey Boulangers Catholic faith.
Boulanger completed this work when she was only twenty-two, yet it sounds mature, ristow writes that Boulanger composed Du fond de labîme in reaction to World War I. Lili Boulanger was the first female composer to win the distinguished Prix de Rome in music and this work had many performances during Lilis lifetime. The text was written by Eugene Adenis based on Goethes Faust and she worked with Georges Caussade, and with Paul Vidal at the Paris Conservatoire, in order to prepare for this competition. She gained a contract with the publisher Ricordi after winning the Prix de Rome
Holy Innocents' Cemetery
The Holy Innocents Cemetery is a defunct cemetery in Paris that was used from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was the oldest and largest cemetery in Paris and had often used for mass graves. It was closed because of overuse in 1780, and in 1786 the remaining corpses were exhumed and transported to the unused subterranean quarries near Montparnasse known as the Catacombs, the place Joachim-du-Bellay in the Les Halles district now covers the site of the cemetery. The cemetery took its name from the church of the Holy Innocents that has now disappeared. Sources describe the ground, called Champeaux, and the associated church in the 12th century. It was located next to the central market, under the reign of Philip II the cemetery was enlarged and surrounded by a three-meter-high wall. Les Innocents had begun as a cemetery with individual sepulchres, people were buried together in the same pit, only when it was full would another be opened. It was one of the earliest and best-known depictions of this theme and it was destroyed in 1669 when this wall was demolished to allow the narrow road behind it to be widened.
In the 16th century, the prominent Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius studied the bones of corpses in the Holy Innocents cemetery, two edicts by Louis XVI to move the parish cemeteries out of the city were resisted by the church, which profited from burial fees. To reduce the number of burials, the price of burials was increased, after a prolonged period of rain in spring 1780, conditions became untenable. On 4 September 1780, an edict forbade burying corpses in Les Innocents, bodies were exhumed and the bones were moved to the Catacombs in 1786. Many bodies had incompletely decomposed and had reduced into deposits of fat. During the exhumation, this fat was collected and subsequently turned into candles, the church was destroyed in 1787 and the cemetery was replaced by a herb and vegetable market. The Fountain of the Nymphs, which had erected in 1549 next to the church, was dismantled. Now known as the Fountain of Innocents, it stands on Joachim-du-Bellay Square. The destruction of the church and removal of the cemetery at Les Innocents is the subject of Andrew Millers Costa prize winning 2011 novel Pure, the cemetery and the Catacombs to which the remains were relocated play an important part in Barbary Hamblys novel Those Who Hunt The Night.
In Patrick Süskinds Novel Perfume, the main character Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born here in 17 July 1738, media related to Cimetière des Innocents at Wikimedia Commons
William Didier-Pouget
William Didier-Pouget was a French artist, born in 1864, France, known for his landscape paintings. He focused primarily on the countryside of southern France, infusing his landscapes, always painted outdoors, with light, Didier-Pouget is associated with the phase of Impressionism, although not actually identified with the group of artists typically known as the Impressionists. His career as an exhibiting artist stems from 1886 onwards and he was a member of the Société des Artistes Français, a member of lÉcole de Crozant and Société des Peintres de Montagne. Also, laureate of lInstitut au Concours Troyon, Officer of the order of Nichan Iftikar, William Didier-Pouget was the son of a newspaper editor. Antoine Paul Jules Edgar Pouget, a lover, encouraged William in his ambition to become an artist. The two would take long walks together, the elder pointing out natural phenomena while discussing methods of their pictorial representation. He related biographical details of the artists and present.
Didier-Pouget began his art training at the École des Beaux-Arts in the city of Toulouse. He studied at the Académie de Paris with Amédée Baudit, the famed French landscape painter and he studied with Louis-Augustin Auguin, an associate of Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste Corot. Ultimately, Didier-Pouget was accepted into the studio of Maxime Lalanne, under these influences many profitable years followed. The seeds were sown for what would become Didier-Pougets fruitful career as an artist, William Didier-Pouget married Caroline Salley and had a daughter, Yvonne. Yvonne Aubert-Didier-Pouget became an artist painter and miniaturist, in Toulouse, the young artist had already been regarded as a prodigy of talent, and great things were expected of him. Paintings were exhibited in the provinces, attracting attention. Encouraged, Didier-Pouget sought an audience, and moved to Paris. From 1886 he exhibited regularly at the Salons, each new season showing a marked advancement in his art, bringing to the world of Paris new and delightful colour-schemes, during his early years Didier-Pougets landscape paintings were temperate and ethereal with a poetic atmosphere.
Progressively he began to specialize in a style that would build his reputation all the way to the United States. The artist took pleasure in expressing the tranquil ambiance of river scenes, the soft poesy of his mountainous landscapes are suggestive of Auguin, a disciple of Corot. Didier-Pouget, part of the school, had cultivated from their groundwork the idea of leaving the foreground largely unobstructed
Marie Duplessis
Marie Duplessis was a French courtesan and mistress to a number of prominent and wealthy men. She was the inspiration for Marguerite Gautier, the character of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas the younger. Much of what is known about her has been derived from the literary persona, Marie Duplessis was born Alphonsine Rose Plessis in 1824 at Nonant-le-Pin, France. At the age of 15, she moved to Paris where she found work in a dress shop, as recorded in art of the day Marie Duplessis was evidently an extremely attractive young woman, with a petite figure and an enchanting smile. By the time she was 16, she had become aware that prominent men were willing to give her money in exchange for her company in both private and social settings. She became a courtesan and learned to read and write, and to stay abreast of events so as to be able to converse on these topics with her clients. She added the faux noble Du to her name, Duplessis was both a popular courtesan and the hostess of a salon, where politicians and artists gathered for stimulating conversation and socializing.
She rode in the Bois de Boulogne and attended opera performances and she had her portrait painted by Édouard Viénot. Duplessis was the mistress of Alexandre Dumas, fils between September 1844 and August 1845, she is believed to have become the mistress of composer Franz Liszt, who reportedly wished to live with her. Throughout her short life, her reputation as a discreet and she remained in the good graces of many of her benefactors even after her relationships with them had ended. She was briefly married to at least one of her lovers, Marie Duplessis died of tuberculosis at the age of 23 on 3 February 1847. Her husband the comte de Perregaux and her lover the Baltic-German count Gustav Ernst von Stackelberg were by her side. Within a few weeks of her death, her belongings were auctioned off to pay her debts, her funeral in Montmartre cemetery, where her body still rests, was said to have been attended by hundreds of people. Dumas romantic novel La Dame aux Camélias was based on Duplessis and it appeared within a year of her death.
In the book, Dumas became Armand Duval and Duplessis Marguerite Gautier, Dumas adapted his story as a play, which inspired Verdis opera La Traviata and various films. Biographical Studies The Real Traviata, The Song of Marie Duplessis by René Weis Citations
Myles Byrne
Myles Byrne was a leader in the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and chef de bataillon in Napoleon’s Irish Legion. Myles Byrne was born in the townland of Ballylusk near Monaseed, County Wexford, Ireland, on 20 March 1780, after the Wexford Rebellion was over, he joined Michael Dwyer and Joseph Holt in the Wicklow Hills, continuing to fight on. While there he was involved in the Emmet Rebellion, shortly after this he escaped to France. In France he eventually became Brigadier General and leader of Napoleon’s Irish Brigade and he fought in Spain and Greece. In his years he wrote his memoirs, Memoirs of Miles Byrne and these were first published in three volumes in 1863, but there have been many subsequent reprints. ”For those areas and battles that it covers, Byrnes is the best source for the 1798 Rebellion. In Paris, Byrne frequently met many other exiled Irish - including Thomas Addis Emmet, Byrne was married in Paris to a Scots Presbyterian, Fanny Horner, but they had no children. Fannys father was John Horner, a merchant of Edinburgh, and they were married on Christmas Eve,24 December 1835 in the British Embassy Chapel in Paris.
She had three brothers and two sisters, One of her brothers was Francis Horner, a Whig MP, Leonard Horner, was a noted geologist. A photograph of Byrne faces page 185 in Nicholas Furlongs Fr John Murphy of Boolavogue, according to the author, it was taken in Paris in 1859 and is reputed to be the first photograph taken of an Irishman. The photograph is now in Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the President of Ireland, John Mitchel visited Byrne when he was 80 years old and described him as One of those rare beings who never grow old. Miles Byrne died at his house in the rue Montaigne, Paris on Friday 24 January 1862 and his grave there is marked by a Celtic Cross - but this headstone appears to be a 1950s replacement for an earlier one. The inscription to his original headstone appears in his Memoirs, in part, it read, SINCEREMENT ATTACHE A LlRLANDE SON PAYS NATAL, Miles Byrne - Memoirs of Miles Byrne. Stephen Gwynn, Memoirs of Miles Byrne - edited by his Widow,2 vols, K. Wkelan & W. Nolan, Wexford and Society.
Leonard Horner and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M. P
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance, more than half of his works depict dancers and he is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. He was a draftsman, and particularly masterly in depicting movement, as can be seen in his rendition of dancers, racecourse subjects. His portraits are notable for their complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation. At the beginning of his career, Degas wanted to be a history painter, in his early thirties, he changed course, and by bringing the traditional methods of a history painter to bear on contemporary subject matter, he became a classical painter of modern life. Degas was born in Paris, into a wealthy family. He was the oldest of five children of Célestine Musson De Gas, a Creole from New Orleans and Augustin De Gas and his maternal grandfather Germain Musson, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti of French descent and had settled in New Orleans in 1810.
Degas began his schooling at age eleven, enrolling in the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and his mother died when he was thirteen, and his father and grandfather became the main influences on him for the remainder of his youth. Degas began to paint early in life, by the time he graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artists studio. Upon graduating, he registered as a copyist in The Louvre Museum, Degas duly enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in November 1853, but applied little effort to his studies. In April of that year Degas was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts and he studied drawing there with Louis Lamothe, under whose guidance he flourished, following the style of Ingres. In July 1856, Degas traveled to Italy, where he would remain for the three years. In 1858, while staying with his aunts family in Naples and he began work on several history paintings and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60, Sémiramis Building Babylon in 1860, and Young Spartans around 1860.
In 1861 Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy and he exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which attracted little attention. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet, upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Degas enlisted in the National Guard, where his defense of Paris left him little time for painting. During rifle training his eyesight was found to be defective, after the war, Degas began in 1872 an extended stay in New Orleans, where his brother René and a number of other relatives lived. Staying at the home of his Creole uncle, Michel Musson, on Esplanade Avenue, Degas produced a number of works, many depicting family members. One of Degass New Orleans works, A Cotton Office in New Orleans, garnered favorable attention back in France, Degas returned to Paris in 1873 and his father died the following year, whereupon Degas learned that his brother René had amassed enormous business debts
Maxime Du Camp
Maxime Du Camp was a French writer and photographer. Born in Paris, Du Camp was the son of a successful surgeon, after finishing college, he indulged in his strong desire for travel, thanks to his fathers assets. Du Camp traveled in Europe and the East between 1844 and 1845, and again between 1849 and 1851 in company with Gustave Flaubert, after his return, Du Camp wrote about his traveling experiences. Flaubert wrote about his experiences with Maxime, in 1851, Du Camp became a founder of the Revue de Paris, and a frequent contributor to the Revue des deux mondes. In 1853, he became an officer of the Legion of Honour, serving as a volunteer with Garibaldi in his 1860 conquest of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Du Camp recounted his experiences in Expédition des deux Siciles. In 1870 he was nominated for the senate, but his election was frustrated by the downfall of the Empire. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1880, mainly, it is said, on account of his history of the Commune, published under the title of Les Convulsions de Paris.
Du Camp was an amateur photographer who learned the craft from Gustave Le Gray shortly prior to departing on his 1849–1859 trip to Egypt. His travel books were among the first to be illustrated with photographs, Maxime Du Camp died in 1894 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris. He published several works on social questions, one of which and his Souvenirs littéraires contain much information about contemporary writers, especially Gustave Flaubert, of whom Du Camp was an early and intimate friend. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Hugh. Works by or about Maxime Du Camp at Internet Archive
_-_Cimeti%C3%A8re_Montmartre.JPG)
