JOUVEAU-DUBREUIL Gabriel (EN)
Biographical Article
The little-known author of one of the most original twentieth-century works on India, Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil (1885-1945) was continuously on the fringes of official schools and doctrines. He was an eccentric character, a passionate archaeologist and a poet at heart, a traveler and a collector who wrote about India shortly before his death in 1945: “I have been making discoveries in this country all the time. I forgot myself and thought only of Her. She was my passion – she deserves this love. I gave myself to Her in service” (private archives, s.c.). This summed up his life: dedication to scientific research, the accumulation of exceptional discoveries, and the worship of the Indian subcontinent, and in particular Pondicherry, his adopted homeland.
Jouveau-Dubreuil was born in Saigon on January 1, 1885, as the second of the four sons of a Navy doctor. He came from an old French family established in Guadeloupe since the 1830s. He spent his early years between the West Indies and Paris, before starting a career at the Ministry of Finance. The Parisian museums awakened his sensitivity: he frequented the Louvre but also the "museum of religions" of Émile Guimet, where his fascination for the world of India was undoubtedly born. In 1909, he obtained an appointment at the French Establishments in India (les Établissements français de l’Inde), as a professor of physics at the prestigious Collège colonial of Pondicherry (Roustan Delatour C., 1995).
Barely installed in this former market town with old-fashioned charm, Jouveau-Dubreuil undertook a methodical exploration of the south of Dekkan, the Dravidian country. Indefatigable, he devoted his holidays to exploring the regions which he designated "by the rather vague name" of Southern India (Sud de l’Inde) alone, sometimes in extreme destitution. He visited religious centres, participated in festivals, and marvelled at the buzzing confusion of cities, in Madras, Bangalore or Cochin. Before long, he sought to get off the beaten track. First, in the countryside around Pondicherry, he could be seen perched on a jutka jolting behind a dashing pony, or in the traditional cart drawn by his ox (Renault J., 1953, p. 9). As he penetrated into the interior of the land, he gradually discovered a universe whose beauty and importance he had not suspected, a secret and timeless world: the India of the villages. Away from the great sanctuaries of the south, such as Tanjore or Maduraï, he discovered unknown temples, which remained to be studied. Thus was revealed to him his vocation: he would be an indianiste. These monuments of uncertain history, which he came across in the depths of the jungle as in the busiest bazaars, he would now try "not only to show, but to make understood" (Jouveau-Dubreuil G. , 1914, p. 4).
Jouveau-Dubreuil was convinced that Dravidian India engendered an indigenous art, whose evolution could be traced from its origins up to modern times and therefore continued his excursions to the most isolated sites. In three years, he amassed a remarkable and unique documentation, which would provide the material for a doctoral thesis, published in 1914 under the title Archéologie du Sud de l’Inde. In 1911, his meeting with the orientalist Victor Goloubew (Müller C., 1924) allowed him to bring together his research and institutional Indian studies. Under the guidance of Jouveau-Dubreuil, Goloubew studied and photographed the main sites of the Coromandel (Goloubew V., 1921; Malleret L., 1967). Jouveau-Dubreuil preferred drawing to lugging around heavy cameras. In drawing, he found the ideal way to familiarise himself with Dravidian art, to feel the shapes and contours more intimately, through the precise outline of his pen. In this direct relationship with the monuments and their decorations, he wanted to capture the very thoughts of the makers. That is why he went as often as possible to temples under construction, especially in Cuddalore south of Pondicherry, in order to immerse himself in living traditions. With insatiable curiosity, he questioned the workers on manufacturing techniques, the use of tools, the organisation of work, the iconography. He would thus observe, during his "archaeological walks", the almost organic development of buildings through the ages. Observation alone, however, does not constitute a study, and his work did aim to be scientific: he still had to write about, as he put it, “the anatomy and paleontology of buildings (Jouveau-Dubreuil G., 1914, p. 4).
Declaring that he did not "claim to do art criticism", Jouveau-Dubreuil sought above all "to do the science of monuments by researching general laws through the comparative study of ornamental motifs.” (Jouveau-Dubreuil G., 1914, p. 4). His method, both simple and rigorous, evokes the classification procedures of naturalists and especially of Darwin, to which his father introduced him. Despite some evolutionary quirks, his theory had the immense merit of adopting the Indian point of view. It led him to correct the dating of his predecessors, sometimes by six centuries. But above all, faced with the general opinion according to which "the history of art in India was written under the sign of decline" (Chandra P., 1992, p. 42), he opposed the notion of an intelligible and structured Indian art, embodying a constant maturation into increasingly refined forms. This idea, supported by rigorous demonstrations, revolutionised the conception of the arts of India.
In May 1914, on the strength of the success of Archéologie du Sud de l’Inde, Jouveau-Dubreuil was elected a member of the prestigious Asian Society, at the age of 28. In spite of some criticisms - one reproaches him in particular for an intimidating vocabulary, relating more to biology than to the history of art -, he became the undisputed master of his subject (at a time when there was no permanent archaeologist in Pondicherry). Exempted from military obligations, he spent the war years between scholarly work and the classroom and accumulated an impressive amount of discoveries over the course of his explorations. From this work, he drew a series of studies on the ancient dynasties of the Dekkan, published in the Revue historique de l'Inde française, and a fundamental essay entitled "Les Antiquités de l'epo pallava" (1917-18).
During the 1920s, his reputation as a “headline scholar” was established in scholarly circles in British India and the princely states. In the enigmatic excavated caves of Malabar, he made extraordinary finds in quick succession (1919-21): the pallava paintings of Sittannavasal, the frescoes of Bedsa (2nd century) and the caves of the temple of Tirumalaipuram in Kandayanallur (pandya era), and the four caves of Mennapuram. Out of these experiments came a controversial work, Vedic Antiquities (1922), whose implausible arguments only managed to dampen interest. Jouveau-Dubreuil hoped to demonstrate the profound originality of the Dravidian civilisation, even its superiority over the Aryan civilisation of north, of which it was then a poor relation. Because he was severely criticised, particularly in France, Jouveau-Dubreuil abandoned writing for archaeological digs. In this field, his flair became legendary, so much so that in March 1924, the Madras Mail reported that "Jouveau-Dubreuil, in the short space of three years, has done much more than the official archaeologist of Madras has been able to do in the last twenty years, and this without benefiting from any of the facilities and conveniences of modern archaeology.” His intuitions were often rewarded by spectacular discoveries, such as that of the pallava frescoes of the Kailasanatha of Kanchipuram (1931).
However, his first major mission, as a collaborator of the French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan during the summer of 1924, was cut short. Faced with the success of British archaeologists in the Indus Valley, their French counterparts entrenched themselves in the deep and wild valleys of the Afghan kingdom, where in 1922 they obtained the monopoly on excavations. While Alfred Foucher and Joseph Hackin were busy with the excavations at Balkh, Jouveau-Dubreuil tried his luck in the Begram region, north of Kabul, where Foucher had identified a promising site (Cambon P., 1996). Jouveau-Dubreuil was persuaded to find there both the ancient capital of the region, Kapishi, described in the 7th century by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, and the Greek city of Alexandria in the Caucasus, founded by Alexander at the gates of India. He already dreamed of excavating "the marble goddesses and the brazen heroes" who would testify to the conquests of the Macedonians (MNAAG, Jouveau-Dubreuil, Ms. 3). Sadly, only a month after his arrival, a violent revolt broke out, forcing the Europeans to leave the country. Jouveau-Dubreuil barely had time to confirm his hypotheses with a few observations. The Begram excavations were suspended before they had even begun. The site would not be taken over until twelve years later – with resounding success – by Jean Carl and then the Hackin couple (Cambon P., 1996).
His mission was aborted, and Jouveau-Dubreuil returned to India empty-handed. He then turned his attention to a region whose archaeological potential he knew: the ancient kingdom of the Andhra (Jouveau-Dubreuil G., 1917), land of the Buddhist sculpture of Amaravati. This region, which was more accessible than Begram, nevertheless depended on the Presidency of Madras, where Jouveau-Dubreuil already had a few rivals. He had to wait, obtain authorisations, and so on. In 1926, he was finally ready to dig. Alone, lacking time and above all means, he could only carry out rapid surveys. And yet his hunches turned out to be right. In a field near the village of Goli, on the banks of the Krishna, he hastily excavated a small stupa with a richly carved stone covering. Elsewhere, at Nagarjunakonda and Ghantashala, he brought to light many bas-reliefs dating from the 2nd and 3rd centuries (Hackin J. and Grousset R., 1928; Ramachandran T. N., 1929). The frustration of the historian, still obsessed with his Dravidian theory, gave way to the joy of the archaeologist: the sculptures were pure masterpieces. Most of them would be sent to the Madras Museum, with whom Jouveau-Dubreuil was collaborating.
From then on, the fortunate professor was solicited and honoured on all sides. The University of Cambridge asked him to write the ancient history of the Dekkan. Madras consulted him for the choice of young archaeologists. He collaborated with the Musée Guimet, various learned societies, and the organisers of the Exposition coloniale of 1931. He unearthed the imposing foundations of Fort Louis, in the centre of Pondicherry (1928-29). In 1932, he obtained the Légion d’honneur. Weakened by an illness, he limited his prospecting to the vicinity of Pondicherry and spent more time in the colony’s archives than on the excavation grounds; here again, he made felicitous discoveries. However, a key piece was still missing from his list of conquests; the one that would prove the historical interest of Dravidian India in the eyes of the world.
However, since 1935, his work on Pondicherry was oriented around two poles: colonial history (Dupleix ou l’Inde conquise, 1941) and the ancient past of the trading post. It was known, in fact, that around the Christian era India had maintained commercial relations with Imperial Rome. Many ancient sources (Ptolemy's Geography, Pliny's Natural History, etc.) preserved the memory of it. Inspired by this theme, Jouveau-Dubreuil had imagined in L’Inde et les Romains (1921) the journey of a Roman merchant to Dekkan around the year 30 BC, but he was now claiming, without any evidence, that the Romans had settled in Pondicherry itself! The theory was bold and the symbol powerful. And luck would smile on him one last time.
In 1939, while prospecting the site of Arikamedu, a few kilometres from his home, Jouveau-Dubreuil found a small oval intaglio (Jouveau-Dubreuil G., 1941). This simple bezel ring of insignificant dimensions, found almost by chance in a suburb of Pondicherry, bears an engraving of the effigy of Emperor Augustus on its face. Here was the long-awaited link with universal history. Dravidian antiquity was finally emerging from the shade. Gandhara had its Greeks; thanks to Jouveau-Dubreuil, Pondicherry would have its Romans.
The excavations of Arikamedu, started in 1940, would deliver the remains of a commercial establishment with warehouses, a seaport, and many objects testifying to exchanges with the Roman Empire. The privilege of carrying out these excavations, however, would fall to others: first to Sir Mortimer Wheeler, then to the French team of Jean-Marie Casal (1947-48). Jouveau-Dubreuil would never see what he discovered. In the excitement of the first excavation campaign, when everything seemed to be going his way, he left India for good on March 9, 1941 (Pattabiramin P. Z., 1946).
The dangers of war forced Jouveau-Dubreuil to return to France, and he soon found himself trapped there, short of money and unable to leave. Thus began his "hours of exile": the unnatural separation from India. For two years, he stayed in various hotels in Marseille, living on his own but in a solitude "very favorable to [writing]" (private archives, s.c.). His work on a second version of Dupleix ou l’Inde conquise allowed him to maintain hope, as did the atmosphere of the Marseille coast where he found "the heat and the sun" of Pondicherry. Alas, the publication of his book in November 1942 went unnoticed. Gravely ill, he soon entered the clinic. He was urgently brought back to Paris, to his brother.
"In the midst of this feverish post-war Paris, he dreamed of only one thing, to see India again, to return to Pondicherry" (Gaebelé Y., 1946, p. 2). But he knew this was no longer possible: "I have made great discoveries," he wrote. “Romans in Pondicherry, it is sensational. But for the moment, I am dead” (Renault J., 1953, p. 27). On July 14, 1945, Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil passed away at the age of 60.
The Collection
During the 1920s, alongside his scholarly work, Gabriel Jouveau-Dubreuil acquired a solid reputation as a collector and donor, in connection with his areas of expertise: ancient India and the French colonial presence.
Classic Art of India
During his first stay in Pondicherry (1909-12), Jouveau-Dubreuil acquired an important series of "chariot woods" (sculptures decorating processional chariots) dating from the 17th century (Roustan Delatour C., 1995). In 1917, he bought (or found) a beautiful head of Buddha in Vijiaderpuram from the Amaravati school. Six years later, he donated this object to the Musée Guimet (MNAAG, inv. no. MG17003). His financial means were then insufficient to build a significant collection. However, in July 1924 he began a collaboration with the Chinese antique dealer C.T. Loo (1880-1957), whose gallery was flourishing (source: Alexander Reeuwijk). Loo (1880-1957), whose gallery in Paris was flourishing (source: Alexander Reeuwijk). Specialized in Chinese archaic pieces, Loo had recently become interested in Indian art and was looking for a wise supplier who could guarantee the quality of the pieces. As for Jouveau-Dubreuil, he needed money, as he could no longer finance archaeological excavations for which he "was never paid". Without having met him, C.T. Loo proposed to Jouveau-Dubreuil to become his agent in India. On July 9, 1924, Loo wrote to Jouveau-Dubreuil to encourage him to acquire only exceptional Indian pieces - "primitive and of a rare character" - likely to interest the American market. A verbal agreement was also made with Joseph Hackin, curator at the Musée Guimet. Under the terms of this agreement, revealed by Loo in his letter of July 9, the national museum entered into a business relationship with the Chinese merchant and the Pondicherry scholar: "the proceeds from the sales [of the objects acquired in India] will be divided into three, of which one third will be attributed either in objects or in cash to you [Jouveau-Dubreuil] or to the Guimet Museum. The stated goal was to contribute to the enrichment of the Guimet Museum. Jouveau-Dubreuil thus provided CT. Loo several hundred sculptures: narrative reliefs, stone statues, bronzes... purchased discreetly or excavated in the field, and almost all of an irreproachable quality, to make the curators of the whole world run. These treasures, today dispersed in about fifteen museums throughout the world (British Museum, MET, Museum Rietberg, Freer Gallery of Art, etc.) and in a few private homes, fed the international art market for three decades.
The collaboration with C. T. Loo was not only commercial. Both men deeply admired Indian art and wished to promote it in the West. Between 1925 and 1939, they donated to the Musée Guimet, jointly or individually, some 42 works of art, including 18 stone sculptures, 6 bronzes and 18 chariot antlers. Among the best-known pieces are the plaques from the stupas of Ghantashala and Nagarjunakonda depicting a universal sovereign (chakravartin) (c. 1st century, MNAAG, inv. MG19063) and The Assault of Mara (2nd century, n MG17066), the exceptional Dancing Shiva in bronze, a masterpiece of chola art (9th-13th century, inv. MG17471), a large basalt Lingodbhavamurti (12th-13th century, MNAAG, MG17472), and three statues of Yogini (tantric female deities) (10th century, MNAAG, inv. MG18506, MG18507 and MG18508) collected in 1926 in the Kanchipuram region.
Remains of Colonial India
From 1914 to 1941, nostalgic like many of his compatriots for the golden age of French India, Jouveau-Dubreuil amassed a remarkable collection of furniture and decorative objects from the 17th and 18th centuries, which he unearthed "in the bottom of old houses, in attics, under layers of dust, behind bundles of goods.” (Dorsenne J., 1932, p. 3). Transformed into a "Pantheon of old things", his house on rue Dumas - famous for its garden of giant banana trees, its "little lake" and its tamed elephant - became a kind of museum of the colony’s history.
On the occasion of the Exposition coloniale of 1931, then the creation of the Musée des Colonies (renamed the musée de la France d’Outre-Mer, or the Museum of Overseas France), Jouveau-Dubreuil made a donation to the French state of 138 pieces of furniture, mirrors, paintings, fabrics, porcelain, and excavated objects from the Dekkan markets. These objects reflected encounters between European, Indian, and Chinese traditions andfigured prominently in the historic gallery of the Palais de la Porte Dorée. While browsing through the "Salle Paul et Virginie", the visitor could thus admire "windows with various objects [...], furniture from the Compagnie des Indes from the very rich Jouveau-Dubreuil collection installed in alcoves, wallpaper [creating] an exotic atmosphere” (Cornillet-Watelet S., 1989, p. 91). In 1960, André Malraux dedicated the building to African and Oceanic arts and Jouveau-Dubreuil's "indo-colonial" collection ended up in storage.
Unique in France, the set represents 113 numbers in the current inventory of the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. The most beautiful pieces are exhibited elsewhere, as part of state deposits. Thus, the Musée de la Compagnie des Indes welcomed from 1981 (before its installation in the citadel of Port-Louis) a selection of 14 pieces of indo-colonial style furniture and 19 objects from the excavations of the fort of Pondicherry (Roustan Delatour C., 1999). These pieces of furniture included the richly carved Table aux Tritons (Cochin C. 1690, MQBJC, inv. 73.3289), a chest of drawers in rosewood (c. 1730, MQBJC, inv. 75.3296) and the astonishing bed with a rotunda canopy (dated 1804, inv. n. 75.3305.1-10) discovered by Jouveau-Dubreuil in the house of the Viceroy of Denmark in Tranquebar. Another precious relic was deposited at the Musée de l'Armée in 1979: the Dupleix Standard (c. 1750), acquired by Jouveau-Dubreuil from the descendants of Ananda Ranga Pillai, Dupleix's broker.
Some objects have disappeared since their donation and have yet to be located (Roustan Delatour C., 1995). It is not known, for example, what became of the objects entrusted by Jouveau-Dubreuil to the museums of the École française d’Extrême-Orient in Saigon and Hanoi, of which only vague mentions remain: a "beautiful Indo-Greek series" acquired in Punjab in August 1924 (BEFEO, 1927, p. 449) and a set of "terracotta motifs" from the former seminary of foreign missions (séminaire des Missions étrangères), built near Pondicherry in 1772-73 (BEFEO, 1940, p.327).
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