JAURÈS Benjamin (EN)
Biographical Article
Benjamin Constant Jean Louis Jaurès was born on February 3, 1823 in Paris to Auguste Jaurès, a naval officer and later a merchant, and Adélaïde Got. He and his older brother, Jean-Louis-Charles (1808-1870), both joined the navy and rose to the high ranks of Admiral and Vice-Admiral. Fresh out of naval school, he was sent on a campaign in the Pacific during the capture of the Marquesas Islands and Tahiti aboard the Triomphante and then the Reine-Blanche. Appointed as Lieutenant in 1850, he took part in the Crimean War as aide-de-camp to Rear Admiral Léonard-Victor Charner (1815-1861). In 1859, he took part in the Italian war aboard the Tonnante, before joining the Chinese expedition in 1860 again alongside Admiral Charner aboard the Impératrice-Eugénie. He distinguished himself during the landing at the mouth of the Haihe (海河), then in Cochinchina during the capture of Saigon, which earned him the honour of officier de la Légion d’honneur on April 22, 1861 (AN, LH 1358/28). He was appointed Frigate Captain on August 26, 1861. Upon his return to France in 1863, he married Mélanie Marie Lucile Julienne (1839-1940), with whom he had three children: Jeanne Adélaïde Marie Clémence (1864-1935), Louise (1870-1881), and Jean Charles Auguste (1873-1932). After several missions in the Channel (1864), in the Mediterranean (1865) and in the Levant (1866), he was appointed captain aboard the battleship Héroïne.
He distinguished himself during the Franco-Prussian war by joining the army of the Loire, which at the end of the conflicts earned him the rank of Rear-Admiral.
His political career as a moderate republican began in the 1870s. In July 1871, he was elected as representative of the Tarn in the National Assembly, then on December 13, 1875, as a permanent senator by the National Assembly. However, he continued his military career in parallel: in the waters of Salonika, he found himself second in command of the Mediterranean squadron following the assassination of the consuls of France and Germany on May 6, 1876 (Robert A., 1889, p. 408; Bourdon J.-O., pp. 356-358). Promoted to Vice-Admiral on October 31, 1878, then grand officier de la Légion d’honneur in 1880, he was entrusted with several diplomatic missions: French Ambassador to Spain in Madrid (1878-1882), then to Russia in Saint Petersburg (1882-1883).
In 1887, he was elevated to the rank of Grand’Croix de la Légion d’honneur (AN, LH 1358/28). He became Minister of the Navy under the government of Pierre Tirard (1827-1893), a short time before his sudden death on March 13, 1889 (AP, V4E 6145, 1889, décès, 8th district).
Concerning the life of Benjamin Jaurès, please see also the biographical notices of Jacques-Olivier Bourdon (2021, p. 356-358) and Étienne Taillemite (2002, p. 257-258).
The Collection
The collection of Admiral Jaurès offers an unusual example of a collection partially assembled during military campaigns. His letters addressed to the musée de la Céramique de Sèvres attest that he acquired works of art during his presence in China; however, the nature of his Chinese porcelain collections, mainly composed of exported ceramics, suggest that he also made purchases during his occasional stays in France.
Benjamin Jaurès and the musée céramique de Sèvres
In 1864, Benjamin Jaurès, then frigate captain, contacted the Sèvres museum to offer it objects he had acquired in Beijing. In a letter addressed to the museum’s curator, Denis Désiré Riocreux, he speaks in particular of a "very old pot" coming from the "great Imperial Pagoda of Beijing" where he was staying and which would have been offered to him by the superior of the temple. He also mentions a "large blue gourd so remarkable for its shape, for the beauty of its enamel and for the purity of its designs" that he bought in this same pagoda (SMMN, 4W26, letter of January 19, 1864). In addition to these two objects, Benjamin Jaurès added a dish with polychrome decorations, a so-called "celadon" covered vase nearly 50 cm high, decorated with an imperial mark of the Qing dynasty in sigil script, and a cup "in the shape of a chalice decorated with a dragon and bearing the mark of the Yongzheng Emperor (1723-1735) (SMMN, 4W388, 18/03/1864; inv. MNC 6286.1-MNC 6286.5). These works were offered to the administrator of the factory in exchange for porcelain from the Sèvres factory, a common practice at the time which allowed the ceramics museum to be enriched with pieces from all over the world. After estimating the objects offered, the administrator of the manufacture could obtain authorisation from the Minister of the Maison de l’empereur et des Beaux-Arts to offer one or more pieces of equivalent value to the interested party. The objects gathered by Jaurès are estimated to have cost 2,000 francs after negotiation. Few in number but of a quality rare for the time, these pieces suffered greatly in the bombings of the Second World War. Stéphanie Brouillet points out that one of the famille verte vases in this set had a label recalling the circumstances in which these pieces were acquired by Benjamin Jaurès (Brouillet S., 2013, p. 6.). The label also adds that, during a visit to a Chinese embassy in 1869, the piece had been attributed to the Song period.
The Exhibition of his Collection at the "Oriental Museum" of 1869
During the exhibition of the Musée oriental organised by the Union centrale des beaux-arts appliqués à l’industrie, the two Jaurès brothers jointly exhibited the works of their collection among the many Parisian collectors there. The catalogue of this exhibition, drawn up by the art critic Albert Jacquemart (1808-1875) and the future curator of the musée des Arts décoratifs Paul Gasnault (1828-1898) clearly distinguishes the two collections, that of Charles under the name of “Admiral Jaurès” (this one includes 38 lots, mainly Satsuma sandstone, some pieces of celadon, blanc de Chine, and famille rose – and that of Benjamin (“M. le captain B. Jaurès”, “M. B. Jaurès" in the catalogue), which was much more substantial with more than 120 lots for Far Eastern porcelain alone. Chinese porcelains of the famille rose type and commissioned porcelains occupied a prominent place. The latter also presented some figurines "found in the island of Cyprus" (no. 1 and 2) and sculpted precious stones, mainly Chinese jades, and bronzes.
His collections were sufficiently noted to serve as an illustration for Octave Frémin du Sartel who, like him, had campaigned in the Pacific at the turn of the 1840s (cf. D'Abrigeon P. notice Du Sartel) – in his work La Porcelaine de Chine (1882).
Sale of the Collection
The collection of Benjamin Jaurès as sold posthumously in 1889 was heterogeneous: alongside a small set of paintings by the most prominent painters of his time (Corot, Fortuny, Jongkind), the collection included a large number of earthenware objects – French, Oriental, Spanish, Hispano-Moorish, azulejos – German stoneware, some Sèvres porcelain, 128 batches of Chinese porcelain, a few batches of Chinese jade and red lacquer, about fifteen Chinese and Japanese bronzes, cloisonné and painted enamels, most with a nianhao (年號) from the Qianlong period (乾隆) (1735-1796, Lugt, 48367). Finally, in the section of "miscellaneous objects", we can read the description of certain works coming from the Summer Palace (圓明園), such as "Ornaments for a Chinese woman's belt, composed of three plates, two of which are provided oval rings in engraved and gilded metal: the central plate bears a watch dial in the center; the other two, a European enamel representing children playing at the edge of a pond with ducks; rich setting adorned with pearls and garnets – European work from the time of Louis XVI” (lot 399). This kind of hybrid object testifies to the cultural and diplomatic exchanges between France and the Qing imperial court during the 18th century through the intermediary of the Jesuits (Zhao B., Simon F., 2019). It is also not impossible that the following lot, a “Music box from the time of Louis XVI in enamelled gold, oval in shape; on the subject cover depicting the Arrival of Telemachus and Mentor on the Island of Calypso – Work of Geneva” (lot 400), is not one of these diplomatic gifts brought by the Jesuits to the imperial court. This sale also included books from his library, which combined classic literary works (Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, Perrault, Boccacio) and works by his contemporaries (Les Chats de Champfleury, Notre-Dame de Paris, and Les Travailleurs de la mer by Victor Hugo, Les Contes drolatiques by Balzac, etc.), none of which is really linked to his activity as a collector. Benjamin Jaurès also seems to have nurtured a true passion for the works of the illustrator and caricaturist Henry Monnier (1799-1877), which make up the last 100 lots in his catalogue.
In this collection with its emphasis on ceramics (earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain), the presence of coats of arms seems to have played a preponderant role in the choices. Coats of arms are found as much on German stoneware as on so-called Indian Company porcelain or commissioned porcelain, made in China on models transmitted by the East India Companies. Paul Gasnault (1828-1898), the curator of the musée des Arts décoratifs displays this taste for porcelain with European decorations, but few of his other contemporaries shared this taste: these pieces were considered by an art critic specialising in the history of Albert Jacquemart as "bastards" and by Édouard Garnier (1850-1903), curator at the Musée céramique de Sèvres, as an "aberration of taste" (Chabanne L., 2004, p. 12).
