MOILLET Alphonse (EN)

Biographical article

Alphonse Albert Joseph Moillet was born in Lille on 25 June 1812 (AD59, N (1812) 5 Mi 044 R 134, n.1199). He was the son of a dealer, Claude Joseph Moillet (1788–1859), and Henriette Elisabeth Josèphe Cuvelier (1788–1833); the eldest of five siblings, he was born into a family that belonged to the wealthy bourgeoisie of Northern France (Demarcheliers, H., 1891, p. 13). He studied at the Collège Haffringues, an institution in Boulogne with a reputation for the high standard of its teaching and which trained scientifically minded bourgeois youngsters in the Pas-de-Calais, such as Ernest Théodore Hamy (1842–1908), a major figure in French ethnography (Hoffmann, M., 2019, annexes, p. 121), and the palaeontologist Émile Sauvage (1842–1917), who trained there several decades after Moillet (Hoffmann, M., 2019, annexes, p. 225).

According to his biographer (Demarchelier, H., 1891: 14), Alphonse Moillet travelled around Europe on several occasions, staying in particular in Germany, Italy, Holland, and England. These travels may have helped him to develop his network of contacts and acquire several artefacts to enrich his collection. Although he did travel to Alegria, which was officially colonised in 1834, he did not seem to travel inland (Notter, A., 1997, p. 61). However, while Desmarchelier highlighted these stays abroad, the Moillet Collection came from many countries and continents (for example, Asia) that the collector never visited. Hence, like other collectors of his times, such as Samuel Henri Berthoud, who donated his collection to the Musée de Douai (Hoffmann, M., 2021), Alphonse Moillet very probably assembled most of his collection thanks to his contacts, in particular in the French army, as well as the many dealers in curiosities who visited the region, such as Maison Verreaux (Daszkiewicz, P., 1997).

But Moillet’s interest in collecting attested not only to a passion for ‘exotic’ objects in themselves, but also for the regions and peoples that produced them. In his book on linguistics, Victor Derode (1797–1867), one of his friends and relatives, mentioned Alphonse Moillet’s comments on the similarities between the physiognomy of oceanic pirogues and linguistic divisions (Derode, V., 1840, p. 25). Moillet also contributed to the Revue du Nord. Archives de l'Ancienne Flandre, founded in 1834 by the novelist and archivist Elie Brun-Lavainne (1791–1875). Hence, he published several articles in the journal, inspired by his travels, and complemented by engravings in the Mélanges section describing the monuments and places he visited, such as the Jamaa al-Jdid Mosque in Algiers (Moillet, A., 1835, pp. 132–135).

Moillet assembled his collections in his residence at 12, Rue de Gand in Lille. But his health, described as fragile, prevented him from continuing with his travels. Several years before his death, he lost his hearing. His younger sister, Henriette Elisabeth Marie Moillet (1817–1862), stayed at his bedside and read to him (Demarchelier, H., 1891, p. 16). During his life, he indicated his desire to establish a museum, donating his collections to his native city (Desmarchelier, H., 1891, p. 17). He laid down two conditions for this donation: that the administration of the museum be entrusted to the Société des Sciences, de l’Agriculture et des Arts de Lille, and also that he would enjoy his rights over the collection during his life (AM (municipal archives) Lille, 1D/2/36, pp. 450–453). However, he died on 2 January 1850, before he even had a chance to realise his project. His father, Claude Joseph Moillet, was the heir to this collection, and decided to honour his son’s wishes and donated artefacts to the municipality in January 1851 (AM (municipal archives) Lille, 1D/2/36, Deliberations of the municipal council, 6 February 1850). The inauguration of the Musée Moillet took place on 1May 1851 (Demarchelier, H., 1891, p. 22).

The collection

Henri Desmarchelier (1855–1927) indicated in his biographical article (Desmarchelier, H., 1891, p. 22) that the Moillet donation comprised a total of 1,500 artefacts during the Musée’s establishment. However, an inventory drawn up in 1851, by Moillet’s notary at the time of the donation, estimated that the ensemble was worth 10,040 francs and only comprised 842 objects. Hence, Alphonse Moillet’s collection comprised ethnographic artefacts, mostly weapons, body ornaments, and tools used for hunting and fishing, which came from Persia, North and Southern America, Japan, Oceania, Africa, Malaysia, China, India, Greenland, Germany, and Russia. Only 189 objects remain from this collection that bear labels that identify them as coming from the Moillet Collection, around one hundred of which came from Asia (mainly from China, Japan, and India).

Moillet forged connections with members of the merchant and military navy, generals, and diplomats, such as François de Négrier (1788–1848), Governor General of the Province of Algeria, whom he met in Lille, and whom Moillet called upon when he went to Algeria (Desmarchelier, H., 1891, p. 17). Although most of the objects in his collection came from extra-European territories, it seems that Moillet only stayed once in a country outside Europe. Only two inventories have survived for the entire period spanning 1850 to 1950: the inventory drawn up between 1863 and 1876 by Charles Joseph Bachy (1800–1888), a member of the Société Impériale des Sciences de l’Agriculture et des Arts de Lille, which comprised 1,589 descriptions of objects, then a second phase of documentation was carried out between 1911 and 1912 under the pressure of the French Ministry of Finance, and this comprised 3,450 object descriptions. The complex history of the collections, which were transferred several times, may explain the missing documentation in the archives.

The museum opened in 1851, on the second floor of the Hôtel de Ville in Lille, the Palais Rihour, alongside the museums of paintings, the Wicar Collections, and the municipal library (Bruneel, 1850, p. 375). In 1889, the Musée Moillet was scheduled to be transferred to the site of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, inaugurated in 1892. But ongoing construction work and military conflicts gave the public few opportunities to visit the collections—initially, between 1892 and 1912, then from 1935 to 1940 (Cadet, X., 1999, p. 313). The artefacts were then placed in the basement of the Palais des Beaux-Arts until they were transferred to the storerooms in the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Lille in 1990 (Cadet, X., 1999, p. 314).