Charles Percier

Charles Percier (Paris, August 22nd 1764 - Paris, September 5th 1838) is a neo-classic Architecte French, Décorateur, which worked in partnership with his/her fellow student Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine starting from 1794, up to the point where it is useless to try to distinguish work from the one and other. Together, Percier and Fontaine were the inventors and the principal representatives of this version of the neoclassicism rich and conscieusement archaeological: the Style Worsens.

Formation and career

Raise Marie-Joseph Peyre (like Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine), Charles Percier gained in 1786 the Prix of Rome, and found it with the Palais Mancini. One the their first collaboration was Palais, houses and other modern buildings drawn in Rome , which drew the attention of their future customers, on their return to Paris. End 1792 (during the French revolution), Charles Percier supervised the decorations of the Opera of Paris, a post office with the point of the “avant-garde”. With the return of Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine of London, where it had been exiled, they remained with the Opera until in 1796. They made team with Claude-Louis Bernier (1755-1830).

The theatricalness of the style Worsens, its aggressive oppulence restricted by an arid and correct direction of the ancient taste, and its values néo-Romans which were all the two foreign ones with the old mode, dictated their esthetics with Napoleon Bonaparte. It appointed them its personal architects, and kept them with its service: Percier and Fountain worked on the imperial projects until the any end. As a certain number of artists implied politically in the Empire, Charles Percier took retreat compared to his official functions and turned to teaching, while Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine continued his career until the Second Empire. He thus opened his workshop in the Art schools; during the 22 years which its teaching lasted, its workshop gained 18 Prix of Rome.

Charles Percier was elected in 1811 with the Académie of the Art schools - 3rd section (architecture), with the armchair V (previously occupied by Charles de Wailly and Jean-François Chalgrin).

Principal achievements

Under the Consulate, they reflect at the point the drawing of the frontages of the Rue of Rivoli.

They worked between 1802 and 1812 on the Palais of Louvre (Parisian royal residence forsaken by the kings with the profit of Versailles) to make it possible the emperor to be in the middle of Paris, Versailles had become in any event uninhabitable following the Révolution. They intervened on the Palais of Tileries, opposite Louvre (demolished during the Commune of Paris). One owes them in particular the conversion of the room of Convention into a theater, or the septentrional wing of the court of Tileries. They were also at the origin of the curetting of the court of the Louvre (which contained several streets). One owes them a project of meeting of Louvre and Tileries.

In results of the prospect for the Champs Elysées, Percier and Fontaine drew the arc of the Carousel (1807 - 1809), in commemoration of the Bataille of Austerlitz.

They altered the Château of Malmaison for Joséphine. They made transformations and decorations in the castles of Compiegne, Saint-Cloud and Fontainebleau.

Percier and Fountain drew each detail of their interiors: night table to the candlesticks while passing by paper-painted and hangings. One even called upon Percier to draw porcelains for the manufacture of Sevres, in particular a large vase in the Greek taste, the vase of Londonderry (Art Institute off Chicago), hardly completed in 1814, and that Louis XVIII offered to the marquis de Londonderry during the Congrès of Vienna.

Publications

Together, Percier and Fontaine published:
  • 1798 - Palate, houses and other modern buildings drawn in Rome .
  • 1811 - Description of the ceremonies and the festivals which took place for the marriage of Napoleon i with the archduchess Marie-Louise .
  • 1812 - Recueil of interior decoration concerning all that has report/ratio with furnishing , with famous engravings with the feature which diffused their style beyond the Empire, and influenced the English R3egence style.
  • 1833 - Residences of the sovereigns of France, of Germany, of Russia, etc

One also owes in Charles Percier the illustrations of Horace and the Fountain , in the edition of Didot.

Posterity

At the end of 1804, Charles Percier stops his official career to be devoted to teaching. Here some of its pupils:

Notes and references of the article

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