Jacques Rouché

Jacques Louis Eugène Rouché (16 November 1862, Lunel - 9 November 1957, Paris) was a French art and music patron. He was the owner of the journal La Grande Revue and manager of the Théâtre des Arts and the Paris Opera.

He was born to a Protestant family. His father, Eugène, was a mathematician who devised what is now known as Rouché's theorem. After studies at the École Polytechnique and the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, he worked for several different ministries and was appointed head of security at the Exposition Universelle (1889).

He always had a passion for the theater and began writing comedies while still in school. In 1891, he travelled to Vienna, Budapest and Bayreuth to get a first-hand look at the workings of professional theaters. In 1893, however, his career took an unexpected turn when he married Berthe Piver, heiress to the L.T. Piver perfumery, and he soon became an entrepreneur. First, he worked to modernize the company by holding a competition for young chemical engineers who would later develop some of the first synthetic fragrances. He then introduced scented sample cards and slowly expanded the company, opening branches as far-flung as New York, Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. Eventually, half the company's product was exported. After he had amassed a small fortune, he became a patron of the arts.

In 1907, he acquired La Grande Revue, a legal publication founded in 1897 by Fernand Labori (who had been defense counsel for Lucy Dreyfus and Émile Zola) and turned it into a cultural journal. He published essays, critiques, short stories and theatrical pieces by Gide, D'Annunzio, Shaw and many others. His regular contributors included Maurice Denis and George Desvallières (painting), Jacques Copeau (theater), Romain Rolland (music), André Suarès (literature) and Gaston Doumergue (politics). It was published bimonthly until 1940.

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