Charles Ephrussi
| Charles Ephrussi | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
24 December 1849 Odessa, Russian Empire |
| Died | 30 September 1905 (aged 55) Paris, France |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Occupation | Art historian, critic |
Charles Ephrussi (24 December 1849 – 30 September 1905) was a Jewish-French art critic, art historian, and art collector. He also was a part-owner (from 1885) and then editor (from 1894) as well as a contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the most important art historical periodical in France.
A member of the wealthy Ephrussi family, he spent the first ten years of his life in Odessa, a major port on the Black Sea where his grandfather was a grain industrialist, before moving to Vienna. His father Léon and his uncle Ignace were in charge of establishing branches of the family business in Europe.
In 1871, Charles Ephrussi moved to the newly built Hôtel Ephrussi, 81 rue de Monceau, in Paris, with his parents and brothers. The next year, he traveled to Italy, where he began to collect art. On his return to Paris, he became more involved in both the purchase of art and writing about it, publishing his first article in Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1876. Like most of his publications, it concerned Renaissance art. He also gave two works of art to the Louvre at this time.
In about 1880, Charles Ephrussi became interested in the art of the Impressionists and, within the next few years, purchased some 40 works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro, among others. He has been identified as the man in a top hat standing with his back to us in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party (Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.). An account of the collection hanging in his study appears in a letter written in 1881 by the Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue (later published in La Revue blanche). But, to the distress of some of the Impressionists, he continued to buy other types of art, including pictures by his friends Gustave Moreau and Paul Baudry.
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