Ferdinand Bac
| Ferdinand Bac | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
15 August 1859 Stuttgart |
| Died | 18 November 1952 (aged 93) Compiègne |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Writer and Artist |
| Known for | The gardens of Les Colombières |
Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach, known as Ferdinand Bac, (15 August 1859 - 18 November 1952) was a French cartoonist, artist and writer, son of an illegitimate nephew of the Emperor Napoleon. As a young man, he mixed in the fashionable world of Paris of the Belle Époque, and was known for his caricatures, which appeared in popular journals. He also traveled widely in Europe and the Mediterranean. In his fifties, he began a career as a landscape gardener. The gardens that he created at Les Colombières in Menton on the French Riviera are now designated as a Monument Historique. He also wrote voluminously about social, historical and political subjects, but his work has been largely forgotten.
Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach was born in Stuttgart on 15 August 1859. His father, Karl Philipp Heinrich Bach (1811-1870), was a geologist, cartographer and landscape architect, the illegitimate son of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. Ferdinand was born of a second marriage of his father with Sabina Ludovica de Stetten, daughter of Baron Sigismund-Ferdinand Stetten. The baron, born in 1772 in Bohemia, had attended the Congress of Vienna and told his memories to his grandson. Ferdinand Bac, a second cousin of Napoleon III, was raised on the margin of the court of the Second Empire.
A few years after the collapse of the regime, he chose to leave Germany and his mother to live a quiet but bohemian life in Paris. He was introduced to the Parisian salon society by his godfather Arsène Houssaye and Prince Napoleon, and became a fashionable artist. Ferdinand Bac's friends and acquaintances included Adolphe Thiers, Léon Gambetta, Richard Wagner, Victor Hugo, Hippolyte Taine, Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Paul Verlaine, Maurice Barrès, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Giuseppe Verdi, Charles Gounod and Pierre de Nolhac.
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