Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor

Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor was born in Brussels on 5 August 1789 and died in Paris on 6 September 1879. He was closely associated with the development of French theatre, a noted traveller and author, and a philanthropist.

Isidore’s father Hélie Taylor was English born and took French nationality. His mother was the Belgian Marie-Jacqueline Walwein (from what was then the Austrian Netherlands). Originally destined for a military career, the young man neglected this in favour of travelling about Europe and later the Near East. Among the fruits of his travels was a series of books on the French regions, Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l'ancienne France (1820–63), the nearly 7000 lithographs in which were the first to catalogue the French artistic patrimony. Another book, La Syrie, l'Égypte, la Palestine et la Judée (Paris, 1839), was illustrated with the author’s watercolours, two of which are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

George Borrow describes meeting Taylor in his The Bible in Spain. “He has visited most portions of the earth, and it is remarkable enough that we are continually encountering each other in strange places and under singular circumstances. Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert, the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas, at Novgorod or Stambul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, ‘O ciel! I have again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable B…’”. Ennobled in 1825 by King Charles X, he was by this time collecting Spanish art on behalf of the new French King Louis Philippe I, who made him a Commissioner of Art in 1838. These paintings constituted the then named Spanish gallery of the Louvre.

Previously, he had been very active in the theatrical world and was made Royal Commissioner of the Theatre Francaise between 1825-38. During this period he used his position to encourage the production of Romantic drama. Among those he helped was Alexandre Dumas, who dedicated to Taylor his first successful play, Henri III et sa cour (The court of Henry III, 1829). Taylor himself authored plays with a Levantine background, Ismael et Maryam, ou l’arabe et la chrétienne (The Arab and the Christian, 1821) and La fille de l’Hébreu et le chevalier du temple (The Jewess and the Templar, 1823) and co-authored with Charles Nodier an adaptation of Charles Maturin’s successful drama, Bertram ou le pirate (1821).

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