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Les dessins de Champignons de Claude Aubriet

 | 
Xavier Carteret
, 
Aline Hamonou-Mahieu

Claude Aubriet (ca 1665-1742)

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1A talented miniature painter and renowned illustrator of natural history of the 18th century, Claude Aubriet (ca 1665-1742) was nevertheless a largely unrecognized artist whose art was entirely dedicated to the discovery of nature and science.

2His work was colossal and critical to the development of the role of illustration in botanical, zoological, and mycological scholarship. Claude Aubriet remained an unassuming and modest man who thrived in the shadow of scholars for more than half a century; yet his life can only be traced very partially.

The son of ploughman from Champagne who became a painter

3Claude Aubriet’s exact birth date remains unknown; it can be deduced from his death certificate, which states that he died at the age of “approximately 77 years old” during the night of December 2, 1742, that he was probably born around 1665. Though the botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) stated in his work Journal of a Trip to the Levant (Relation d’un Voyage au Levant), published in 1717, that Aubriet was from Chalons en Champagne, in fact, Aubriet was originally from Moncetz. Aubriet came from a family of ploughmen from the region of Champagne. Before his parents Pierre Aubriet and Marie Valleray, who gave birth to at least four children (Claude, Jean, Marie, and Magdeleine), his maternal grand-father Charles Valleray ploughed the land in Moncetz. His paternal grand-parents Pierre Aubriet (dead in 1656) and Claudine Baudier ploughed the land in Sarry, where the castle which belonged to the bishops of Chalons became, thanks to Sir Félix Vialart de Herse, a favorite vacation resort.

4Aubriet’s youth and teenage years remain enigmatic. Did he stay in Moncetz where his family owned some land and part of a barn to work the land with his parents? Did he suffer from the difficulties of rural society at that time? Or did he spend his youth in Paris at his uncle and aunt’s house? His uncle, Antoine Aubriet, worked as a valet for Louis II de Bourbon and Henri-Jules de Bourbon, and his aunt, Marie-Anne Alguy, worked as a linen maid for the main customers of the Prince of Condé. What date did he move to Paris? Unfortunately, we don’t know. What is known is that sometime before December 1692, Claude Aubriet connected with the community from Champagne that was settled in Paris. There, he met one of his former patrons who was also from Moncetz: Jean-Baptiste de Pinteville, who helped him with the legal succession of his deceased parents. He appointed his uncle, Noel Prin, a blacksmith from Sarry, as legal representative, and he renounced his share of inheritance in favor of his brother and sisters for a payout of eighty pounds, which he received on February 13, 1693 from Jean-Baptiste de Pinteville.

  • 1 These ages were given by Isabelle Richefort (Richefort 1998, pp. 21-22) and Antoine Schnapper (Sch (...)
  • 2 These books are listed in the artist’s after-death inventory. cf. A.N., M.C. XXIII/522 Inventaire (...)

5What occupation did he have in 1692? In spite of his modest origin, the young man from Champagne had become an artist, which shows that he had completed his apprenticeship. Yet very little is known about his life at that time. The name of his first master is not mentioned in any story, account, archive, or apprenticeship agreement. Thus many questions still remain unanswered. Where did he carry out his apprenticeship, in Champagne or in Paris? Did he follow his master from Champagne to Paris? Was he attracted by the effervescent artistic world of Paris that had been blossoming since Louis XIV’s accession to the throne, or by the recent scientific discoveries that occurred at both the Botanical Garden and the Royal Academy of Sciences? Or was he simply attracted by the botanical classes given at the Botanical Garden? Did Claude Aubriet come to Paris only to find an apprenticeship and start a new life far from Champagne and the difficult conditions of rural society? Was he hired by a studio that was regularly commissioned by the Royal Academy of Sciences, or by an engraver or a renowned artist officially granted credentials by the Royal Academy of Sciences, or by an artist connected to a prince, or a scholar in natural history? We don’t know. When did he start to draw or paint? Did he start to learn his trade between the age of nine and eighteen as most apprentices did during the 17th century, or later?1 How long did his apprenticeship last? We don’t know. Only the discovery of new archival documents could bring some answers to these questions. However, the analysis of his first renowned illustrations, which he did for the scholar Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s Elements de Botanique (1694), leads us to believe that the teachings of his master were mainly focused on the art of drawing. Indeed, the artist mastered all techniques: black chalk, pen and ink, color wash, and red chalk— mainly used for more precise details. His master, whoever he was, was committed to teaching Aubriet his art, and to providing him with the colors and the necessary tools to draw or paint. Furthermore, he probably gave Aubriet a primary education since Aubriet knew how to sign and write, though he was never good at spelling and always wrote in phonetics. He also probably learned how to read since he had an extensive collection of books on history, religion, architecture and painting2.

  • 3 When Marie-Catherie Aubriet (daughter of Antoine Aubriet and Marie-Anne Alguy) and Louis Angelin, (...)
  • 4 Paris, A.N., M.C. XCII/327, 13 juillet 1704, État des dettes de Jean Joubert. Jean Joubert owed hi (...)

6In December 1692, Claude Aubriet, who stayed at the Condé Palace, was thus a “painter” and had already acquired some experience in the trade. However, he agreed to study under Jean Joubert (1648-1707), a painter to the king and to the House of Condé, whom he got acquainted with while socializing at the Princes of Condé’s residence, rue Neuve-Saint-Lambert. Their encounter was probably made easier by the fact that they both had family members working as servants at the House of Condé. While Aubriet stayed at his uncle and aunt’s house, Antoine Aubriet and Marie-Anne Alguy, Jean-Joubert saw his niece’s family on a regular basis at the Condé’s residence. His niece, Marie Carré, was the spouse of a king’s officer, Daniel Le Bœuf, sieur Du Rocher. It is unknown exactly when Aubriet and Joubert started collaborating, other than that it occurred during the years 1690-1700. Thus Claude Aubriet joined Joubert’s studio, whose activity is quite difficult to describe with precision. Jean Joubert, who was in charge of the vellum collection since November 22, 1685, trained at least one apprentice named Jean-Baptiste Prin3, cousin of Claude Aubriet, who resided at his master’s apartment at the Royal Garden starting in July 1704. Several artists worked also for Jean Joubert as painters, such as Antoine Hugo or Jean Delahaye, who practiced his trade at “Falaize.”4 But Jean Joubert relied primarily on Claude Aubriet, to whom he taught the technique of miniature on vellum in order to later entrust him with the creation of some vellum.

  • 5 Paris, A.N., M.C., XCII-327, 13 juillet 1704: billet de transport et état des dettes de Jean Joube (...)
  • 6 Paris, A.N., O1 48 fol 15, Brevet de peintre du roi à condition de survivance.
  • 7 Ibid.
  • 8 Paris, A.N., XCII/334, 25 juin 1706 Comparution de Marie Carré.

7As early as March 1700, Jean Joubert owed Aubriet the amount of 450 tours pounds for the creation of “artworks of painting”5 which confirms that a more active collaboration with the painter to the king occurred at that time. In 1702, year of his return to Paris after a trip to the Levant with the scholar Tournefort, Aubriet became first assistant to his master, who resigned on January 23, 1704 from his responsibility of painter to the king. Hemiplegic, Jean Joubert could no longer fulfill his duties. Thus, Claude Aubriet was designated as “Miniature Painter”6 by Louis XIV who considered him to “have acquired a great knowledge in his art and the required skills so as to fulfill the duties of miniature painter which Jean Joubert renounced voluntarily in favor of Aubriet who is now named as his successor.”7 Thus, starting in January 1704 (though much earlier unofficially) until Jean Joubert’s death on May 11, 1707, Claude Aubriet designed botanical and zoological plates for the collection of arts and curiosities of the king. However, he was not allowed to sign his art works. He did not receive any payment either for taking over his master’s charge, though he did obtain authorization to live in one of the apartments of the Royal Garden (confirmed by a notary act dated 1706).8

Claude Aubriet, painter to the kings Louis XIV and Louis XV

8When his teacher in miniature art died on May 11, 1707, Claude Aubriet officially became “Painter to the King”, even though he did not belong to the Academy of painting and sculpture, and, according to a ruling dated February 1663, it was forbidden to “whoever did not belong to the Academy to be considered as painter or sculptor to the king” (Schnapper 2004, p. 48). Aubriet was granted the privilege to remain at the Royal Garden where he stayed until his death in December 1742. Furthermore, he finally obtained the authorization to affix his signature to the plates of natural history that he created. The name Aubriet, though misspelled as “Aubrié”, appeared for the first time in 1708 in the books of the Treasury for the Royal Buildings, for the creation of “rare plants that he painted on vellum” (Guiffrey 1881-1901, vol. 5, col. 239). Like Jean Joubert before him, he was commissioned to create twenty four miniatures a year, for which he received a payment of 600 tours pounds. Over a period of thirty five years, the artist created almost six hundred vellums for the royal collection. Most of them are still preserved today in the main library of the Museum national d’Histoire naturelle of Paris. A few artworks are also kept in the collections of the Natural History Museum and of the Royal Horticultural Society of London, as well as in Cambridge and in Pittsburg in the United States.

9What makes Aubriet’s work unique is his aspiration to represent all species of the animal and plant kingdoms that were known, discovered, listed, identified, named, and classified at that time. Of course his predecessors such as Nicolas Robert (1614-1685), for example, painted favorite flowers of the time (tulips, anemones and other bulb flowers), birds or animals from the menagerie of Versailles, but their work did not compete with the diversity of the species of plants and animals that Aubriet drew. Thus Aubriet created 59 vellums of fish from the southern seas and from the Aegean Sea, 28 entomological sheets, real scientific studies on the Lepidoptera and their metamorphosis: from the pupa to the chrysalis, from the caterpillar to the butterfly. These vellums are evidence of the major project that the artist undertook in the 1710’s when he started to put together a “compendium on insects and their metamorphosis.” He also painted many ornithological miniatures (almost 109) including raptors (black kites, vultures, bald eagles, eagles); nocturnal birds (owls, hawk owls); aquatic birds (ducks, pelicans, coulands); poultry (roosters, chickens); as well as other specimens that came from faraway lands such as the bird of paradise and the parrot. He also represented mammals in 17 artworks: monkeys, dogs, lynxes, marmots, and goats. In addition to these different fauna specimens, Aubriet produced about 385 botanical vellums on diverse and varied species, exotic and more local. He was probably the first artist in the history of the vellum collection of the king to represent so many different species from the plant kingdom.

  • 9 Paris, A.N., O1 36 fol 162/163 Nomination of Madeleine Basseporte as Painter to the king as succes (...)
  • 10 Paris, A.N. O1 85 fol 252/253 Nomination of Madeleine Basseporte as Painter to the king, July 19, (...)

10As early as 1731, Claude Aubriet was assisted by Madeleine Basseporte (1701-1780), an artist who did her apprenticeship under Paul-Ponce-Antoine Robert de Séry (1686-1733), painter to Cardinal Armand de Rohan. Basseporte also participated in Abbé Pluche’s work Le Spectacle de la nature in 1732. On April 30, 1735, she was appointed painter to the king as successor to Aubriet9 She took full responsibility of this charge on July 19, 174110 Aubriet relinquished all benefits linked to this position in her favor at that time. He honored however his commitment to deliver a few sheets in April 1741, which shows his dedication to his position of miniature artist. Much to his dismay, old age and disease led him to give up his lifetime passion. Madeleine Basseporte was thus left alone in charge of the royal collection.

Claude Aubriet, botanical illustrator for the Royal Garden’s botanists and for other scientific scholars

11In addition to being painter to the king, Claude Aubriet drew scientific illustrations for the scholars of the Botanical Garden and of the Royal Academy of Sciences. He was probably introduced to the scientific community of Paris by Jean Joubert who was well acquainted with the botanists Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Charles Plumier and Sébastien Vaillant.

12In the 1690’s, Tournefort was the first to commission Aubriet for an impressive order: a thousand drawings to illustrate his work Elemens de Botanique or méthode pour connoître les plantes… (1694). As soon as it was published, the book received acclaim in the botanical world thanks to its scientific quality, its clarity of comprehension, its use of a system based on the genre concept, as well as the accuracy of the plates based on Aubriet’s illustrations. The book was a legitimate success in Europe until Carl von Linné’s works (1707-1778). It was one of the very first plant classification systems to be illustrated with plates created from such detailed drawings, executed from nature, with an accuracy that Linné himself praised many years later. Tournefort, who was full member of the Royal Academy of Sciences since November 1691, enjoyed the benefit of being able to illustrate his 698 plant genera based on the classification of flowers and fruits. He was authorized by royal privilege to illustrate his text with drawings. Martin Lister (1638-1715), in his work Voyage à Paris in 1698, stated that: “if one of them [scholar from the Academy of Sciences] […] wants to publish a book and if he provides the bill for the engraving costs, […], the king pays for it” (Lister 1873, p. 81). He added later: “This is how M de Tournefort did it for his work Elements of Botany, whose plates cost the king the amount of 12,000 pounds” [ibid]. This is how Tournefort was able to illustrate the first volume of his two books which included almost 451 plates based on Aubriet’s drawings (Hamonou-Mahieu 2005, pp. 71-75). The details of the fruits and flowers that were represented on the stereotyped plates [d2] of morphological survey done on watermark paper were vivid, thanks to the use of black chalk, grey wash-drawing, black ink and red chalk, techniques that the artist had mastered. These plates demonstrate what Aubriet would prove throughout his fifty-year career: a true passion for a job well done and the expert execution of drawings based on nature and completed under the scientific supervision of the scholar.

  • 11 Paris, MNHN, Library of botany. Correspondence, Jussieu family, Aubriet’s file.
  • 12 Ibid.
  • 13 Ibid.
  • 14 Ibid.
  • 15 Ibid.

13Through the Academic institution, Tournefort commissioned Aubriet for other works that are partially listed in a record of “the drawings that Aubriet made for the Academy11” which he delivered to the scholar on June 2nd, 1699: five drawings of oysters; “two large drawings representing the tamarind tree with the dissection of the flower and the fruit”12 which supplemented Tournefort’s “L’Histoire des tamarins” published in his book Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences of 1699 (Pitton de Tournefort 1699, pp. 96-103); five drawings for the Latin version of Elemens de botanique;“one drawing representing leulyet of China”13, which was added to the description that was published in 170514; a plate with “six other genera with their dissections”15 for the “continuation on the creation of new plants genera” (Pitton de Tournefort 1705b, pp. 226-241; 1706, pp. 83-87); and a “drawing […] representing layers of mushrooms” which accompany the text of 1707: “Observations on the birth and cultivation of mushrooms” (Pitton de Tournefort 1707, pp. 58-66).

  • 16 Paris, A.N., AJ 15 501 Fol 41.
  • 17 Aubriet is designated as “skillful painter to the King”. Brice qualifies him as “skillful painter”

14For the period of almost fifteen years during which he collaborated with the botanist Tournefort, Claude Aubriet did not have the status of official illustrator to the Roayl Garden or to the Royal Academy of Sciences. He would have to wait for a ruling from the State Council, dated April 14, 1719, to be designated as officer of the Royal Garden and “miniature painter and illustrator of plants and anatomical parts.”16 He was finally designated as “Painter assigned to the Garden” by Pierre Chirac, administrator of the Garden, in the Regulations of the Royal Garden dated 1729. He remained connected all his life to the Parisian scientific circles and to the scholars Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Sébastien Vaillant, Antoine-Tristan Danty d’Isnard (1663-1743), Antoine René Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757), and Antoine de Jussieu (1686-1758). Before Claude Aubriet, Nicolas Robert and Jean Joubert had worked for the Parisian scientific scholars and created drawings for the Royal Academy of Sciences. But Aubriet was the first artist to carry both responsibilities of painter to the king and miniaturist of natural history and scientific illustrator commissioned by all major botanists of the Royal Garden. These scholars publicly praised the artistic skills of the painter; Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Lauthier, for example, in his Letter to Monsieur Bégon called Aubriet a “skillful painter” (Lauthier 1709, pp. 15-16)17, and Germain Brice in his work Description de la ville de Paris also referred to him as “skillful” (Brice 1713, pp. 14-15). But it was not until 1734 that Claude Aubriet was mentioned in the Royal Almanac, as the replacement for Louis de Chatillon as “painter to the king, illustrator to the Academy of Sciences.” From then on, Aubriet was officially attached to the Royal Academy of Sciences and was then allowed to sign his engravings with his name. Before he received this official status, Aubriet had worked anonymously for the Academy and his drawings were engraved by Philippe Simonneau, official engraver of the Company. His drawings illustrated more than twenty-one publications written by scientific scholars from the Academy between 1710 and 1728, which shows how renowned the artist had become as a scientific illustrator. For Réaumur, he drew illustrations of mollusks and coellenteratas (1710), a drawing of a “reddishorange latticed-body morel” identified as a Clathrus ruber (1713), and representations of moths (1728). For Sébastien Vaillant, he created plates to illustrate his plant classification system (1718-1722). For Antoine de Jussieu, he drew a Peruvian Apple (1716), fossils (1723), hippopotamus bones (1724), and a mushroom of the Helvella crispa species (1728).

15During his career, Claude Aubriet remained in the shadow of scholars who mentioned him only rarely in their scientific publications, even though Tournefort called him his friend. He was also Sébastien Vaillant’s neighbor. According to the English botanist William Sherard (1659-1728), the scholar and the illustrator lived in the same building in the Royal Garden. But his sponsors did not make any reference to their work relationship with the artist in their publications. Were they positive? Did they treat him on an equal footing or as a mere worker doing his job? Did they show consideration for his artistic work and the fact that he drew, on hundreds of sheets of paper, species that were more or less decorative in a monotonous layout with recurrent techniques? We don’t know. They mentioned his name very rarely. Réaumur, whose aversion to some artists was well known (Pinault-Sørensen 2002), is actually the only one who mentioned him in his article on the Clathrus ruber published in the Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences in 1713: “I asked M. Aubriet to draw a large one [the latticed-body morel is in fact an unnatural red cage] of which some pieces of the lattices were already starting to fall” (Ferchault de Réaumur 1713, pp. 75-76). Could this be considered as some kind of recognition by the scholar who softened his position while working with Aubriet? He came close to expressing admiration for his collaborator’s attitude when Aubriet drew the illustration of a Clathrus ruber despite the stench of the species: “I was surprised to see that he could stand the stench while drawing it” (op. cit. p. 76). Other scholars, such as Antoine de Jussieu, who commissioned him almost eight hundred drawings and miniatures did not show him any recognition. In spite of the little recognition that he received from some of his sponsors, (which does not necessarily indicate a lack of recognition for his talent and his quality of being a good collaborator), Claude Aubriet was one of the most famous illustrators of natural history in the scientific community of Paris at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. He participated in all major botanical works of the first half of the 18th century: the trip to the Levant commissioned by Secretary of State Louis Phélyppeaux, Count of Pontchartrain, in December 1699, on Louis XIV’s request; the inventory of the Parisian flora, a lifelong work by Sébastien Vaillant; the illustration of the Histoire des plantes by Antoine de Jussieu, and Réaumur’s experiments.

  • 18 Paris, BCMNHN, Ms 78 Dessins de Claude Aubriet réalisés pendant le voyage au Levant.

16Claude Aubriet, who was not a scientist (as we already mentioned) was one of the first illustrators of natural history who followed a botanist on a trip that would take him to Greece and Turkey. The botanist Tournefort’s mission was not only to research the flora from the Levant but also “to survey and observe the ancient and modern geography, commerce, religion, and cultural and societal life of the various peoples who lived there” (Pitton de Tournefort 1701, vol. 1, p. 1). During his twenty-seven-month trip to the Levant (from March 1700 to June 1702), Tournefort wrote an epistolary journal directed to the Count of Pontchartrain and to some scholars from the Royal Academy of Sciences. Since Tournefort was not very skilled at drawing and did not practice this art as his friend Plumier did, he had to entrust Aubriet with the mission of drawing absolutely everything during the expedition. Thus Aubriet illustrated the discoveries of the scholar, who was also accompanied by Doctor André Gundelsheimer. From Crete to the Cyclades, from Constantinople to the faraway lands of Persia, Claude Aubriet had to adapt his drawing techniques to the working conditions of the field, which were often difficult and far from what he was used to in his studio. Plants and animals from the Levant became alive under the black chalk magic of Aubriet who, excited by his passion about botany and zoology, illustrated the scientific descriptions of the scholar, thus making them more comprehensible. Almost 546 drawings were shipped to France to the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Father Bignon. They were sometimes dropped off in trunks at the consulate of some of the cities they visited along their expedition, together with travel notes, dried plants and seeds. Starting in 1702, Claude Aubriet corrected each of the plates he had done during his trip, thus leaving an iconographic testimony of the various species collected and listed by the scholar18.

  • 19 Paris, BCMNHN, MS 1344 Catalogue des plantes des environs de Paris, 1700.
  • 20 Paris, BCMNHN, Ms 1093 Dénombrement des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris, 1704
  • 21 Lists preserved in Paris, MNHN, Library of botany, Correspondence, Jussieu’s family, Aubriet’s fil (...)
  • 22 Paris, Institute of France, Archives of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Réaumur’s file and boxes. R (...)

17After he was done drawing the endemic species of the flora from the Levant, Aubriet was entrusted by Sébastien Vaillant with the drawing of the Parisian flora. In 1700, the scholar had already identified almost 1475 species and created a “Catalogue des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris19.” By the end of December 1704, he had classified 1896 species20, including in his inventory the plants already listed in Tournefort’s work Histoire des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris (1698). So many specimens for Aubriet to draw! According to the English botanist William Sherard (Tjaden 1976, p. 17), Aubriet had drawn almost 250 of them, which were posthumously published in the work Botanicon Parisiense in 1727. The artist would not be as lucky with the drawings made for Antoine de Jussieu. In spite of a titanic work to honor the botanist’s order of about 350 illustrations21 between 1724 and 1730 for a History of Plants, Claude Aubriet did not see his illustrations published, as the book remained unfinished in spite of a few engraving attempts. He also drew for Antoine de Jussieu copies of vellum as well as plates of mushrooms, which are being studied in the present volume. Between 1734 and 1739, in addition to the illustration of Antoine de Jussieu’s personal works, Aubriet worked also for the naturalist Réaumur in order to complete his various projects on insects, birds, and batrachians with illustrations22.

  • 23 All the information about the privacy of Claude Aubriet’s apartment and about the end of his life (...)
  • 24 Paris, AN, M.C., XXIII/522, Testament du 2 décembre 1742, Inventaire après décès de Claude Aubriet(...)
  • 25 Paris, AN, M.C., XXIII/522 Testament du 2 décembre 1742.
  • 26 Paris, AN, Y 13508 Scellés après décès du sieur Aubriet. Testament du 10 mai 1740.
  • 27 Ibid.
  • 28 Ibid.
  • 29 Ibid.
  • 30 AN, Y 13508 Scellés après décès du sieur Aubriet.

18From 1740 to 1742, Aubriet’s health quickly deteriorated. Around July 1741, he complained about his age and his “disabilities23.” In 1742, he was plagued with a debilitating disease that prevented him from signing his will24. Aware that his health was deteriorating at a very fast pace and confined to bed in his second floor bedroom “with a view on the street, of sound mind, memory and judgment,” he dictated his will to Maitre Laideguive, lawyer, on December 2, 174225, canceling and replacing the one he had written on May 10, 1740. In his holograph will, the artist bequeathed to his nephews and nieces his “assets”26, though no detail was given as to what his assets included. Furthermore, he named Anne Person, “his maid”27, as will executor because of “her good attentions to my health and her good services28.” She was thus in charge of calling in the people who had the authority to affix seals on the assets of Aubriet’s succession, and organizing the funeral “in the cemetery of the parish wherever I would be29.” In his 1742 will, Aubriet specified the details of how he wanted everything to be taken care of after his death: he wanted to be buried the same day of his death or at the latest the day after, and that “twelve masses of requiem” should be said for the “rest of his soul.” He bequeathed his maids, Anne Person and Françoise Paris, as well as his nephews and nieces, “his personal belongings”. He requested that his “movable property” be sold to cover for his “current debts” and asked that the balance be distributed for two-thirds to his housekeeper and the remaining third to his nephews and nieces from Champagne, who were designated as sole legatees. Then, Aubriet decided to change of will executor for unknown reasons, and he designated Bernard de Jussieu (1699-1777), assistant demonstrator at the Royal Garden since the death of Sébastien Vaillant in 1722, as his new executor. He bequeathed him the cabinet “in wood veneer and exquisite paintings of parrots which ornamented the panels of such cabinet with their golden border”, an heirloom he inherited from his master Jean Joubert. Claude Aubriet passed away on December 3, 1742, around two a.m.30, in his bed “of low pillars, covered with his mattress, beddings and feather pillow, curtains of beige and pale blue color, and the back of the bed covered with baize ornamented with green silk ribbons in tapestry.” He was 77 years old (approximately), a good age to die at that time. He was buried the next day in the Saint-Médard parish (Jal 1872, pp. 78-79); Bernard de Jussieu, Nicolas Angelin, and witnesses such as Claude Gérard (who was probably his grand-nephew, son of Jacques Gérard) attended his funeral.

Notes

1 These ages were given by Isabelle Richefort (Richefort 1998, pp. 21-22) and Antoine Schnapper (Schnapper 2004, pp. 97-113)

2 These books are listed in the artist’s after-death inventory. cf. A.N., M.C. XXIII/522 Inventaire après décès de Claude Aubriet.

3 When Marie-Catherie Aubriet (daughter of Antoine Aubriet and Marie-Anne Alguy) and Louis Angelin, surgeon of the Prince of Condé, got married on May 18, 1708, Jean-Baptiste Prin was designated as Painter to the king and Claude Aubriet’s cousin (Cf. Paris, A.N., M.C. XCII/344, 18 mai 1708). On February 10, 1709, when Marie-Anne Alguy remarried with Etienne Boret, he was designated as “bourgeois from Paris” (Cf. Paris, A.N., M.C. XCII/347, 10 février 1709). Jean-Baptiste Prin lived at Jean-Joubert’s residence (Cf. Paris, A.N. M.C. XCII/327, 13 juillet 1704, État des dettes de Jean Joubert). Unfortunately, no document remains that would enable us to trace back the relationships between Jean Joubert and Jean-Baptiste Prin, to whom he probably provided an apprenticeship.

4 Paris, A.N., M.C. XCII/327, 13 juillet 1704, État des dettes de Jean Joubert. Jean Joubert owed him 560 pounds for twenty-four drawings.

5 Paris, A.N., M.C., XCII-327, 13 juillet 1704: billet de transport et état des dettes de Jean Joubert; M.C., XCII-330, 20 juin 1705: procuration de Jean Joubert à sa nièce Cf. Rambaud 1964, p. 172. Mireille Rambaud gave a wrong date. It was not in March 1704, but in March 1700 that a note for 450 pounds was given by Joubert to Aubriet. Cf. Acte notarié A.N., M.C., XCII-327.

6 Paris, A.N., O1 48 fol 15, Brevet de peintre du roi à condition de survivance.

7 Ibid.

8 Paris, A.N., XCII/334, 25 juin 1706 Comparution de Marie Carré.

9 Paris, A.N., O1 36 fol 162/163 Nomination of Madeleine Basseporte as Painter to the king as successor, April 30, 1735.

10 Paris, A.N. O1 85 fol 252/253 Nomination of Madeleine Basseporte as Painter to the king, July 19, 1741.

11 Paris, MNHN, Library of botany. Correspondence, Jussieu family, Aubriet’s file.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Paris, A.N., AJ 15 501 Fol 41.

17 Aubriet is designated as “skillful painter to the King”. Brice qualifies him as “skillful painter”.

18 Paris, BCMNHN, Ms 78 Dessins de Claude Aubriet réalisés pendant le voyage au Levant.

19 Paris, BCMNHN, MS 1344 Catalogue des plantes des environs de Paris, 1700.

20 Paris, BCMNHN, Ms 1093 Dénombrement des plantes qui naissent aux environs de Paris, 1704

21 Lists preserved in Paris, MNHN, Library of botany, Correspondence, Jussieu’s family, Aubriet’s file. The drawings are kept in London at the Royal Horticultural Society.

22 Paris, Institute of France, Archives of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Réaumur’s file and boxes. Réaumur.

23 All the information about the privacy of Claude Aubriet’s apartment and about the end of his life were analysed and inferred from the archival documents that are kept in the National Archives of Paris: Y 13508 Scellés après décès apposés sur l’appartement de Claude Aubriet au Jardin du roi, le 3 décembre 1742; M.C., XXIII/522, Inventaire après décès de Claude Aubriet du 17 au 22 décembre 1742.

24 Paris, AN, M.C., XXIII/522, Testament du 2 décembre 1742, Inventaire après décès de Claude Aubriet: “because of the immense weakness of his right hand caused by disease”.

25 Paris, AN, M.C., XXIII/522 Testament du 2 décembre 1742.

26 Paris, AN, Y 13508 Scellés après décès du sieur Aubriet. Testament du 10 mai 1740.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 AN, Y 13508 Scellés après décès du sieur Aubriet.

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