Uploaded June 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Title: Collector/Photographer/Art Critic: The Multiple Roles of Paul Casimir-Périer (1812–1897)
Speaker: Dr Simon Kelly (Curator and Head of Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saint Louis Art Museum)
Abstract: Paul Casimir-Périer (1812–1897), also known as Paul Périer, was one of the most important mid-nineteenth-century French collectors of Barbizon and Dutch seventeenth-century painting, as well as a pioneering photographer and significant art critic. His varied career provides a way into exploring the hybrid practice of the nineteenth-century collector. During the July Monarchy, Périer used his considerable inherited wealth to build up a prominent collection of Old Masters, which included Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath, and contemporary paintings by Théodore Rousseau, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Jules Dupré, and Richard Parkes Bonington. Périer’s collecting subsequently informed his practice as a controversial art critic in the Second Empire. Perhaps even more notably, it underpinned his output as an innovative landscape photographer and leading figure within the Société Française de Photographie.
Drawing on extensive archival research, this presentation examines the formation and dispersal of Périer’s collections (many of his works were acquired by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and are now in the Wallace Collection) and the complex interplay between his collecting practice and his photography and writing. The presentation offers an opportunity to rediscover this fascinating but little-known figure of the nineteenth-century French art world.
Title: Collector/Photographer/Art Critic: The Multiple Roles of Paul Casimir-Périer (1812–1897)
Speaker: Dr Simon Kelly (Curator and Head of Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saint Louis Art Museum)
Abstract: Paul Casimir-Périer (1812–1897), also known as Paul Périer, was one of the most important mid-nineteenth-century French collectors of Barbizon and Dutch seventeenth-century painting, as well as a pioneering photographer and significant art critic. His varied career provides a way into exploring the hybrid practice of the nineteenth-century collector. During the July Monarchy, Périer used his considerable inherited wealth to build up a prominent collection of Old Masters, which included Rembrandt’s Bathsheba at Her Bath, and contemporary paintings by Théodore Rousseau, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña, Jules Dupré, and Richard Parkes Bonington. Périer’s collecting subsequently informed his practice as a controversial art critic in the Second Empire. Perhaps even more notably, it underpinned his output as an innovative landscape photographer and leading figure within the Société Française de Photographie.
Drawing on extensive archival research, this presentation examines the formation and dispersal of Périer’s collections (many of his works were acquired by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and are now in the Wallace Collection) and the complex interplay between his collecting practice and his photography and writing. The presentation offers an opportunity to rediscover this fascinating but little-known figure of the nineteenth-century French art world.
