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JEAN LOUIS CHARLES GARNIER (1825-1898)

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Originally appearing in Volume V11, Page 472 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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JEAN LOUIS CHARLES GARNIER (1825-1898)  , French architect, was born in Paris on the 6th of November 1825 . He was educated in a
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primary school, and it was intended that he should pursue his
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father's craft, that of a wheelwright . His
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mother, however, having heard that with a little previous study he might enter an architect's office and eventually become a measuring surveyor (verificateur), and
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earn as much as six francs a day, and foreseeing that in consequence of his delicate
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health he would be unfit to
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work at the forge, sent him to learn
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drawing and mathematics at the Petite Ecole de Dessin, in the rue de Medecine, the cradle of so many of the
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great artists of France . His progress was such as to justify his being sent first into an architect's office and then to the well-known atelier of Lebas, where he began his studies in preparation for the examination of the Ecole
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des Beaux Arts, which he passed in 1842, at the age of seventeen . Shortly after his
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admission it became necessary that he should support himself, and accordingly he worked during the day in various architects' offices, among them in that of M . Viollet-le-Duc, and confined his studies for the Ecole to the evening . In 1848 he carried off, at the early age of twenty-three, the
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Grand Prix de Rome, and with his comrades in sculpture,
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engraving and
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music, set off for the
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Villa de Medicis . His
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principal
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works were the measured drawings of the Forum of Trajan and the temple of Vesta in Rome, and the temple of
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Serapis at Pozzuoli . In the fifth
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year of his travelling student-
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ship he went to Athens and measured the temple at Aegina, subsequently working out a
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complete restoration of it, with its polychromatic decoration, which was published as a monograph in 1877 . The elaborate set of drawings which he was commissioned by the duc de
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Luynes to make of the tombs of the house of
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Anjou were not published, owing to the
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death of his
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patron; and since Garnier's death they have been given to the library of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, along with other drawings he made in Italy . On his return to Paris in 1853 he was appointed surveyor to one or two government buildings, with a very moderate
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salary, so that the commission given him by M . Victor Baltard to make two
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water-colour drawings of the Hotel de Ville, to he placed in the album presented to Queen Victoria in 1855, on the occasion of her visit to Paris, proved very acceptable .

These two drawings are now in the library at

Windsor . In 186o came, at last, Garnier's chance: a competition was announced for a design for a new imperial academy of music, and out of 163 competitors Garnier was one of five selected for a second competition, in which, by unanimous
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vote, he carried off the first prize, and the execution of the design was placed in his hands . Begun in 1861, but delayed in its completion by the Franco-German War, it was not till 1875 that the structure of the
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present Grand Opera House of Paris was finished, at a 'cost of about 35,000,000 francs (£I,42o,000) . During the war the
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building was utilized as the municipal storehouse of provisions . The
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staircase and the magnificent hall are the finest portion of the interior, and alike in conception and realization have never been approached . Of Garnier's other works, the most remarkable are the Casino at
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Monte Carlo, the Bischoffsheim villa at
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Bordighera, the Hotel du Cercle de la Librairie in Paris; and, among tombs, those of the musicians Bizet, Offenbach, Masse and Duprato . In 1874 he was elected a member of the Institute of France, and after passing through the grades of chevalier, officer and
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commander of the Legion of Honour, received in 1895 the rank of grand officer, a high distinction that had never before been granted to an architect . Charles Garnier's reputation was notconfined to France; it was recognized by all the countries of
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Europe, and in England he received, in 1886, the royal gold medal of the Royal Institute of Architects, given by Queen Victoria . Besides his monograph on the temple of Aegina, he wrote several works, of which Le Nouvel Opera de Paris is the most valuable . For the International
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Exhibition of 1889 he designed the buildings illustrating the "
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History of the House " in all periods, and a work on this subject was afterwards published by him in conjunction with M . Ammann . Not the least of his claims to the gratitude of his country were the services which he rendered on the various
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art juries appointed by the state, the Institute of France, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, services which in France are rendered in an honorary capacity .

Garnier died on the 3rd of

August 1898 . (R . P .

End of Article: JEAN LOUIS CHARLES GARNIER (1825-1898)
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