Le Général de Beylié 1849 - 1910

Collectionneur et mécène

An illustrated tribute to one of the greatest patrons of the Musée de Grenoble.

A little over one hundred years ago, on 15 July 1910, General Léon de Beylié was tragically drowned in the waters of the Mekong. He was a key figure for the growth of the Museum of Grenoble at the turn of the twentieth century; indeed, his extraordinary donations make him the museum’s most important patron.

A man of boundless energy and unconfined curiosity, he contributed to collections in a huge variety of fields. In life he came across as all things to all men an aristocrat with encyclopaedic learning, a career soldier in the marine infantry, a scholarly traveller anxious to find out all he could about different cultures and their art. General Beylié always had a special place in his heart for the Museum of Grenoble: St Lucia, a thirteenth-century tempera and wood painting attributed to Jacopo Torriti, four works by Zurbarán, St Florian, a polychrome wooden sculpture by a German artist of the sixteenth century and a self-portrait by Ary Scheffer, dating from 1830, are just some of the major works from among the one hundred and nine pieces of European art donated by Léon de Beylié. Outside Europe, his interest in archaeology led him to carry out some excavations of his own in North Africa, while his adventures in Asia saw him take a jaunt in the jungle to visit the rarely seen ruins of Angkor. This was a site of the utmost importance and once again he spared nothing in his efforts to learn all he could from these remains and used all the means at his disposal to ensure they would be safeguarded for posterity so they could attract further scholars in the future.

Danielle Bal is a curator in the Museum of Grenoble, where she is head of the Department of Sculptures and Objects.
Jean-François Klein is a lecturer in contemporary history in the Department of Southeast Asia in the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) and a researcher in the Centre Roland Mousnier, Paris IV-Sorbonne. He is an expert in French Indochina and the history of imperial ventures in the region, especially in the nineteenth century.
Roland Mourer is the former head curator in the Department of Human Sciences in the Natural History Museum of Lyon. He was awarded his PhD in Human Sciences with a thesis on Cambodia, where he taught for several years in the University of Phnom-Penh.
Caroline Herbelin is a PhD student in art history at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne. She has taught Chinese art history at the same university and is currently a lecturer in Vietnamese art history at the University of Paris 7 Denis Diderot.