Eugène Goupil

Charles Eugène Goupil Espidon ( born December 14, 1831 in Mexico City; † October 24, 1896 ) was French - Mexican businessman, philanthropist and art collector. He acquired on 11 April 1889 by Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin a collection of Aztekencodices and documents and supplemented this. The collection was donated after his death by his wife in 1898, the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Biography

Goupil came from a French -Aztecan family with good contacts in France and Mexico. He was the first of eleven children from the marriage of Joseph Victor 1830 closed Ferdinand Sénateur Goupil and the Spanish- aztekischstämmigen Anna Benita Meléndez. The son of his brother Louis Cyriaque was the later artist Jean Charlot, his sister Alice later married Léon Harmel, the son of the ecclesiastical and social industrialist Léon Harmel. Goupils paternal grandfather Pierre Nicolas came from Normandy and held already in 1820 again in Mexico. His father bought the 1851 Pavillon de Sully of the New Palace of Saint- Germain -en- Laye, imported in 1853 from Tacuba several agave plants and bred them.

Goupil came as a trader to a certain extent in the footsteps of his father and built the business in France and Mexico from. Among other things, he founded the jewelry company in Chaumontel " Perles de toutes couleurs talliques ". On 14 May 1864 he married Augustine Élie, who later called the Aubin- Goupil or Boturini -Aubin- Goupil collection donated.

The Aubin- Goupil collection

This history of the collection dates back to a collection of Lorenzo Boturini Bernaducci, who had started in the years 1735 to 1743. When he was arrested in 1743, it was confiscated by the viceroy of New Spain Pedro Cebrián y Agustín. They have been stored and neglected. Later she gave the Viceroy Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas, Conde de Revillagigedo I the friend of Boturini historian and Anitiquar Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia. After his death, his collection came into the hands of the historian Antonio de León y Gama, after his death in the hands of his heirs. 16 paintings from the collection acquired Alexander von Humboldt during his visit to Mexico in the early 19th century. Today, they belong to the stock of the Berlin State Library. Parts of the original Boturini collection are now in the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, other parts of the Boturini collection went to the amateur antiquarian Father José Pichardo. About 1827 acquired Aubin important parts of the collection from various sources and brought them to France in 1840.

Goupil, who had previously purchased art pieces and artifacts, the collection Aubin 384 manuscripts acquired by the mediation Eugène Boban, a with both of friendly businessman and Americanist whose fundamental interest was the fate of the collection in France after the Mexican government expressed an interest the collection was made ​​manifest. Aubin had to sell the collection because he was in financial difficulties due to the Panama scandal. He negotiated the purchase price paid for Goupil, whose Chaumonteler company had just burned down at this time. Goupil has invested much time and money to complement and reorganization of the collection, for its organization he had set Boban. Goupil had indeed expressed a desire to donate the collection to the National Library in Paris after his death, but had the time of his death intestate deposited. Despite lucrative offers his wife followed his expressed will last.