Bouchot, Henri

Curator of the Print Room, Bibliothèque nationale. After the death of his father, in 1859, Bouchot's mother and sister moved with him to Tilleroyes, near Besançon, where he later attended the Collège Saint-François-Xavier. He served in the army during the Franco-Prussian war. In 1874 he was admitted at the École des Chartes, where he obtained the diploma of archivist-paleographer. He began, in 1879, a lifelong career at the Print room of the Bibliothèque nationale, as an intern under Henri Delaborde. His catalog, Les Portraits aux crayons des XVIe et XVIIe siècles, conservés à la Bibliothèque nationale was published in 1884. He rose to deputy librarian in 1885, the year of his marriage to Claire Chevalier. His important overview of the history of the book appeared in 1886. It soon was translated and enlarged by Edward Clements Bigmore (1838?-1899). A new revision was edited by H. Grevel in 1890. With Georges Duplessis (1834-1899), curator of the Print Room since 1885, Bouchot co- authored the Dictionnaire des marques et monogrammes de graveurs (1886-1887). In 1889 his study on the French printmaker Jacques Callot (ca 1593-1635) appeared. In 1892 the Académie des Beaux-Arts awarded him the Prix Bordin for his biographical study, Les Clouet et Corneille de Lyon d'après des documents inédits. He rose from librarian to deputy curator of the Print room in 1898, under Duplessis. A year later, in 1899, he was elected associated correspondent member of the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Besançon. For his active involvement in the Exposition universelle he was awarded the medal of chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1900). He succeeded Duplessis as curator of the Print Room in 1902. Bouchot had a special interest in the origins of early wood engraving. His catalog of 200 incunabula conserved in the Print room appeared in 1903, Les deux cent incunables xylographiques du Département des estampes. The acclaimed exhibition, Les Primitifs français, in the Louvre (Pavillon Marsan) and in the Bibliothèque nationale, organized by Bouchot, was a high point in his career. Its success led to Bouchot's election as a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. An exhibition on eighteenth-century artworks was held in 1906. Bouchot died suddenly in the same year. He was a member of the Société des Antiquaires de France, and the Société d'Émulation du Doubs. The exhibition Les Primitifs français was a patriotic response to the celebrated exhibition Les Primitifs Flamands of 1902 held in Bruges, Belgium. Important research on the Flemish Primitives had been done by William Henry James Weale and Georges Nicolas Marie Hulin de Loo. Bouchot's concept of a leading French school at the beginnings of the Renaissance was debated among others by Louis Dimier, who also criticized the nationalist character of the exhibition. Even Georges E. Lafenestre, curator of the Louvre, who wrote the introduction to the catalog, warned against stupid exaggerations of patriotic vanity.