Engerand, Fernand

Compiler of inventories of French royal art collections; deputy representing Calvados in French parliament (Chambre des députés) from 1902-1936; general secretary of the Musée social from 1898-1902. Engerand received his education from the lycée de Caen and the Institution Sainte-Marie, also in Caen. He was licensed in letters and law, and began his political career as a lawyer for the court of appeals in Paris. Later as deputy in the French legislature, Engerand sat on various government committees for public works and industrial projects. For four years, he served as secrétariat général of the Musée social, a research-based institution dedicated to urban social reform. Engerand was also a journalist who regularly wrote articles in newspapers and journals like Le Correspondant, L’Illustration, and L’Écho de Paris. In the mid-1890s, Engerand began writing for archival publications like the Revue de l’art français ancien et moderne (Nouvelles archives de l’art français) and the Gazette des Beaux-Arts on French art from the seventeenth thru nineteenth centuries. He was particularly dedicated to the art of his native region of Normandy, and in 1905 passed a law, the Projet de résolution relatif aux musées de province, that supported the study and inventory of local museums throughout the country.

Engerand’s most well-known contributions to art history, his inventories on the royal art collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Inventaire des tableaux du roy: inventaires des collections de la Couronne par Nicolas Bailly (1899) and Inventaire des tableaux commandés et achetés par la Direction des Bâtiments du Roi de 1710 à 1792 (1900)), reflect the nationalism felt by the generation of Frenchmen living in memory of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 (Weil-Curiel). After the First World War, such feelings also directed Engerand’s political career more towards foreign affairs and heavy industry (Jolly). He received multiple distinctions from the Académie française for his writings on recent French history and contemporary social issues and Franco-German relations. In 1899 he received the Marcelin Guérin prize for his book published that year, Ange Pitou, agent royaliste et chanteur des rues (1767-1846). In 1917, he received the same annually-awarded distinction for L’Allemagne et le fer: les frontières lorraines et la force allemande (1916). Lastly, in 1941, Engerand was awarded the Prix général Muteau for a book on art from his native Caen, Les Trésors d’Art religieux du Calvados, which his daughter published posthumously in 1940. A portion of his personal papers at the regional archives in Calvados were destroyed in 1944 from aerial bomblings during WWII.