Emmanuel Gonzalès was born on 25 October 1816 in Saintes, where his father, a Monegasque subject, was a senior doctor at the military hospital. Emmanuel moved to Paris to study literature. He founded La Revue de France, worked for La Presse and Le Siècle, and never stopped writi...
Emmanuel Gonzalès was born on 25 October 1816 in Saintes, where his father, a Monegasque subject, was a senior doctor at the military hospital. Emmanuel moved to Paris to study literature. He founded La Revue de France, worked for La Presse and Le Siècle, and never stopped writing literary pieces. Emmanuel Gonzalès was Vice President of the Société des Gens de Lettres (French Society of People of Letters) from 1852 to 1855, and became the organisation’s President in 1863. He met Émile Zola through his daughter, Eva, who was an impressionist painter and student of Edouard Manet. Although his work as a journalist and writer required him to spend a large part of the year in Paris, Gonzalès regularly visited his estate in the Bas-Moulins area of Monaco. In 1860, he published a book entitled Mes Jardins de Monaco (My Gardens of Monaco), in which he praised the charms of the Rocher: “I have just taken a stroll through the groves of the Saint-Martin Gardens, planted by order of Prince Honoré. They are genuine hanging gardens, hovering over the sea on the side of the Rocher. A maze of pines, cypress, aloe, ponds, roundabouts and zigzagging paths dotted with numerous prickly fig trees. There is no description that can convey the unique and outstanding nature of this creation.” He died in Paris on 17 October 1887. In 1891, a statue of Gonzalès was erected at Montmartre Cemetery, in the presence of Émile Zola, President of the Society of People of Letters. A reproduction of this bust, gifted by Emmanuel Gonzalès’ grandson, was officially unveiled in 1954, in the presence of Prince Rainier III and Princess Antoinette.
Count Anatole Marquet de Vasselot was born on 16 June 1840 in Paris, and died in 1904 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. A high-ranking government official and diplomat, he took up a career as an artist in 1865. He studied painting with Lebourg and Bonnat, then sculpture with Jouffroy. He devoted himself to statuary art and exhibited a plaster medallion of Liszt at the Salon in 1866. He sculpted busts of Corot, Lamartine and Balzac. Anatole Marquet de Vasselot was an art critic, and a member of the Society of People of Letters and the Syndicat de la critique littéraire (French Union of Literary Criticism). He published a Histoire de la sculpture à l’époque de la Renaissance (History of Sculpture in the Renaissance Era) and a Histoire du portrait en France (History of Portraiture in France) – both books were awarded prizes by the Académie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts).
