Édouard Hannon (1853–1931) was a Belgian engineer and photographer. He was the son of the doctor and

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

Joseph-Désiré Hannon and the brother of the poet

Théodore Hannon Théodore (Théo) Hannon (1851-1916) was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver, and man of letters. As a man of letters, he was a scenarist, theatrical-parodist, and poet. As a poet he enjoyed the rare honor of being mentioned in glowing ...

and the mycologist Mariette Rousseau (1850–1926).

Biography

He was the youngest son of Joseph-Désiré Hannon (1822–1870), doctor of natural sciences and medicine, and professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Upon his death on 23 August 1870, Ernest Rousseau (1831–1908), professor of physics at the ULB, became Edouard and his brothers' tutor. The future mycologist Marie-Sophie, dite Mariette (1850–1926) became and spouse of Ernest Rousseau, brother of Théodore, called Théo (1851–1916), the future painter and poet. Édouard became a civil engineer, graduating from the École polytechnique in Ghent in 1875, then joining the Solvay Company in 1876, where he became technical director (1883), and then one of its managers (1907–1922). He was the longtime head of Solvay's soda plant in

Dombasle-sur-Meurthe Dombasle-sur-Meurthe (, literally ''Dombasle on Meurthe'') is a commune in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France, close to the city of Nancy. History Dombasle is one of the main production sites for sodium carbonate in the ...

, France, just south of Nancy, where he became attracted to the works of the Art Nouveau artists

Emile Gallé Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *'' Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *'' Emil and the Detecti ...

and Louis Majorelle. In April 1922, with his colleagues

Édouard Herzen Édouard Herzen (Florence, 1877–1936) was a Belgian chemist of Russian descent who played a leading role in the development of physics and chemistry during the twentieth century. He collaborated with industrialist Ernest Solvay, and participated ...

and Léon Flamache, he organized the first Solvay Conference of chemistry. During the course of his working life, Édouard Hannon took many photographs which bear witness to the urban life of the socioeconomically disadvantaged classes of society in Spain, Italy, the United States and especially Czarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. As an amateur photographer and through his portraits and landscapes, Édouard Hannon became a pioneer of pictorialism in Belgium. In 1874, he was one of the founding members of the Association belge de photographie. En 1894, he won the gold medal at the first exhibition of the Photo-Club de Paris with his ''Matinée d'Automne'' Autumn Morning"and participated in international photography shows in Berlin (1896) and Brussels (1902). Two prints of ''Matinée d'Automne'' (1894) are in the collection of the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...

. His name is perpetually associated with the Hôtel Hannon, an example of Art Nouveau architecture where he lived from 1904 onwards, and which housed, from 1988 to 2014, his collection of photographs as part of the ''Espace photographique Contretype''. He died in Saint-Gilles (Bruxelles) in 1931.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hannon, Edouard 1853 births 1931 deaths Photographers from Brussels People from Ixelles 19th-century Belgian engineers Landscape photographers Portrait photographers 20th-century Belgian engineers

Biography

Further reading

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References