Abbot Joseph Marie Terray (1715 – 18 February 1778) was a Controller-General of Finances during the reign of

Louis XV of France Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

, an agent of fiscal reform.

Biography

Terray,

tonsure Tonsure () is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all of the hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word ' (meaning "clipping" or "shearing") and referred to a specific practice i ...

d but not a priest, was appointed in 1736 an ecclesiastical counsellor in the

Parlement of Paris The Parliament of Paris (french: Parlement de Paris) was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. It was fixed in Paris by Philip IV of France in 1302. The Parliament of Paris would hold sessions inside the ...

, where he specialized in financial matters. In 1764 he was made abbot '' in commendam'' of the rich abbey of Molesme. The support of his uncle, physician in ordinary to the duchess of Orléans, mother of the Regent, eventually rendered him rich, enabling him to set aside his former circumspect style of life and openly seat his mistresses at his table. His genuine capacity attracted the attention of Louis XV's chancellor, René Nicolas de Maupeou, who made him controller general in December 1769. His first big venture was helping Mme du Barry's partisans to bring down the minister of foreign affairs,

Étienne François, duc de Choiseul Étienne François, Marquis de Stainville, Duc de Choiseul, KOHS, OGF (28 June 17198 May 1785) was a French military officer, diplomat and statesman. From 1758 to 1761 and from 1766 to 1770, he was Foreign Minister of France and had a strong i ...

the very next year by demonstrating that the government could not afford to go to war with

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

. "Intelligent, plain-speaking, hard-working and rich", Terray spent the next few years stabilizing the finances of the country by repudiating part of the national debt, suspending payments on the interest on government bonds, and levying forced loans. These reforms aroused mass protest among nobles and commoners alike, which forced Maupeou to strip the Parlements of their political power in 1771, so that further reforms could be enacted. Terray continued his overhaul of the financial system by reforming the collection of both the '' vingtième'' (a five percent tax on income) and the ''capitation'' (head tax) of Paris and renegotiating more advantageous agreements with the farmers general, the financiers who held the right to collect indirect taxes. These measures were responsible for a large increase in government revenue; however, he continued to face opposition, particularly over his restriction of free trade of grain, which opponents charged was part of a "Pact of Famine" with Louis XV designed to allow the king to profit from artificially high grain prices. When Louis XV died in May 1774, his successor

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

bowed to pressure and dismissed both Terray and Maupeou.

Patron of the arts

Terray's position enabled him to become a lavish patron of the arts. His rebuilding of his '' hôtel'' in rue Nôtre-Dame-des-Champs, c. 1769–74, was the last commission of Antoine-Mathieu Le Carpentier (1709–1773), who did not live to see its completion. The Hôtel Terray, "notable for the good arrangement of its rooms", later housed the Collège Stanislas and was demolished in 1849, when the rue Stanislas was extended through its garden, leaving an isolated

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

. Pairs of paintings he commissioned from Nicolas Bernard Lépicié in 1775 (an ''Interior of a Customs-house'' and an ''Interior of a Market'') and from Claude-Joseph Vernet in 1779, displayed a strong didactic bias reflecting Terray's concerns with the economics of commerce, rather than a choice by the artists From the history painter Nicolas-Guy Brenet he commissioned two subjects, equally referent to his official position; one, ''Cincinnatus Made Dictator'' was a clear reference to the enlightened despotism under which he operated; the other made a less open reference to his reputation as a speculator in grain: ''The Roman Farmer'', in which Caius Furius Cressinus was wrongly accused of sorcery on account of the abundance of his crops: it had been exhibited at the Salon of 1775. Not all subjects of his commissions were so severe: from Jean-Jacques Caffiéri he commissioned a pair of table bronzes in 1777, on '' galante'' subjects: ''Cupid Vanquishing Pan'' (

Wallace Collection The Wallace Collection is a museum in London occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square, the former townhouse of the Seymour family, Marquesses of Hertford. It is named after Sir Richard Wallace, who built the extensive collection, along ...

, London) and ''Friendship Surprised by Love'' (

Toledo Museum of Art The Toledo Museum of Art is an internationally known art museum located in the Old West End neighborhood of Toledo, Ohio. It houses a collection of more than 30,000 objects. With 45 galleries, it covers 280,000 square feet and is currently in th ...

). A small marble ''Bartholomew'' by

Pierre Le Gros the Younger Pierre Le Gros (12 April 1666 Paris – 3 May 1719 Rome) was a French sculptor, active almost exclusively in Baroque Rome where he was the pre-eminent sculptor for nearly two decades.Gerhard Bissell, ''Pierre le Gros, 1666–1719'', Reading ...

was purchased from the estate of the painter Jean-François de Troy, the head of the French Academy in Rome. Among the rich furnishings of the Hôtel Terray was a secretary desk by Bernard II van Risamburgh. His funeral monument was sculpted by Clodion. After his death, the collection was dispersed by his nephew at auction in 1779.''Catalogue d'une belle collection... provenant de la succession du feu M. L'Abbé Terray'', F.-C. Joullain fils Paris 1778 (the sale took place 20 January 1779); noted in Ulrich Middeldorf, ''Sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress Collection'', 1976:106.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Terray, Joseph Marie 1715 births 1778 deaths People from Loire (department) 18th-century French Roman Catholic priests French economists Secretaries of State of the Navy (France) Secretaries of State of Ancien Régime France Heads of the Bâtiments du Roi French Ministers of Finance