Émile Étienne Guimet (2 June 183612 August 1918) was a French industrialist, traveler and

connoisseur A connoisseur (French language, French Reforms of French orthography, traditional, pre-1835, spelling of , from Middle-French , then meaning 'to be acquainted with' or 'to know somebody/something') is a person who has a great deal of knowledge ...

. An important collector of artefacts related to Oriental religions and Asian arts, Guimet is the founder of the

Musée Guimet The Guimet Museum (full name in ; ''MNAAG''; ) is a Parisian art museum with one of the largest collections of Asian art outside of Asia that includes items from Cambodia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Tibet, India, and Nepal, among other countries. Foun ...

Life and career

Émile Guimet was born at

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

and succeeded his father Jean-Baptiste Guimet in the direction of his " artificial ultramarine" factory. He also founded the

, which was first located at Lyon in 1879 and was handed over to the state and transferred to Paris in 1885. In Lyon he also established a library and a school for Oriental languages. Guimet aimed at spreading knowledge of Oriental civilizations, and facilitating religious studies, through sacred images and religious objects. Devoted to travel, he was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Japanese and Chinese

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

and many objects relating not merely to the religions of the East but also to those of

Ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

and

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

. In 1945 Georges Salles, director of the Museums of France, redistributed the collections of national museum. The great collections of Asian arts of the Louvre Museum were transferred to the Musee Guimet. As a result, the Guimet became one of the greatest museums of Asian art in the world. It provides the most comprehensive panorama of Asian arts under one umbrella.

Mata Hari Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod (, ; 7 August 187615 October 1917), better known by the stage name Mata Hari ( , ; , ), was a Dutch Stripper, exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for German Empire, Germany during World War ...

was his long-time mistress. In 1880 he started publishing the ''Annales du Musee Guimet'', in which original articles appear on Oriental religions. He wrote ''Lettres sur l'Algerie'' (1877) and ''Promenades japonaises'' (1880), and also some musical compositions, including a

grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and Orchestra, orchestras. The original productions consisted of spectacular design and stage effects with plots normally based on o ...

, ''Tai-Tsoung'' (1894) The Émile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature was created in his honour in 2017.

References and sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guimet 1836 births 1918 deaths Businesspeople from Lyon