Charles-Émile de Tournemine

Charles de Tournemine, born Charles-Émile Vacher de Tournemine, October 25, 1812 in Toulon, where he died December 22, 1872, is a French orientalist painter. Grandson of the archaeologist Jean-Charles Vacher de Tournemine (1755-1840), Charles de Tournemine is the son of Bernard Vacher de Tournemine, an officer in the French army, who does not recognize him and just agrees to pass as his uncle. Raised by his mother, Marie Anne Victoire Roubaud, alone in Toulon, he already showed drawing skills. He entered the foam school in 1825 and served on the schooner L'Amaranthe. He traveled the Mediterranean and discovered the cities of Constantinople, Beirut, Tyre, Alexandria, Cyprus, Syria and Tripolitania. He was injured in the left eye at the Battle of Navarino on October 27, 1827. He left the navy and, on March 18, 1831, he enlisted in the 11th artillery regiment, where his father was colonel. In 1840, he became a draftsman at the Ministry of War in Paris. In 1843 and 1844, he made several trips to Normandy, Picardy, Brittany and the Loire region. Tournemine frequents the artistic world and buys the works of his contemporaries and friends. He was in charge, with his friend the painter Louis Français, of an annual publication of lithographs, Contemporary Artists, from 1846 to 1853. He exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1846. He showed seven paintings from Brittany at the Salon de 1848. He joined the Luxembourg Museum in 1852, as a conservation officer. He would have…