Portrait of the architect Charles Girault (1851-1933) by his grandson

18 January 2012
A French architect, born at Cosne-sur-Loire in 1851, Charles Girault studied at the School of Fine Arts (l'École des Beaux-arts) in Paris and was awarded the Premier prix de Rome (a grant to study at the Villa Medici) in 1880. He was chief architect of the Grand Palais and supervised the construction work executed by Deglane, Thomas and Louvet. He also designed the Petit Palais before being elected to the Institut de France in 1902. One of his grandsons Henri Girault, now in his eighties, was only too willing to share his memories of the architect.

See the media:The Petit Palais was built by Charles Girault.
The Petit Palais was built by Charles Girault. © Petit Palais, cliché Ludovic Maisant
Do you have any memories of your grandfather, Charles Girault?
I was born in 1929 and my grandfather died in 1933. So I hardly had time to know him. However I do well remember visiting him one New Year's Day. I was surprised by the warmth of his welcome. He was a very generous man who was very fond of his family. His sons and grandsons were a great source of joy to him, as well as his former friends and camarades in Rome: he enjoyed nothing more than to dine, share a joke and sing songs with them. He had won the First Prize in Rome in 1880 and I think that it was at this time that he met Henri Deglane, the future architect of the facade of the Grand Palais. They had become friends, and developed very close ties. Charles Girault acted in a coordinating capacity for the Grand Palais, while Deglane took care of the more spectacular part: the facade on avenue Winston-Churchill and the Nave. When I was a child, my mother would say: "It wasn't your grandpa that built the Grand Palais, it was his friend Deglane!" Ultimately, it was through books on the Grand Palais that I realised just how much influence my grandfather had on the architecture of the Grand Palais.
 
What were Charles Girault's other major works?
The Petit Palais of course, for which he was the sole architect, unlike the Grand Palais. Before this major work, he was responsible for Pasteur's tomb, the grandstands at Longchamps race course and the Hôtel de Choudens in rue Blanche, a villa that was home to generations of drama students from 1940 to 1997.
After the Petit Palais, my grandfather did a lot of work in Belgium. The story goes that the King of Belgium, Leopold II, had visited the 1900 Universal Exhibition and had been very excited about the Petit Palais. So he asked to meet the architect and commissioned several projects from him. This did not go down well with the people in Brussels who even today would rather have had Art déco than neoclassical architecture. Léopold II had asked my grandfather to design the Congo Palace in Tervuren (now the Royal Museum for Central Africa), asking him to replicate the Petit Palais. Fortunately this was impossible, as the semicircular plan of the Petit Palais would not fit into the trapezoid plot of land earmarked for the museum. So the building in Brussels was rectangular. Charles Girault also built the Cinquantenaire Arch in Brussels. However according to my cousin, Philippe Girault, grandfather's masterpiece was the garden in Bièvres, our family home! Sadly, this garden no longer exists.
 
Do you have any mementoes that once belonged to Charles Girault?
I have a portrait by the painter, Julian Story. This American artist did not have a great career but my grandfather was very fond of this portrait, feeling that it was more human and lively than the others. Charles Girault's library was sold, but the sword that he owned as a member of the Académie française remained in the family, as well as a book about his mentor Honoré Daumet (1826-1911) who he looked to as a father figure. There is also a watercolour executed in Rome, two drawings of Assisi, a preparatory drawing for the restoration of Hadrian's Villa, and a copy of one of the angels on Pasteur's tomb, the original of which can be seen at the Pasteur Institute. However, all the archives relating to the Grand Palais, the preparatory drawings, and the plans, are at the Grand Palais or the National Archives.
 
What are your personal memories of the Grand Palais?
I particularly remember the houseware show, the Salon des arts ménagers, held from 1955 to 1956. At the time I was working for a construction firm that was specialised in insulation and waterproofing. So I actually exhibited in the hall built by my grandfather.

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