Antoine Crozat, 1st Marquis of Châtel
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Antoine Crozat
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Antoine Crozat, 1st Marquis of Châtel (c. 1655 – 7 June 1738),[1] French founder of an immense fortune, was the first proprietary owner of French Louisiana, from 1712 to 1717.
Career
Antoine Crozat and his brother
Asiento Company, two lucrative overseas franchises involved in the slave trade. The king eventually offered him a 15‑year trade monopoly in Louisiana. Crozat's term running and influencing Louisiana was quite unpopular with the settlers, and Crozat ceded the monopoly only 5 years into the 15-year term. As Crozat left, he claimed that tobacco could be grown in Louisiana. The monopoly was transferred to the Scottish economist and businessman John Law in 1717 under a group called the Company of the West (Compagnie d'Occident).[3]
Personal life
Joseph Aved (exhibited at the Salon of 1741), Montpellier, Musée Fabre
In 1690 Antoine Crozat married Marguerite Legendre (1670–1742). They had four children.
- Louis François Crozat, 2nd Marquis of Châtel (1691–1750), who inherited his uncle Pierre's collection of paintings and his hôtel in the Rue de Richelieu[4]
- Marie Anne Crozat (1695–1729), who married the Count of Évreux, Godefroy Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne and Marie Anne Mancini
- Joseph Antoine Crozat, Marquis of Thugny (1696–1751)[4]
- Catherine II of Russia, through Denis Diderot. Most now hang in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, although a few were sold in the 1920s and 1930s by the Soviet authorities for hard currency, including a dozen purchased by Andrew Mellon, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.[4]
In 1708 Antoine Crozat built a notable hôtel particulier on the Place Vendôme to the designs of the architect Pierre Bullet. It became part of the Hôtel Ritz Paris in 1910.[5]
Notes
Bibliography
- Gady, Alexandre (2008). Les Hôtels particuliers de Paris du Moyen Âge à la Belle Époque. Paris: Parigramme. ISBN 9782840962137.
- Leclair, Anne (1996). "Crozat family", vol. 8. pp. 208–210, in ISBN 9781884446009. Also at Oxford Art Online, subscription required.
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