Joseph Marie Terray

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Joseph Marie Terray
23rd Controller-General of Finances
In office
22 December 1769 – 24 August 1774
Nominated byRené Nicolas de Maupeou
MonarchLouis XV
Preceded byÉtienne Maynon d'Invault
Succeeded byAnne Robert Jacques Turgot
Personal details
BornDecember 1715
Boën, France
Died18 February 1778 (age 62)
Paris, France

Joseph Marie Terray, by Alexander Roslin, 1774; the red calf-bound portfolio symbolic of his appointment stands on the writing-table behind him.

Abbot Joseph Marie Terray (1715 – 18 February 1778) was a

Louis XV of France, an agent of fiscal reform.[1]

Biography

Terray,

Étienne François, duc de Choiseul the very next year by demonstrating that the government could not afford to go to war with Great Britain. "Intelligent, plain-speaking, hard-working and rich",[4] 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

Louis XVI bowed to pressure and dismissed both Terray and Maupeou.[6]

Patron of the arts

Terray's position enabled him to become a lavish patron of the arts. His rebuilding of his

After his death, the collection was dispersed by his nephew at auction in 1779.[17]

References

  1. ^ "Joseph-Marie Terray (1715-1778)". Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
  2. ^ Charles du Rozier, in Dictionnaire de la conversation et de la lecture inventaire, s.v. "Terray (Joseph-Marie)".
  3. ^ Choiseul, Mèmoires: "Intrigue de l'abbé Terray, de Madame du Barry et du duc d'Aiguillon pour me renvoyer du ministère".
  4. ^ Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Régime: a history of France, 1610-1774 1998:144.
  5. S2CID 153831273
    .
  6. ^ Napoleon Bonaparte, "Notes diverses tirées des mémoires de l'abbé Terray," Napoleon: Manuscrits inédits, 1786-1791 publiés d’après les originaux autographes par Frédéric Masson et Guido Biagi (Paris: Société d’Éditions Littéraires et Artistiques, 1910), 236-238.
  7. ^ Colin B. Bailey, Patriotic taste: collecting modern art in pre-revolutionary Paris, 2002:267
  8. ^ Henri Gourdon de Genouillac, Paris à Travers les Siècles, vol. 3:357; Jetta Sophia Wolff , Historic Paris, 1921:315.
  9. ^ Noted in Commission du vieux Paris. Procès-verbaux 1905:307
  10. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
    , Madrid, was included in the exhibition The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre, National Gallery of Canada, 2003, cat. no 96.
  11. ^ Included in the exhibition The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre, National Gallery of Canada, 2003, cat. nos. 89, 90.
  12. ^ Philip Conisbee, Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1714-1789 (exhibition catalogue, Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, London) 1976; "the choice of subject... emanating surely from Terray's office and not from a proposal by the artist - is clearly a didactic one, extolling the virtues of trade and agriculture, and the royal system of customs and excise" (Philip Conisbee, in The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: masterpieces of French genre, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Canada 2003, s.v. cat. no. 96).
  13. ^ Conisbee 2005; for Terray's reputation as a corrupt speculator, see Rozier, in Dictionnaire.
  14. ^ It has been identified with a sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (John Goldsmith Phillips).
  15. ^ It was lent to the Exposition de l'art français, 1888 (no. 213), by the comtesse Terray, and noted as stamped B.V.R.B. by Lady Dilke, French Furniture and Decoration in the XVIIIth Century 1901:161 and note.
  16. ^ Michael Levey, Painting and Sculpture in France 1700-1789 1995:151
  17. ^ 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.
Political offices
Preceded by
Controllers-General of Finances

22 December 1769 – 24 August 1774
Succeeded by
Preceded by
César Gabriel de Choiseul
Secretaries of State for the Navy

24 December 1770 – 9 April 1771
Succeeded by