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Eugène Secrétan, or M.E. Secrétan (1836, Saulx – 1899, Dives-sur-Mer), was a French industrialist and art collector. ==Biography== According to the Museum of the City of New York he was a French copper industrialist who made his fortune in copper production and who donated 60,000 kilos of copper in the 1870s to make the Statue of Liberty.〔The Statue of Liberty: The Museum of the City of New York, by Cara Sutherland, 2003〕 He later lost his wealth in the when his "Société industriel et commerciale des métaux" went bankrupt after an attempt to corner the market on copper.〔''The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914-45'', by Mira Wilkins, Harvard University Press, 2004〕 After the copper crash in March 1889, he sold his extended art collection in the Paris gallery of Charles Sedelmeyer after printing and publicizing a catalogue in French and English to attract American investors. He timed the sale to coincide with the peak of the Exposition Universelle (1889), exhibiting the Eiffel tower, which attracted many wealthy Americans. A French-American bidding war during the auction on L'Angelus, a work by the popular French painter Jean-François Millet of the Barbizon school, forced the price up to a record-breaking amount of 553,000 francs by Antonin Proust, who was bidding for the Louvre.〔''Eiffel's Tower: And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count'', by Jill Jonnes, 2009〕〔(Albany Evening Times, July 5th, 1889 ) on Fulton history〕 Proust only had 180,000 francs however, and after spending a day trying to save the work for France, he called James F. Sutton of the American Art Association to buy it from him for 552,000.〔 The provenance of the work reflects that Secretan owned the painting from the time it was first shown in 1865, and the American Art Association from 1889.〔(Muséé Orsay ) collection catalogue inventory nr. RF 1877〕 Other works from this sale on 1 July 1889 can be found in many American museums today.〔(Rubens painting from the Eugène Secrétan collection sale ) in the Detroit Institute of Arts according to the RKD〕〔The Havemeyers: Impressionism comes to America, by Frances Weitzenhoffer, 1996〕 With the proceeds from this sale, Secretan, an expert in metallurgy, paid his creditors and restarted his work in copper by making a deal with an English company and founded a factory in Dives-sur-Mer called "Elmore's French Patent Copper Depositing Company". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eugène Secrétan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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