Les Juifs avignonnais de Paris et l’École royale gratuite de dessin (1768-1795)

Abstract

Founded in 1766 by the painter Jean-Jacques Bachelier, the l’Ecole royale gratuite de dessin of Paris, better known as the Ecole nationale superieure des arts decoratifs, appealed to private patrons at the moment of its creation. It so happens that in 1768, among the very first patrons (who became known as founders) figured 27 Jews who traced their origins to Avignon and worked as haberdashers. Several months earlier, six of them had benefited from a royal edict of March 1767, which gave them the right to buy their patents. The collective participation of Avignonese Jewish families in Bachelier’s project thus appears to be part of a strategy of consolidating newly acquired and cherished rights, while at the same time getting in the good graces of the Lieutenant General of the Paris Police. This phenomenon reveals the Avignonese Jews’ desire to integrate into French society, while also indicating their still very marked belonging to a group that not only shared the same geographical and confessional origins, but also had a common professional identity and practiced in-marriage.