A lovely copy of this mezzotint of the famed Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de St. Georges (1745-1799): violinist, conductor, soldier. Here he stands poised, sword in hand, with a music score, violin, and bow in the background.
A free person of colour born in Guadeloupe, his father, George Bologne de Saint-Georges, was a white plantation owner and his mother, Nanon, an enslaved Creole. At the age of seven, he was sent to Paris to be educated. He quickly distinguished himself as a fencer and was made gendarme de la garde du roi, and received lessons in music and composition.
He joined the orchestra Le Concert des Amateurs and became its conductor in 1773. Three years’ later he was appointed conductor of the Paris Opera, though that success was marred by the racism of some of the performers. He is best known for his simphonies concertantes and was one of the first French composers to compose string quartets. Around 1780 he started composing operas and continued thus throughout the tumultuous decade which culminated in 1789. He inevitably drew comparisons with another music prodigy, busy in Paris in 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and as such was referred to as the Black Mozart.
During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges fought on the side of the Republic. Furthermore, he was colonel of the ‘Legion St.-Georges,’ the first all-black regiment in Europe. One of his subalterns was Thomas Alexandre Dumas (grandfather of the novelist). Such was his love and dedication to music he continued to give concerts during this time. He saw action at Lille and in the war against Austria, his duties took him to Belgian border where the company of volunteers held the line at Baisieux.
Bologne was an extraordinary figure in an extraordinary age. His biographer, describes him thus: “This was a truly gentle man who, endowed with extraordinary physical and artistic skills tempered by modesty, carried love and consideration for his fellow men to extremes. His generosity often conflicted with his own interests, and his help to others was always offered with tack in order not to offend the recipient” (Banat). So enduring was his fame, he became the subject of the popular 1840 novel by Roger de Beauvoir, very much in the style of The Count of Monte Cristo and entirely misleading for a generation of scholars interested in Bologne. The recent motion picture has rekindled his fame.
OCLC locates copies at Yale, Harvard, and BnF. We find others at the Met, UVa, and the National Maritime Museum.
Banat, G., “Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Man of Music and Gentleman-at-Arms: The Life and Times of an Eighteenth-Century Prodigy” in Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Autumn, 1990), p.209.
