F R A N C O I S A N D R E V I N C E N T
1746 - Paris - 1816
Portrait of Baron Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)
Oil on canvas, Unlined, 54 x 65.4 cm
Signed and dated:
Vincent. F an VIII
Inscribed on back:
Georges, Cuvier. Anatomiste de l'institut n-t- de la Rep. Française ne a Mont-beliard le 24 Aoust 1769
PROVENANCE:
By direct descent in The Cuvier family
LITERATURE:
To be included in J. P. Cuzin’s forthcoming monograph on the artist
ENGRAVED:
Simon Charles Miger 1736-1820 [Acad.1778]
Without a doubt, Georges Cuvier possessed one of the finest minds in history. Almost single-handedly, he founded vertebrate palaeontology as a scientific discipline and created the comparative method of organismal biology, an incredibly powerful tool. It was Cuvier who firmly established the fact of the extinction of past lifeforms. He contributed an immense amount of research in vertebrate and invertebrate zoology and palaeontology, and also wrote and lectured on the history of science.
Baron Cuvier was a friend to John Smithson (1765?-1829), the English minerologist and chemist whose bequest resulted in the creation of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr Heather Ewing, who is undertaking research at the British Library, has recently communicated to us some of the correspondence (see attached) between them, which began in the 1790s. Cuvier’s career and achievements are also celebrated by Balzac, and he is one of the most frequently portrayed Frenchmen of his age; the likeness by Vincent is, however, undoubtedly the most successful, and has come down in the collection of his family.
His study of comparative anatomy allowed him to draw conclusions about one part of an organism from investigating other parts. A famous story tells how his students dressed up in a devil's costume and woke up Cuvier in the middle of the night, chanting "Cuvier, Cuvier, I have come to eat you." Reportedly, Cuvier opened his eyes, remarked "All creatures with horns and hooves are herbivores. You can't eat me," and went back to sleep.
Cuvier extended the classification scheme of Linnaeus by grouping related classes into phyla. He extended this system to fossils, which he recognized as the organic remains of animals now extinct, including the ground sloth and pterodactyl. He is therefore known as the father of palaeontology. Cuvier believed that "animals have certain fixed and natural characters," and therefore rejected both the theory of evolution and Lamarck's theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics. In "Essay on the Theory of the Earth," he proposed that life was created anew after periodic advances and retreats of the sea. Cuvier is supposed to have virtually memorized the 19,000 volumes in his library.
Cuvier was born on August 23, 1769, at Montbéliard, a French-speaking community in the Jura Mountains that was not under French jurisdiction at the time; it was ruled by the Duke of Württemberg. Cuvier studied at a school, which the Duke had founded, the Carolinian Academy in Stuttgart, from 1784 to 1788. He then took a position as tutor to a noble family in Normandy, which kept him out of the way of the worst of the violence of the French Revolution; there he was named to a position in the local government and began to make his reputation as a naturalist. In 1795, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire invited him to come to Paris; he was appointed an assistant, and shortly thereafter a professor of animal anatomy, at the newly reformed Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History). Cuvier stayed at his post when Napoleon came to power, and was appointed to several government positions, including Inspector-General of public education and State Councillor, by Napoleon. Cuvier continued as a state councillor under three successive Kings of France; he thus accomplished the almost unbelievable feat of serving under three different, opposing French governments (Revolution, Napoleonic, and monarchy) and dying in his bed. All the while, Cuvier lectured and did research at the Musée National, amazing his colleagues with his energy and devotion to science. By the time of his death he had been knighted and made a Baron and a Peer of France.