Émile Étienne Guimet

Émile Étienne Guimet (26 June 1836 – 12 August 1918) was a French industrialist, traveler and connoisseur.

Émile Guimet in his Museum, by Ferdinand Jean Luigini, 1898

He was born at Lyon and succeeded his father in the direction of his "artificial ultramarine" factory. He also founded the Musée Guimet, which was first located at Lyon in 1879 and was handed over to the state and transferred to Paris in 1885.[1][2]

Devoted to travel, he was in 1876 commissioned by the minister of public instruction to study the religions of the Far East, and the museum contains many of the fruits of this expedition, including a fine collection of Japanese and Chinese porcelain and many objects relating not merely to the religions of the East but also to those of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.[1]

He wrote Lettres sur l'Algerie (1877) and Promenades japonaises (1880), and also some musical compositions, including a grand opera, Tai-Tsoung (1894)

The Émile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature was created in his honour in 2017.[3]

References and sources
  1.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Guimet, Jean Baptiste s.v.". Encyclopædia Britannica. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 696.
  2. http://egyptartefacts.griffith.ox.ac.uk/?q=paris-mus%C3%A9e-guimet
  3. "MNAAG Prix littéraire".
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