Jacques Edouard Guerlain (; 7 October 1874 – 2 May 1963) was a French perfumer, the third and most famous of the Guerlain family. One of the most prolific and influential perfumers of the 20th century, over eighty of Guerlain's perfumes remain known,1. Atlas, Michèle, and Alain Monniot. Guerlain: Les Flacons À Parfum Depuis 1828. Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 1997. Print. though certain estimates suggest he composed some four hundred.Feydeau, Élisabeth de. Les Parfums: Histoire, Anthologie, Dictionnaire. Paris: R. Laffont, 2011. Print. Among his greatest fragrances are L’Heure Bleue (1912), Mitsouko (1919) and Shalimar (1925).Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print. Though his work earned him universal renown, a considerable fortune and honours such as that of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour,Temerson, Henri. Biographies Des Principales Personnalités Françaises Décédées Au Cours De L'année 1963. Paris: Chez L'auteur (boite Postale 144 Paris Xiie), 1968. Print. Guerlain avoided public attention, never once granting an interview. As a result, relatively little is known of his creative process or personal life.
Many of his major works are archived in their original form at the Osmothèque, donated by Thierry Wasser on behalf of Guerlain in 2014.Irles, Sophie. "Séance thématique - Vie de la collection, les nouveaux trésors de l'Osmothèque". Osmothèque. April 30, 2014. Web. May 7, 2014.
Biography
Early life
Jacques Guerlain, the second child of Gabriel and Clarisse Guerlain, was born in 1874 in the family villa in Colombes.Guerlain archives (villa and factory). Musée municipal d'art et d'histoire de Colombes, Colombes. 17 April 2014. He was educated in England, in keeping with family tradition,Robert, Guy. Les Sens Du Parfum. Paris: OEM, 2000. Print. and then in Paris at the École MongeTemerson, Henri. Biographies Des Principales Personnalités Françaises Décédées Au Cours De L'année 1963. Paris: Chez L'auteur (boite Postale 144 Paris Xiie), 1968. Print. where he studied history, English, German, Greek and Latin.Buisson, Ferdinand. Dictionnaire de pédagogie. Paris: Hachette, 1911. Print. His uncle, perfumer Aimé Guerlain, was childless,Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print. and thus trained Jacques from the age of sixteen as his apprentice and successor. In 1890 Jacques created his first perfume, Ambre.Atlas, Michèle, and Alain Monniot. Guerlain: Les Flacons À Parfum Depuis 1828. Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 1997. Print. He then interned in the organic chemistry laboratory of Charles Friedel at the University of Paris, before being officially employed in the family business in 1894.Guerlain, Jean-Jacques. "Une industrie bien française : La parfumerie." Centre universitaire méditerranéen de Nice, Nice. 1954. Lecture. He experimented widely in both cosmetics and fragrance, perfecting a method for perfuming ink"Nouvelle manière de parfumer les encres d’imprimerie par M. Jacque Guerlain." Revue de la Papeterie 1894: 588. Print. while publishing with Justin Dupont on the subject of various essential oils.Davy, Sir Humphry. The collected works of Sir Humphry Davy. London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1897. Print. Meanwhile, he composed his earliest works such as Le Jardin de Mon Curé (1895). In 1897 he assumed joint ownership of his family's company, shared with his brother, Pierre, and father. For two years, Jacques and Pierre exchanged the responsibilities of manager and chief perfumer, until Jacques assumed the latter role in 1899.Atlas, Michèle, and Alain Monniot. Guerlain: Les Flacons À Parfum Depuis 1828. Toulouse: Éditions Milan, 1997. Print. During this period, Jacques composed several perfumes, including Tsao Ko (1898), his first perfume to reference the Orient, a dominant theme in his oeuvre.
Belle Époque to World War I
At the Exposition Universelle in 1900, Jacques Guerlain presented the leathery floral Voilà Pourquoi J'Aimais Rosine in tribute to Sarah Bernhardt (born Rosine Bernardt), a friend of the Guerlain family.Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014. The grimly named Fleur Qui Meurt (1901) was a novel experiment with violet (created in perfumery via synthesis),Feydeau, Élisabeth de. Les Parfums: Histoire, Anthologie, Dictionnaire. Paris: R. Laffont, 2011. Print. a common accord in Guerlain's oeuvre.Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014. This was followed by a pair, Voilette de Madame (1904) and Mouchoir de Monsieur (1904), the latter being one of Guerlain's few masculines and largely akin to his uncle's Jicky (1889).Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014.
In 1905 Guerlain married Andrée Bouffet, a Protestant from Lille, and did so according to Protestant law, thereby suffering excommunication from the Catholic Church.Thomsen, Ulrik. "Jacques Guerlain: the untold stories." Monsieur Guerlain. 7 Jun. 2014. Web. 4 Jan. 2015. Their first child, Jean-Jacques, was born the following year, as Guerlain finished Après l'Ondée (1906), his first major commercial success. This perfume, translated as "After the Rains" and described at its release as "melancholy" by La Liberté,Fellous, Colette. Guerlain. Paris: Denoël, 1987. Print. was a continuation in Guerlain's experiments with notes of heliotrope and violet.Turin, Luca, and Tania Sanchez. Perfumes: The Guide. New York: Viking, 2008. Print. Due to affordable synthetics, this accord was popular in mainstream perfumery, though Guerlain's treatment, incorporating anisic aldehyde, eugenol and large quantities of orris root,Turin, Luca, and Tania Sanchez. Perfumes: The Guide. New York: Viking, 2008. Print. was considered exemplary by many, including perfumer Ernest Beaux.Beaux, Ernest. "Souvenirs d’un parfumeur." Industrie de la Parfumerie 1.7 Oct. 1946: 228-231. Print.
Kadine, released in 1911, referenced a concubine in a sultan's harem, another Oriental subject. Though Guerlain never visited Asia,Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014. his fascination with the East led him to collect Oriental art; celadon and Blanc de Chine china"Très importante fontaine de table…" Galerie J. Kugel. Web. May 7, 2014. featured in his ever-expanding collection decorating his apartment by the Parc Monceau at 22 Rue Murillo.Fumaroli, Sébastien. "Daniel et Florence Guerlain : la passion du dessin." Grande Galerie - Le Journal du Louvre 2013: 84-85. Print. An aesthete of diverse tastes, Guerlain purchased Nevers faience,"Haute Epoque, Curiosités : Vente du Vendredi 7 juin 2013" Piasa. Web. May 7, 2014. and from RouenReports from the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations Received from the Allied Military Government. 1943-1946. A3380. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. Microfiche. manufactories alongside furniture by André Charles BoulleWeissert, Olga Grimm. "Eine besondere Spezialität" Handelsblatt Nov. 12, 2011. Print. and Bernard II van RisamburghVan Riesen Burgh, Bernard II. Commode. Decorative Arts, Louvre, Paris. (since acquired by the Louvre), paintings by Francisco Goya,European Masters of the Eighteenth Century: Winter Exhibition 1954-5. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1954. Print. Édouard ManetVan Gogh Museum: a decade of collecting : Acquisitions 1997-2006. Amsterdam: Waanders, 2006. Print. and Claude Monet (including The Magpie)Monet, Claude. The Magpie. Painting. Musée d'Orsay, Paris. and antique books.Guerlain archives. Obituary: "Une grande figure disparait." May 1963.
Guerlain's passion for Impressionism and its distinctive effets de soir are thought to have influenced L’Heure Bleue (1912), meaning "The Blue Hour".Feydeau, Élisabeth de. Les Parfums: Histoire, Anthologie, Dictionnaire. Paris: R. Laffont, 2011. Print. An apt metaphor for Paris at the end of the Belle Époque and the beginning of World War I, Guerlain's grandson and successor Jean-Paul Guerlain explains it thus:
"Jacques Guerlain once said that he had a premonition of the calamity that was about to happen. ‘I couldn’t put it in words,’ he told me. ‘I felt something so intense, I could only express it in a perfume.'''"Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print.
On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, Guerlain released Le Parfum des Champs-Elysées (1914), a chocolaty floral, to inaugurate the boutique at 68 Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was sold in a turtle-shaped bottle allegedly referencing the boutique's tortoiselike architect, Charles Mewès.Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014.
Jacques Guerlain was soon after mobilized. By then, he was forty-one and the father of three children. While serving he sustained an injury to the head, leaving him blind in one eye, and so returned home.Thierry Wasser: Jacques Guerlain. Videos Patrimoine. Guerlain. 4 Jan. 2015. Web. Unable to drive, his wife drove for him. Unable to ride, he abandoned the hunt, instead watching horses from his box at the racetrack. His weekends were spent with his family and dogs on his parents’ estate, the Vallée Coterel, a Norman Revival-style compound in Les Mesnuls.Thomsen, Ulrik. "Jacques Guerlain: the untold stories." Monsieur Guerlain. 7 Jun. 2014. Web. 4 Jan. 2015."Guerlain." Architectural Digest. Vol. 56, Issues 7-9 . 1999. There in 1916 his mother, Clarisse, died at the age of 68.Passy Cemetery (Paris), Guerlain family mausoleum. Apr. 2, 2014. Guerlain released one perfume during the war, Jasmiralda, a woody jasmine referencing the heroine of Marius Petipa's La Esmeralda.Thomsen, Ulrik. Monsieur Guerlain. 2006. May 7, 2014.
Interwar period: Exoticism
Jacques Guerlain's Mitsouko, released in 1919, was the result of several hundred trials with oakmoss and the peach-smelling gamma-undecalactone. Named after the heroine of Claude Farrère’s novel La Bataille (1909), the perfume conveys Guerlain’s considerable Japanophilia, inspired by accounts such as Farrère’s of Japanese supremacy during the Russo-Japanese War.Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print.
"My grandfather would often tell me the story of how the might of Russia had collapsed," Jean-Paul Guerlain recalled. "To everyone’s surprise, the Japanese crushed – they didn’t just defeat, they crushed – the Russian fleet. The Japanese navy had been created by the British, and most of my compatriots saw Japan as the new Great Britain."Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print.Mitsouko, an imposing chypre, has also been interpreted as representing the new post-war woman, contrasted against her pre-war past as rendered in L’Heure Bleue, an essentially soft, ambery floral.Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print.
In 1925 Jacques Guerlain presented his magnum opus, Shalimar, at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, of which Pierre Guerlain was vice president. The perfume paid tribute to the eponymous Mughal gardens and was the culmination of four years’ work.Edwards, Michael. Perfume Legends: French Feminine Fragrances. Levallois: HM Éditions, 1996. Print. Guerlain was fifty years old. Shalimar would become the archetypal ‘oriental’ of perfumery, remaining the house's bestseller well into the 21st century."Shalimar, la première senteur orientale" Journal des Femmes. Dec 19, 2005. Web. May 7, 2014. In the words of perfumer Bernard Bourgeois, "Who does not know the troubling sillage of Shalimar?"Bourgeois, Bernard. "Les Fixateurs Animaux." Société des Amis de l'Osmothèque, Galerie de Nicolaï, Paris. May 14, 2013. Lecture.