Antoine de La Rochefoucauld

Marie Joseph Auguste Antoine de La Rochefoucauld (1862 – 1959), also known as "Comte de La Rochefoucauld", was a proponent of Rosicrucianism in France at the end of the 19th century.

De La Rochefoucauld financially supported Rosicrucian salons in Paris in the 1890s and was Grand Prior of the movement from 1892-1897. These salons were a focal point for mystical studies and promoted the idea of "gestes esthétiques," a synthesis of the visual arts, literature and music. The third of Erik Satie's "Sonneries de la Rose+Croix" was composed in his honor.

According to a Christie's sale catalogue, in the early 1890s Antoine de La Rochefoucauld was the owner of Vincent van Gogh's "" which Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of just under USD $40 million in 1987, at the time a record-setting amount for a van Gogh.

He was also the previous owner of "La Berceuse", a van Gogh in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

ee also

*Gnossiennes

References

* [http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/biog/Roch_Ad.htm Almanach de Gotha; Pincu-Witten, Robert, Occult Symbolism in France: Jose'phin Peladan and the Salons de la Rose-croix, New York, 1976.]
* [http://www.vggallery.com/misc/fakes/fakes5d.htm - Stems of division in the provenance of "Sunflowers"]
* [http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=33277&coll_keywords=Van+Gogh&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_
]
*Volta, Ornella, [http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/articl10.html "Give a dog a bone: Some investigations into Erik Satie"] , English translation by Todd Niquette of "Le rideau se leve sur un os", Revue International de la Musique Française, Vol. 8, November 23, 1987.