Alexandre Berthier, 4th Prince of Wagram
Alexandre Louis Philippe Marie Berthier, 4th Prince de Wagram (20 July 1883 – 30 May 1918) was a French nobleman and an art collector.
Early life
Born as the son of Alexandre Berthier, 3rd Prince of Wagram (1836–1911) and Baroness Bertha Clara von Rothschild (1862–1903[1]), member of the German branch of the prominent Rothschild family. The family resided in the ancestral home, the Château de Grosbois, a large estate in Boissy-Saint-Léger, southeast of Paris. He had two sisters, Elisabeth (1885–1960) and Marguerite (1887–1966) of whom the latter married Prince Jean Victor de Broglie.[1]
Biography
Alexandre Berthier was an active collector of modern art.[2] He owned works by Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Of the last he bequeathed 17 to the French nation in his will.[1]
Berthier bequeathed Grosbois to his sister before leaving for the Army and World War I on 1 August 1914. An army captain and the leader of a company of chasseurs during the Third Battle of the Aisne, he sustained wounds from shell fire at Fort de Condé-sur-Aisne and died from them on 30 May 1918. He had no issue.[1][3] He was buried at the Château de Grosbois like his father and grandfather.[4]
Ancestry
References
- Max Reyne: Les 26 Maréchaux de Napoléon: Soldats de la Révolution, gloires de l'Empire, 1990
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d August 2018: Portrait of a ‘Princess’: Bertha Clara von Rothschild by Ellis William Roberts, 1890, The Rothschild Archive (accessed 4 August 2020)
- ^ Le maréchal Berthier démasqué, Le Figaro, 6 February 2014 (accessed 4 August 2020)
- ^ Château de Grosbois, montjoye.net (accessed 4 August 2020)
- ^ Reyne 1990
