Georges Hugo, The Look out at Hauteville House, Guernsey, 1905, Villequier Musée Victor Hugo

It was fun to run into Georges Hugo’s grandson, the handsome photographer Jean Baptiste Hugo, at the opening of the exhibition “The art of being a grandson, Georges Hugo”  at Maison de Victor Hugo, place des Vosges. When I asked him about his grandfather he mentioned that none really knew him in the family since he had left his wife and sons Jea and François when haters were very little. Both became artists and jewelers and gave birth to more artists including Marie Hugo who exhibits regularly at Galerie du Passage. They both live in the family house near Arles.

Georges Hugo, Old ships in Toulon, 1894, private collection

Georges Hugo is 17 when his grandfather Victor (he called him Papapa), the literary celebrity of the time, dies and he leads the funeral cortege from the Arc de Triomphe to the Pantheon. His father had died when he was 3 years old. He is rich and loves to party and starts the life of a painter and a writer in the shadow of his famous ancestor, torn between different feelings of artistic insecurity. Very social, the most famous bachelor in Paris, he is mostly a professional dilettante, but will voluntarily join the army during WWI and draw many portraits of his fellows “poilus”. He gave 600 works by Hugo to the Maison de Victor Hugo when it opened in 1902 and turned Hauteville House, in Guernsey, into a museum. He painted it a lot and loved the place. His military service was spent on a ship, teaching his fellow sailors to read and write. The intriguing painting of “Old Ships in Toulon” is devoted to the “Souverain” and “La Ville de Paris”, two former war ships active between 1819 and 1885, which served as barracks for marine Infantry.

B. Collenette, “Georges and his son Jean”, 1894-1895

He first married Pauline Ménard-Dorian, a childhood friend, in 1894 and Jean was born in their house rue de la Faisanderie. But he divorces her and marries Dora in 1901, the mother of François. The brothers will be friends all their life, sometimes even sharing girlfriends.

They move to Florence where he resumes painting and travels to Iceland in the summer with his brother in law, the doctor and sailor Jean Baptitste Charcot, son of the famous Salpêtrière professor. Since he did not date his paintings, it ‘s difficult to know when his corps was painted. But from 1917 onwards he works hard and an exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1920 and at Gael-rie Frame in 1923 celebrates him.

Georges Hugo “View of the surroundings of Florence”. Paris, Maison de Victor Hugo.

He dies destitute in 1925 in a little room near the Champs Elysées survived by his two sons who would become great artists themselves.

Maison de Victor Hugo until March 10