HILAIRE LEDRU (OPPY 1769 - PARIS 1840) Portrait... Lot 44
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HILAIRE LEDRU (OPPY 1769 - PARIS 1840) Portrait of Philippe Merlin de Douai as a State Counselor. Oil on canvas, signed and dated 1812 lower right. Wooden frame and gilded stucco. 99 x 80 cm Provenance: -Tajan sale, October 1, 2001, Souvenirs Historiques et Armes Anciennes - Collection du Colonel X. et à divers amateurs,n°4 p.6. -Biography : Philippe-Antoine MERLIN was born in 1754 and studied in Douai, which earned him his nickname, intended to distinguish him from Merlin de Thionville. Lawyer at the Parliament of Flanders, he was the defender of Beaumarchais and of President Dupaty. A supporter of the Revolution, Merlin de Douai was elected deputy to the States General in 1789 and played an active role throughout the revolutionary period in the design and implementation of the new legal and legislative framework of the regime. He was elected to the Council of Ancients on 23 Vendémiaire, Year IV, but soon had to devote himself to another function, that of Minister of Justice, entrusted to him by the Directory, before assuming the newly created Ministry of Police. After 18 fructidor year IV, he replaced Barthélémy and became one of the five Directors, but had to resign under the pressure of public discontent, four months before the coup d'état of 18 brumaire. Under the First Empire, he found again prestigious functions in the judiciary: first that of government commissioner near the Court of Cassation, then that of public prosecutor at the same court. Removed from his functions during the Restoration, recalled by Napoleon I at the time of the Hundred Days, Merlin de Douai had to go into exile in Holland at the return of the Bourbons and did not return to France until after the revolution of 1830. Bibliography : Hervé LEUWERS, Un juriste en politique. Merlin de Douai (1754-1838), Artois, 1996.
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