Titre : | Foubert’s Riding Academy in London and Paris, 1668 - 1768 |
fait partie de : | |
Auteurs : | Tessa Murdoch, Auteur |
Type de document : | document vidéo |
Année de publication : | 2018 |
Format : | 25 min. |
Langues: | Anglais |
Mots-clés : |
Equivoc Époque Moderne (XVIe-XVIIIe) ; Équitation Académique ; Londres ; Paris |
Résumé : |
Solomon Foubert ran the Royal Riding Academy in the Faubourg St Germain, Paris. As a result of the 1679 Edict which forced Protestant masters of French Academies to resign, Solomon Foubert emigrated to London. In the British metropolis Foubert established a Riding Academy in Sherwood Street, Piccadilly. This attracted students from courtier families including John Monthermer, son and heir of Ralph, Earl of Montagu, Charles II’s former ambassador to the court of Louis XIV. The curriculum included fencing as well as riding and vaulting, mathematics and its application to geography and navigation.
The Academy was regarded as of national importance as it helped ‘lessen the expense the nation is at yearly in sending children into France to be taught military exercises’. It attracted a royal donation of £100 from Charles II in 1679 and comments from John Evelyn. It was proposed that the Royal Society should supervise the establishment. Solomon’s son Henry served as ADC to the Duke of Schomberg, the General leading William III’s army at the Battle of the Boyne, 1690. In dismounting to assist Schomberg who was mortally wounded, Henry Foubert was himself wounded in the arm. He was promoted to the rank of Major in 1692. Henry took over the management of the Academy on his father’s death in 1696. A mezzotint portrait engraving by Faber after the portrait by Thomas Hudson, 1740, is in the British Museum. Major Foubert built up the aristocratic clientele and was able to live in some style with a private house in King Street. After his death in 1743, the Academy continued under Solomon Durrell, a relative and an executor of Major Foubert’s will. A drawing in the Crace Collection, British Museum, shows Foubert’s Riding School with the street sign on the North marked ‘Major Foubert’s Passage’ (the name survives to this day) and the legend over the door into the stables ‘Horses Stabled’. It had accommodation for forty horses. The Western Side contained stabling, fodder lofts and a yard and extended across the Regent Street and formed the western side of Kingly Street. The brick-built indoor riding school which faced the Eastern end of Conduit Street survived until 1821 when part of Swallow Street was pulled down to make way for improvements to Regent Street. Foubert’s Academy was one of several educational establishments run by French Protestants in London in the late 17th century. Its closest rival was that run by Captain 29St Amour in Oxford Street. They included that run by D’Agard circa 1680 in the Savoy, off The Strand; Abraham Meure’s Academy in Soho, near the French Church in Hog Lane; another run by Metre was situated next to the White Hart Inn, Long Acre. Metre’s Academy offered mathematics, geography, Classics, dancing, fencing and painting. The leading mathematician Abraham de Moivre, who attended the French Church of the Savoy from 1687, may have taught there; he also taught John Monthermer. De Moivre was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1697. Such luminaries were often to be found in Slaughter’s Coffee House, St Martin’s Lane, which was frequented by leading members of the French community in London. John Monthermer, from 1709, 2nd Duke of Montagu, used his equine and mathematical training to advantage serving his father-in-law John, Duke of Marlborough in the Wars of Spanish Succession. He retained a life-long interest in riding and horsemanship. There is a painting by Wootton with figures by Hogarth showing the 2nd Duke of Montagu riding to hounds at Boughton. The Boughton library preserves the dedication copy of Joseph Sympson’s Twenty Five Actions of the Manage Horse. Engrav’d by Josphus Sympson, From Original Drawings of Mr John Vanderbanck, 1729. Were the drawings made in Foubert’s Academy? Other horsemanship manuals in the 2nd Duke’s Library are the Pluvinel’s Manege royal, 1624; the Duke of Newcastle’s Methode de dresser les chevaux, 1658, and Eisenberg’s Description du Manège Moderne 1727. John 2nd Duke of Montagu’s interest in horses included generous provision for their retirement. |
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En ligne : | https://vimeo.com/277069861 |