Jean louis charles garnier biography channel

Jean louis charles garnier biography channel

He was educated in a primary school, and it was intended that he should pursue his father's craft, that of a wheelwright. His mother, however, having heard that with a little previous study he might enter an architect's office and eventually become a measuring surveyor verificateurand earn as much as six francs a day, and foreseeing that in consequence of his delicate health he would be unfit to work at the forge, sent him to learn drawing and mathematics at the Petite Ecole de Dessin, in the rue de Medecine, the cradle of so many of the great artists of France.

His progress was such as to justify his being sent first into an architect's office and then to the well-known atelier of Lebas, where he began his studies in preparation for the examination of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, which he passed inat the age of seventeen.

Shortly after his admission it became necessary that he should support himself, and accordingly he worked during the day in various architects' offices, among them in that of M. Viollet-le-Duc, and confined his studies for the Ecole to the evening.

In he carried off, at the early age of twenty-three, the Grand Prix de Rome, and with his comrades in sculpture, engraving and music, set off for the Villa de Medicis.