Born in Paris in 1856, Paul Marmottan was the son of a Flemish industrialist. After education at the prestigious Collège de Juilly and studying law at the University of Aix-en-Provence, he embarked on a career in the civil service, becoming an adviser to the prefecture of Eure. But his real passion was art and history. After the death of his father in 1883, Paul Marmottan interrupted his career to devote his fortune to his passion for the history and art of the First Empire.
He moved into the former hunting lodge bought by his father near the Bois de Boulogne, which he gradually transformed into a private mansion (now the musée Marmottan-Monet), decorated with furniture, paintings and works of art from the Empire. Passionate about the Napoleonic era, Paul Marmottan was less interested in the actions of the Emperor and his deeds on the battlefield than in the way the Empire was administered. The government of Elisa Bonaparte, one of Napoleon's sisters, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and patron of the arts and letters, was the subject of his detailed study. In addition to his monograph on Élisa, published in 1898, he wrote reference works on the French School of Painting (1789-1830) (1886), the painter Louis Boilly (1913) and the style of the Empire (1927). During his research, he travelled all over Europe, even to Poland and Russia, and collected several thousand books and first-hand documents, which he brought together in his villa in Boulogne. Built at the turn of the century, it soon became a priceless library, furnished and decorated in the Empire style.
A humanist and philanthropist (he donated part of his fortune to charity), Paul Marmottan was deeply committed to the transmission and dissemination of knowledge and to the preservation of national heritage (he was a member of the Commission du Vieux-Paris and of several heritage associations). During his lifetime, he donated numerous paintings to several museums in France. On his death in 1932 Paul Marmottan bequeathed his Parisian residence (now Musée Marmottan Monet) and his villa and library in Boulogne (now the bibliothèque et villa Marmottan) to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.
In accordance with Paul Marmottan's wishes, a prize bearing his name, worth 2,500 euros, is awarded each year to a book of art.
