A European walk through Bordeaux 23
The Broken Dream
of David Johnston.
26, Cours du
Maréchal-Foch.
David
Johnston.
Walter Johnston, a “native of Enniskillen in Ireland” (Inis
Ceithleann in Irish), a “citizen
of Vevey in Switzerland,” and a merchant
born into one of the oldest families in Scotland, which had settled
in Ireland in the 17th century, bought
number 18 Cours des Chartrons
(now 29 Cours Xavier Arnozan)
in 1815. A patron of the arts, Walter Johnston immediately had it “rebuilt almost
entirely” by the architect
Arnaud Corcelles (1765-1843). He placed
the painter Pierre Lacour junior (1778-1859) in
charge of the decoration, the same
man with whom Goya would some years
later entrust the young Rosario and who, for a time
in 1824, would be Leocadia and Rosario’s only source of support.
On 8 June, in the same year in which Lacour and Corcelles were finishing their restorative work, Walter Johnston
died in this same house.
At the age of twenty-nine,
his only son, Celestine – called David by his family, born
in Bordeaux on 12 September 1789 and married to a certain “Peggy” Barton, born
in Dublin – inherited the “Walter and David Johnston”
house, one of the city’s most
flourishing trading companies,
and a considerable fortune.
Walter and David were both patrons of the arts. They were also close friends of Pierre Rode, who dedicated a concerto first to Walter Johnston, then another to David Johnston.
Rode moved to the château of David Johnston, Château
de Bourbon in Lot-et-Garonne, in 1829, after losing the use of his hand, and died there on 25 November 1830. It was from David Johnston’s home that the body of
the violinist, who had once made all the courts of Europe swoon,
left for a final service at Saint-Louis’ church, before being buried in the cemetery of the Chartreuse. His pallbearers were David Johnston,
Arnaud Corcelles and the painter
Pierre Lacour.
The administration of his fortune
and the trading business – although flourishing – were not enough for Johnston. So the Englishmen
found a solution for replacing
the tin-glazed earthenware,
both fragile and expensive,
with the strong, thin, white “fine so-called
English earthenware.” Johnston believed
that because it had created
a thriving industry in England, it could
do the same in France.
In 1834, he
acquired the Moulins des Chartons, at 77 Quai de Bacalan. There, helped by the
Agen ceramist Pierre Henri Boudon de Saint-Amans
(1794-1883), David Johnston installed his Manufacture Royale to produce
fine earthenware and demi-porcelain.
He cultivated the English taste, and the Bacalan factory flourished. In 1839, it boasted ten
furnaces and employed up to
700 workers.
However, appointed
mayor of Bordeaux, at the height
of his success in 1838, David Johston rapidly came up against serious difficulties. The pottery suffered heavy losses, and its creator had
to take on associates and
set up a limited partnership,
D. Johnston et Compagnie, on 31 March 1840. The public lost
interest in the “English style” in
1842, and he tried to
change the manufacturing process.
He invested what remained of his resources, and resorted to foreign funds. Having borrowed from his entire
family, he felt obliged, out of a sense of duty, to resign from his
municipal office in 1842, on the eve
of an insolvency that he had seen
coming. David Johnston’s
English dream was a fiasco.
In his desperate
search for new funds, he had to sell
his assets one after the other. On 5 December 1843, it was the turn of the house in Pavé
des Chartrons to be sold, although this did not prevent
the company bearing his name from
having to be liquidated in January 1844. After living in a château in Villenave d’Ornon, near Bordeaux, belonging to his brother-in-law Jean-Charles Wittfooth, a Russian consul, he died forgotten,
ruined, and still indebted to his entire family on 1 October 1863.
His earthenware
factory continued nonetheless in the hands of his partner, Jules Vieillard, and the majority
of his former associates under the new name of J.
Vieillard et Compagnie (1845-1895). At his death in 1868, manufacturing continued with his two
sons until 1895.
David Johnston remains an iconic figure in Bordeaux’s brief history of fine earthenware (1829-1895), in which
he represented the unfortunate decade of 1835 to
1845. His portrait at the age
of 19, by Prud’hon, sold as a result
of assets being distributed among the family, has now joined the Samuel H. Kress
Collection and can be found in the National Gallery of
Art in Washington.
David Johnston’s house was … …
… …
… …
Cross Place des Quinconces and
go to Cours du XXX Juillet,
all the way to the Hôtel des 4 Soeurs.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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