Baron Edmond James de Rothschild cuts back…
1882 CE
Baron Edmond James de Rothschild cuts back on his purchases of art and begins to buy land in Palestine in 1882.
He becomes a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, financing the first site at Rishon LeZion.
A member of the French branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Edmond was born in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-sur-Seine, Haut-de-Seine, the youngest child of James Mayer Rothschild and Betty von Rothschild.
He had grown up in the world of the Second Republic and the Second Empire and was a soldier "Garde Mobile" in the first Franco-Prussian War.
In 1877, he had married Adelheid of Naples, the daughter of Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild with whom he will have three children: James Armand Edmond, Maurice Edmond Karl and Miriam Caroline Alexandrine.
Edmond has inherited Château Rothschild, Boulogne-Billancourt and owns the Château Rothschild d'Armainvilliers in Gretz-Armainvilliers in the Seine-et-Marne département.
He takes little active part in banking but pursues artistic and philanthropic interests, helping to found scientific research institutions such as the Institut Henri Poincaré, the Institut de Biologie physico-chimique, the pre-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Casa Velázquez in Madrid, and the French Institute in London.
He serves as a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts and through it sponsors the archaeological digs of Charles-Simon Clermont-Ganneau in Egypt, Eustache de Lorey in Syria, and Raymond Weyl in Palestine.
He has acquired an important collection of drawings and engravings, which he will bequeath to the Louvre, consisting of more than forty thousand engravings, nearly three thousand drawings, and five hundred illustrated books.
Included in this gift are more than one hundred engravings and drawings by Rembrandt.
A portion of his art collection will be bequeathed to his son James A. de Rothschild and is now part of the National Trust collection at Waddesdon Manor.