Jean-Baptiste-Ambroise-Marcellin Jobard (17 May 1792 – 27 October 1861) was a Belgian lithographer, photographer and inventor of French origin. Founder of the first significant Belgian lithographic establishment, first photographer in Belgium on 16 September 1839, director of the Musée de l’Industrie de Bruxelles (Industry Museum of Brussels) from 1841 to 1861, Jobard played a role, in the artistic, technological, scientific and industrial development of Belgium during the Dutch period and the reign of Leopold I.
Haute-Marne
Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.Baissey for thirty years. Also a poet, he lived in a house at the foot of a hill on the slopes of which he owned two gardens and a vineyard. He married Marguerite Prudent, daughter of the village prévôt (magistrate).
Jobard spent six or seven years in
Langres
Langres () is a commune in northeastern France. It is a subprefecture of the department of Haute-Marne, in the region of Grand Est.
History
As the capital of the Romanized Gallic tribe known as the Lingones, it was called Andematunnum, then L ...
at the same school that
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promine ...
had attended, then continued his education at the Lycée imperial de
Dijon
Dijon (, , ) (dated)
* it, Digione
* la, Diviō or
* lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920.
The earl ...
, where he attended classes given by Joseph Jacotot.
Towards the end of his life, Jobard developed an enthusiasm for spiritualism and in his final years he appears to have lost his mind. He is buried in
Brussels Cemetery
Brussels Cemetery (french: Cimetière de Bruxelles, nl, Begraafplaats van Brussel) is a cemetery belonging to the City of Brussels in Brussels, Belgium. Located in the neighbouring municipality of Evere, rather than in the City of Brussels p ...
.
Career
A surveyor in the Dutch land registry during the Empire and the Restoration, Jobard became a naturalized Dutch citizen. Having heard of lithography, he resigned from the land registry and settled in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
where he was resident by 1819. His first commission was to illustrate the Annales générales des Sciences physiques, printed by Weissenbruch under the scientific editorship of
Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent
Jean-Baptiste Geneviève Marcellin Bory de Saint-Vincent was a French naturalist, officer and politician. He was born on 6 July 1778 in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) and died on 22 December 1846 in Paris. Biologist and geographer, he was particularly ...
, Auguste Drapiez and Jean-Baptiste Van Mons. In 1820 Jobard founded a sizable lithographic establishment, employing Jean Baptiste Madou.
The Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale in Paris launched an international competition for lithographers in 1828, aimed at rewarding those who had made the greatest progress in their art. Jobard was awarded the gold medal ("Le Courrier des Pays-Bas", 3 December 1828).
Following the 1830 revolution, Jobard automatically became a Belgian citizen. After his lithography business went bankrupt, he spent a year in
Verviers
Verviers (; wa, Vervî) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Liège, Belgium.
The municipality consists of the following districts: Ensival, Heusy, Lambermont, Petit-Rechain, Stembert, and Verviers. It is also ...
where he immersed himself in industrial issues. In 1832 he became a propagandist for the philosophy of
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (17 October 1760 – 19 May 1825), often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon (), was a French political, economic and socialist theorist and businessman whose thought had a substantial influence on p ...
in Belgium. He travelled to Britain in 1833 where he met
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
Babbage is considered ...
and then campaigned for the railway to be introduced into
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
.
In 1837 he became owner of two daily newspapers, ''Le Fanal de l’Industrie'' and ''Le Courrier belge'', in which he published a column "Bulletin Industriel". In 1841 Jobard proposed in his newspaper adding what he called "extra emotional typographic characters" (including an irony punctuation) which may be considered precursors to present-day emoticons and smileys.
In 1839 Jobard was appointed Commissioner for the Belgian Government at the French industrial exhibition in Paris, where he met
François Arago
Dominique François Jean Arago ( ca, Domènec Francesc Joan Aragó), known simply as François Arago (; Catalan: ''Francesc Aragó'', ; 26 February 17862 October 1853), was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, freemason, supporter of ...
,
Louis Daguerre
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre ( , ; 18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photog ...
, baron Pierre-Armand Séguier amongst many other intellectuals and industrialists. He also bought a Daguerreotype apparatus. Back in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, he succeeded in taking the first Belgian photograph on 16 September 1839, a
daguerreotype
Daguerreotype (; french: daguerréotype) was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.
Invented by Louis Daguerre ...
view of the Place des Barricades in Brussels, following this up in October with the first Belgian portrait. Both of these plates are now lost.
Jobard was appointed Director of the Musée Royal de l’Industrie in Brussels in 1841, where he developed his ideas of museology which already then met modern-day requirements for conservation, cataloguing, study and popularization.
Ingenious and imaginative, Jobard registered 73 patents in lighting, heating, food supply, transport, ballistics and other areas. In 1850 he set up a patents office, a brokerage for assisting inventors to file patents and protect their inventions. He published numerous works and articles on industrial property, earning him a reputation as the greatest campaigner for intellectual property rights in the nineteenth century.
Jobard developed an economic and social theory that he called "Monautopole" and that he defined as "from monos, alone, autos, oneself and pôleô, dealing". Historically a monopoly was a concession, granted exclusively, for trading a good belonging to all, an unjust privilege arising arbitrarily. Monautopole would be the natural right to dispose of oneself and the fruits of one's labours, "the just reward for work, talent and persistence". His writings earned him the praise of the future
Napoleon III
Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A neph ...
,
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
and
Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais Hugues may refer to
People:
* Hugues de Payens (c. 1070–1136), French soldier
* Hugues I de Lusignan (1194/95 –1218), French-descended ruler a.k.a. Hugh I of Cyprus
* Hugues IV de Berzé (1150s–1220), French soldier
* Hugues II de Lusignan ...
.
Works
* J.B.A.M. JOBARD, "Nouvelle économie sociale ou Monautopole industriel, artistique, commercial et littéraire, fondé sur la pérennité des brevets d'invention, dessins, modèles et marques de fabrique", Paris, Mathias, Bruxelles, chez l'auteur, 1844.
* J.B.A.M. JOBARD, "Les nouvelles inventions aux Expositions universelles", Bruxelles – Leipzig, Flatau, 1857–58, 2 vol. gd in-8°.
Honours and distinctions
* 1858 : Officer of the
Legion of Honour
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
* JOSEPH, Steven F. & SCHWILDEN, Tristan, "Un cadeau à l'Europe : naissance de la photographie en Belgique, in "Bulletin trimestriel du Crédit Communal de Belgique", n° 168, 1989, p. 2–22".
* JOSEPH, Steven F. & SCHWILDEN, Tristan, "Sunrise over Brussels: the First Year of Photography in Belgium", in "History of Photography", 13, 1989, p. 355–368.
* CLAES, Marie-Christine, "J.B.A.M. JOBARD (1792–1861), visionnaire de nouveaux rapports entre l'art et l'industrie, acteur privilégié des mutations de l'image en Belgique au XIXe siècle" (thèse de doctorat, université catholique de Louvain, 2006, inédite).
CLAES, Marie-Christine, "Marcellin Jobard, un visionnaire dévoré d’ambition humanitaire", in "Science connection", 20, 2008, p. 20-23.
CLAES, Marie-Christine, "Marcellin Jobard, een visionnaire met humanitaire ambitie", in "Science connection", 20, 2008, p. 20-23. * CLAES, Marie-Christine, "J.B.A.M. Jobard et le chauffage domestique en Belgique au milieu du XIXe siècle", in "Cahiers de la Fonderie, Revue d’histoire sociale et industrielle de la Région bruxelloise", 35, 2006, p. 21–25.
* CLAES, Marie-Christine, "Marcellin Jobard et le Musée de l’Industrie de Bruxelles", dans "La Revue du Musée des Arts et Métiers", n° 51–52, Paris, décembre 2009, p. 42–53.
* CLAES, Marie-Christine, "Marcellin Jobard e o Museu da Indústria de Bruxelas", dans Maria Eliza Linhares Borges (org.), "Inovações, coleções, museus", Belo Horizonte, Autêntica Editora, 2011, p. 69–81.