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1 pp. Printed document, with manuscript writing, and signed A. Kaempfen. 10¾x8¼".

To G. Guillaume, notifying him that the School would buy 20 copies of his biography of painter Antoine Watteau. Kaempfen (1826-1907) was a lawyer, journalist and minor author, his best-known book being a parody of Napoleon III’s “Paris, Capital of the World”. Despite meager accomplishments, in 1882, Kaempfen became Director of the Beaux-Arts and, five years later, Director of the Louvre and the French National Museums, a powerful position he held until 1904. Derided as a hack “journalist” by Degas, he refused to allow the Beaux-Arts to hold an exhibition of the works of Manet, whom he called “nothing less than revolutionary” and later banned Impressionist paintings from the Louvre during his tenure.