Agnès Humbert

Agnès Humbert
Agnès Humbert, with the Cross of Lorraine
Born	October 12, 1894(1894-10-12) Dieppe, France
Died	September 19, 1963(1963-09-19) (aged 68) Valmondois (Val d'Oise), France
Occupation	Art historian and ethnographer

Agnès Humbert (12 October 1894 – 19 September 1963) was an art historian, ethnographer and a member of the French Resistance during World War II.

Biography

Early life

Humbert was born in Dieppe, France, daughter of French senator Charles Humbert and English author Mabel Wells Annie Rooke.^[1] She spent her childhood in Paris, where she studied painting and design. In 1916 she married Egyptian artist Georges Hanna Sabbagh (1877–1951), by whom she had two sons: Jean Sabbagh, a sub-mariner and advisor to General Charles de Gaulle,^[2] and television director and producer Pierre Sabbagh. From 1929 she studied the history of art at the Sorbonne and at the Louvre school, and took a course in philosophy. Agnès and Georges divorced in 1934. Her first book was on the painter Louis David, published in 1936. She then worked as an Art historian at the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires in Paris, and broadcast on art on Radio Paris at the start of 1936.

Wartime resistance

A few days after the fall of Paris on 14 June 1940, Humbert heard an appeal by General de Gaulle on the BBC's Radio France encouraging the people of France to continue the struggle against the occupying Germans and Philippe Pétain's Vichy government. It was offensive to her when books were removed from her library by the Germans, and German authors added. On 6 August a notice was fixed on the gateway of the Palais de Chaillot, ordering free entry to German soldiers, and she wrote in her diary that she told her colleague Jean Cassou "I feel I will go mad, literally, if I don't do something!".^[3] So, with Boris Vildé, Anatole Lewitsky, Jean Cassou and Yvonne Oddon she formed the Groupe du musée de l'Homme out of members of the Museum, the first resistance movement in occupied France. In a few months these pioneers built a highly diffuse underground network. Their action spread rapidly with the creation of a clandestine newsletter, Résistance, which had only five issues, between 15 December 1940 and the end of March 1941, with editorials (the first written by Boris Vildé) holding no illusions on Pétain and the Vichy government. This group went on to feed information to the British.

The leaders of the resistance cell were betrayed and arrested in April 1941. Humbert then recruited Pierre Brossolette to continue with the last number of Résistance before being arrested herself. The Museum group were sent to the harsh Cherche-Midi prison and then Fresnes Prison in Paris where they were tried by the Wehrmacht and in February 1942, along with seven members of the group,^[4] sentenced to death. However she was transferred to the Prison de la Santé where conditions were better and she was visited by her son Pierre and her mother, but she learnt that the men had been put to death by firing squad (they sang "Vive la France" in their last moments). The women were sentenced to 5 years slave labor and deported to Anrath prison in Germany. She was made to work in appalling conditions at the Phrix rayon factory in Krefeld: there workers died, went blind, and developed horrible skin conditions. After four years, in June 1945 she was liberated by the Third United States Army and her diary records how she took part in the "Nazi Hunt" at Wanfried in 1945. She set up soup kitchens for refugees and expressly stated that everyone was to get a share, even the German civilians. Later she helped to start the denazification process.^[5]

Post-war

Croix de Guerre with palm

After the war Humbert refused to return to work at the Museum. Though her health had been affected by her experiences, she continued to write books on art. In 1949 she was awarded the Croix de Guerre with silver gilt palm for heroism. She spent her final years with her son Pierre in the village of Valmondois and is buried in the cemetery there.

She published her diary under the title Notre Guerre in 1946. This was later reissued as well as being translated into English by Barbara Mellor under the title: Résistance.^[6]

Publications

• Agnès Humbert, Louis David, peintre et conventionnel: essai de critique marxiste, Paris, Editions sociales internationales, 1936
• Agnès Humbert (introduction), L. Chevojon (photographs), Le Musée National d'Art Moderne: Peinture, sculpture, Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, 1948
• Agnès Humbert and Nadeshda Ferber, Die französische Malerei von den Anfängen zum Impressionismus ("French painting from the beginnings of Impressionism"), 30 illustrations, Berlin, Minerva-Verlag, 1949
• Agnès Humbert, Vu et entendu en Yougoslavie ("Seen and heard in Yugoslavia"), Paris, Deux-Rives, 1950
• Henri Barbusse, Agnès Humbert and Max Lingner, Max Lingner, 30 reproductions, Berlin, Deutsche Akademie der Künste, 1950
• Agnès Humbert, (preface by Jean Cassou), Les Nabis et leur epoque 1888-1900, 51 plates, Genève, Pierre Callier, 1954
• Agnès Humbert, (introduction in French and English), La Sculpture Contemporaine au Musée National d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, Albert Morancé, 1954
• Gaston Diehl (notes by Agnès Humbert), Henri Matisse, 140 colour plates and illustrations, Paris, Pierre Tisné, 1954 (also New York, Universe Books, 1958)
• Agnès Humbert, Henri Matisse, dessins, pocket edition with 42 drawings, Paris, Fernand Hazan, 1956
• Agnès Humbert, Louis David: peintre et conventionnel, 60 illustrations, Paris, Braun, 1960
• Agnès Humbert (photographs by Guy de Belleval, tr. Joan Dalrymple), Contemporary Painters: Jean-Jacques Morvan, Genève, Rene Kister, 1962
• Agnès Humbert, Exposition Maurice Denis: Peintures, aquarelles, dessins, lithographies. Du 28 juin au 29 septembre 1963 notes to exhibition catalogue, Albi, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, 1963^[7]

Her Journal:

• Agnès Humbert (introduction by Julien Blanc), Notre guerre: Souvenirs de Résistance, Paris 1940-41, 2ème éd., Tallandier, 2004 (in French) Published in 1946, on the return from her detention.^[5]

References

• Humbert, Agnès (tr. Barbara Mellor), Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France, London, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2008 ISBN 978-0-7475-9597-7 (American title: Resistance: A Frenchwoman's Journal of the War, Bloomsbury, USA, 2008); Dutch: Resistance. Dagboek van een Parisienne in het verzet (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2008)
• Rooke, Mabel Wells Annie, Continental Chit-Chat, F. V. White, 1897

Notes

External links

• Bold defiance in Nazi Paris
• Bloomsbury Publishing Agnès Humbert, (tr. Barbara Mellor) Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France
• Audio Editions Agnès Humbert, (tr. Barbara Mellor) Résistance: Memoirs of Occupied France Reader: Joyce Bean