Paul de Pury
Born in 1844.
Died in 1874.
Nineteenth-century Swiss art · travel drawing, architecture and military subjects.
Paul Alphonse de Pury (La Chaux-de-Fonds, 9 January 1844 – Neuchâtel, 25 December 1874) was a Swiss architect, draughtsman and painter whose short career combined academic training, archaeological travel, architecture and military subjects.
After attending the Schnepfenthal educational institution from 1858 to 1860, he trained with Gustave de Pury, Eugène de Meuron and then the architect Louis Châtelain. In 1864 he attended the polytechnic schools in Karlsruhe and Zurich. The following year he entered the Paris studio of Louis-Jules André and was admitted to the second class of the École des Beaux-Arts on 24 April 1866.
Between 1866 and 1868 he received several mentions for architectural projects and sketches.
From 1868 to 1870 de Pury undertook extensive archaeological journeys through Italy, Turkey, the East and England. These travels enriched his drawing practice. Auguste Bachelin’s posthumous volume of 1885 combines a biographical study with fifty heliogravures after his drawings and a portrait engraved by Robert Girardet.
It remains an important resource for studying an oeuvre dispersed after a career cut short at thirty.
Established as an architect in Neuchâtel in the early 1870s, de Pury worked on private buildings, hotels and the Catholic church at Cressier. In January 1874 he entered into partnership with William Mayor. Alongside architecture, he continued to paint and draw, with a particular interest in military subjects.
Architecture and drawn imagery thus formed complementary strands of his work.
He died while still working on the Hôtel du Jura project in Le Locle. Interest in his work continued in Neuchâtel: in 1975 the Musée d’art et d’histoire presented his drawings alongside those of Léopold Robert in “Dessins de France et d’Italie”. This museum presentation and Bachelin’s monograph place his drawings within an artistic history extending beyond his architectural career.