Auguste-Emile Boysset

Much of the Cypriot Bronze Age pottery in the Sèvres museum came from the collection of the French consul at Larnaca¹⁰. Auguste-Emile Boysset was born in 1848 and began his career at Alexandria. He was consul at Larnaca from 1891, was promoted Consul-Général on 30 July 1899, and retired on 29 August 1900, unmarried and, in the words Merrillees quotes, "sans fortune"^1,2. Annie Caubet gives his forename as Eugène, but the Foreign Ministry archives, on which Robert Merrillees draws, give Auguste-Emile^1,3. His name also appears as Boisset in Perdrizet's letters² and as Boissé in the Berkeley record of the 1901 sale⁴.

The Tano scheme and the denunciation of 1896

In 1896 Boysset backed the proposal of the Larnaca dealer Marius Tano for French excavations on Tano's own land, and took Tano on as a substitute chancellor at the consulate. He dismissed Antoine Béraud from the same post¹. Elizabeth Goring writes that Boysset advised the French government to ask the British for excavation permission "at the instigation of" Tano; the mission went first to Charles Fossey, who fell ill, and then to Paul Perdrizet⁵. The dismissal set off a quarrel in the French community and a feud with Antoine's father, Célestin Béraud. On 21 April 1896 Antoine and his supporters wrote to Paris accusing Boysset of false declarations of expenses and misappropriation. Boysset answered on 24 April with a report defending Tano. Merrillees records that the authorities were unimpressed, that Célestin Béraud distanced himself from his son's charges on 28 May, and that "with that the matter lapsed"¹. Boysset was promoted three years later.

On 6 May 1896 Boysset reported that Tano was ready to send antiquities to the Louvre once Britain allowed their export⁶, adding that local rules permitted export only by a special permission never granted to private persons. Merrillees found no evidence linking Boysset to the removal of the first Lambousa treasure, although it had been suggested that the consulate bag or his luggage in June 1897 might have been used⁶.

Perdrizet's visit

Perdrizet spent the summer of 1896 in Cyprus, and his letters to Edmond Pottier at the Louvre, published by Olivier Masson, name Boysset as a friend and his chief local help². Perdrizet wrote that Boysset had "decimated his showcases" for the Louvre. The list included three tuff statuettes from Dali (a woman, a man in a pointed cap, and Herakles with a club and a lion), a large Archaic female head from Athienou, and a gold bull-head earring whose pair Perdrizet bought himself. Boysset also offered to assemble a series of vases for a university museum showing Cypriot pottery from the Mycenaean period to Roman lamps and glass². When Perdrizet found the large Eteocypriot inscription at Amathus, Théophile Homolle put a sum at the disposal of Boysset and Jean Peristianis to conclude its purchase². Homolle wrote to Boysset on 27 November 1896 to thank him¹.

Boysset also gave objects to other institutions. Caubet records that he gave the Louvre the Herakles and the Archaic head, and that several large Red Polished vases with figural decoration reached Sèvres with his gift³. A 1900 article in the Revue numismatique lists Byzantine lead seals in the Bibliothèque nationale as the gift of "M. Boysset, consul à Larnaca" in 1898⁹.

The sale of 1901

Ve Raymond Serrure sold the collection at the Hôtel des Commissaires-Priseurs in the rue Drouot on 6 and 7 March 1901, under the title "Collection formée en Chypre", with illustrated plates¹. Boysset was alive at the time. Merrillees suggests that his lack of money may explain the sale¹. The Lowie Museum at Berkeley bought lots through a representative, and the museum recorded them as the collection of "M. Boissé, formerly French Consul General at Larnaca". Vassos Karageorghis and Darrell Amyx note that Sèvres was the chief competing bidder, and that the Sèvres catalogue lists many vases as "Anc. Coll. Boysset (sic)", acquired in 1901. Caubet, by contrast, describes the Red Polished vases as a gift. The Berkeley pieces were given to the museum by Phoebe Apperson Hearst⁴. A review in Antiquity says that the Cypriot Bronze Age pottery at Sèvres came largely from his private collection¹⁰.

Merrillees publishes a Base Ring mother-and-child figurine, lot 3, from Alambra. The auctioneer's record shows the Louvre buying it for 46 francs, but the Louvre never accessioned it. It is in the Sèvres museum, whose accession numbers follow the catalogue order¹. Boysset died on 19 September 1914 at Marnes-sur-Seine¹.