Skip to Content
 

Claude Anet (1868–1931)

Claude Anet (1868–1931)

Claude Anet was the pseudonym of the writer, tennis player, collector, and sometimes dealer Jean Schopfer, who was born on May 28, 1868, in Morges, Switzerland. He was educated at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre in Paris. His writing career began in 1899, and he published many books, including La révolution russe (Paris: Payot, 1917), written after a trip to Russia during the First World War. He collected Persian artworks, especially miniature paintings; his collecting activities in Iran were detailed in his book Feuilles persanes (Paris: Grasset, 1924). In 1913, he had an antiquities gallery at 18, rue Godot de Mauroy, where he specialized in Persian art, such as carpets, textiles, miniatures, and ceramics from Iran and Iraq. He periodically sold parts of his collection to other collectors and dealers, including Joseph Brummer, and through auction. For example, in 1920, his collection of Persian and Indo-Persian miniatures and manuscripts were auctioned by Sotheby’s London. Anet was twice married: first in 1895 to the American Alice Weatherbee, whom he divorced in 1903; and then in 1910 to Clarisse Langlois. Anet died on January 9, 1931, in Paris.


A Small but Choice Collection of Persian and Indo-Persian Miniatures and Manuscripts, the Property of Monsieur Claude Anet, 108 Rue du Bac, Paris, Consisting of Sixty Miniatures and Eleven Important Manuscripts, Many of the XVth and XVIth Centuries (London: Sotheby’s, 1920).