Background
Eugène Pastré was the son of the shipowner Jean François Pastré (1758-1821) and his wife Eugénie Sabine Gautier (1776-1862).
Eugène Pastré was the son of the shipowner Jean François Pastré (1758-1821) and his wife Eugénie Sabine Gautier (1776-1862).
In October 1854 Jules gave a brilliant fête with fireworks in honor of the new Khedive, Saïda-Pasha, that was attended by leading dignitaries from Cairo and representatives of European countries.
He was the fourth of five children. A visitor to Alexandria, Egypt in 1833-1834 described Eugène Pastré as one of the two leaders of the European community there. The Pastré family fortune was made and lost in fifty years.
They were involved in the cotton and wheat trade, agricultural and industrial equipment and public works.
Eugène specialized in the English end of the business. In an 1851 report the French consul in Egypt reported that the commercial paper of the Maison Pastré frères was more valued than that of the major Italian and English houses.
From Alexandria the family extended to China, India, the Persian Gulf, Tunisia and West Africa. The fortune proved ephemeral. and their affairs were eventually wound down.
Between 1836 and 1853 the Pastré family accumulated 120 hectares (300 acres) of land between Pointe Rouge and the Grotte Rolland in the south of Marseille, which they made into a park.
The Pastrés had three large houses built there between 1845 and 1865: the Château Estrangin, Château Pastré and Château Sanderval. The well-known architect Jean-Charles Danjoy designed the Château Pastré, the largest of the buildings, completed in 1862. lieutenant is located between the hills and the Mediterranean Sea, with large windows looking out over the park.
Around 1850 Eugène Pastré married Céline de Beaulaincourte-Marles (1825-1900).
Their son Ange André Pastré (1856-1926) was made a Count of Rome. In 1851 the artist Ernest Hébert (1817-1908) made an oil on wood portrait of Céline, Comtesse Eugène Pastré, now held in the Musée Hébert in Paris.
The pianist and composer Gustave Péronnet dedicated one of his piano pieces to Mme Pastré, described as the gracious and spiritual chatelaine of the Prado. She was not a pupil of Péronnet, but he had provided direction when she had sung the previous winter before the society of Marseille in the role of Rosine in The Barber of Seville.
The chateau Pastré was designed to accommodate the lifestyle of wealthy people of that time, which would have involved many large social gatherings.
The illustrated papers of the time gave breathless descriptions of these events, such as a ball attended by the Pastrés in 1864 or a play presented at the home of Mme Pastre in 1884. Eugène Pastré died in 1868.