Background
His father Léon and his uncle Ignace were in charge of establishing branches of the family business in Europe.
His father Léon and his uncle Ignace were in charge of establishing branches of the family business in Europe.
He also was a part-owner (from 1885) and then editor (from 1894) as well as a contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, the most important art historical periodical in France. The next year, he traveled to Italy, where he began to collect art On his return to Paris, he became more involved in both the purchase of art and writing about it, publishing his first article in Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1876.
Like most of his publications, it concerned Renaissance art
He also gave two works of art to the Louvre at this time. In about 1880, Charles Ephrussi became interested in the art of the Impressionists and, within the next few years, purchased some 40 works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro, among others
He has been identified as the man in a top hat standing with his back to us in Renoir"s Luncheon of the Boating Party (Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia). An account of the collection hanging in his study appears in a letter written in 1881 by the Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue (later published in Louisiana Revue blanche).
lieutenant also was at this time that he began to collect Japanese lacquers and netsukes, the subject of Edmund de Waal"s The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010) which also devotes considerable attention to Charles" life and artistic interests.
His taste had changed, and he decorated his part in the Empire style. By this time, he was a well-established figure in the Paris art world, and a welcome guest at some of the most famous salons. He was one of the inspirations for the figure of Swann in Marcel Proust"s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time.
Titled Remembrance of Things Past in the first translation).
All of this changed with the Dreyfus affair in 1894, which polarized France and caused many doors to be closed to Jews. The Ephrussi family was very prominent and thus became the target of anti-Semitic attacks.
Charles died in 1905, before Dreyfus was exonerated.