Which award did Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor receive in May 1834?
Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor was born in Brussels on 5 August 1789 and died in Paris on 6 September 1879 . He was closely associated with the development of French theatre , a noted traveller and author , and a philanthropist . Life and career . Isidores father Hélie Taylor was English born and took French nationality . His mother was the Belgian Marie-Jacqueline Walwein ( from what was then the Austrian Netherlands ) . Originally destined for a military career , the young man neglected this in favour of travelling about Europe and later the Near East . Among the fruits of his travels was a series of books on the French regions , Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans lancienne France ( 1820–63 ) , the nearly 7000 lithographs in which were the first to catalogue the French artistic patrimony . Another book , La Syrie , lÉgypte , la Palestine et la Judée ( Paris , 1839 ) , was illustrated with the authors watercolours , two of which are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum . George Borrow describes meeting Taylor in his The Bible in Spain . He has visited most portions of the earth , and it is remarkable enough that we are continually encountering each other in strange places and under singular circumstances . Whenever he descries me , whether in the street or the desert , the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin haimas , at Novgorod or Stambul , he flings up his arms and exclaims , O ciel ! I have again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable B… . Ennobled in 1825 by King Charles X , he was by this time collecting Spanish art on behalf of the new French King Louis Philippe I , who made him a Commissioner of Art in 1838 . These paintings constituted the then named Spanish gallery of the Louvre . Previously , he had been very active in the theatrical world and was made Royal Commissioner of the Theatre Francaise between 1825-38 . During this period he used his position to encourage the production of Romantic drama . Among those he helped was Alexandre Dumas , who dedicated to Taylor his first successful play , Henri III et sa cour ( The court of Henry III , 1829 ) . Taylor himself authored plays with a Levantine background , Ismael et Maryam , ou larabe et la chrétienne ( The Arab and the Christian , 1821 ) and La fille de lHébreu et le chevalier du temple ( The Jewess and the Templar , 1823 ) and co-authored with Charles Nodier an adaptation of Charles Maturins successful drama , Bertram ou le pirate ( 1821 ) . From the 1840s he began his philanthropic activity by setting up a series of mutual societies for members of the artistic professions that have continued to this day as the Taylor Foundation . In recognition of his work he was elected to the Académie Française in 1847 , named a senator of the Second Empire in 1869 and made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1877 . Artistic representations . After his death , Taylor was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery with a memorial statue by sculptor Gabriel-Jules Thomas . A decorative bust by Tony Noel ( 1845-1909 ) was also erected on behalf of the Taylor Foundation on the Boulevard Saint Martin . Both of these show the baron in old age . There were attractive earlier portraits of him by Jean Alaux when he was 22 , and by Federico de Madrazo y Kuntz at the age of 44 . The latter is a three-quarters bust that pictures him in his official uniform in 1838 . He also figures in the crowded canvas of Edouard Manets Music in the Tuileries ( 1862 ) . Taylor is pictured in the mid-foreground to the left with his cane beneath his arm as he talks to Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier . References . Much of the information is based on the article in the French Wikipedia .