Exhibition - Jasius de la Moutte

"One might have thought that, as the grandson of composer André Messager, the celebrated author of "Véronique" and a great discoverer of Wagner and Debussy, my relationship with Annette Troiser de Diaz would have been essentially musical; but not at all!

They were first and foremost friendly and Tropezian, when I would share with her, in the subtle, ancient scent of her library, a fragment of a cool afternoon on the bangs of the peninsula's scorching summers. But what I loved most of all, with Annette's blessing, was discovering the immense territory that encircles the château all the way to the sea. [...] "In autumn, in the park, flies the biggest and most powerful of our butterflies, a fierce and magnificent beast, the "Jasius". Dany Lartigue

Dany Lartigue, grandson of composer André Messager, had a very friendly relationship with Annette Troisier de Diaz, herself a great-granddaughter of Emile Ollivier.

This friendship was nourished by their shared love of music and nature, and made Dany a privileged "explorer" of the park surrounding the château.

In his book Extravagante aventure des chasseurs de papillons, Dany Lartigue gives us a delightful chapter on the "Jasius", the butterfly that lives among the arbutus trees in the Parc de la Moutte.

The Jasius, a member of the Nymphalidae family, is one of Provence's diurnal species. It is found on Mediterranean shores in North Africa and in Europe on the Mediterranean islands and the Atlantic coast of Portugal. Four other butterfly families from the museum's collections will be presented in the château's dining room.