November 14, 2024 saw the inauguration of REG - ARTS, the new database created by the Beaux-Arts de Paris, the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA) and the LIR3S laboratory at the University of Burgundy. REG - ARTS makes available all the registration registers of students in the painting and sculpture section of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris from 1813 to 1968, thanks to the complete and systematic digitization of these documents.

This invaluable tool gives us direct access to the registration of over 12,000 students, including Charles Auffret's on June 18, 1952, in the sculpture section: https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/6.1199. At the École des Beaux-Arts, he joined the monumental art studio run by Alfred Janniot (1889-1969).

This period in the early 1950s coincided with the 22-year-old sculptor's arrival in Paris, where he began working with the sculptor Pierre Honoré. A university restaurant card remains from this period, in which the identity photograph captures the sculptor's character, dreamy and concentrated.

In Paris, he also discovered the works of three sculptors who would influence his thinking on his art: Charles Despiau (1874-1946), Robert Wlérick (1882-1944) and Charles Malfray (1887-1940). The database tells us that these sculptors enrolled respectively in March 1895 for Despiau (https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/4.0017) and on May 7, 1907 and 1917 for Malfray (https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/4.1051), Wlérick having never enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Despite the fact that Charles Auffret was “not keen on the spirit of competition in the studio [at the École des Beaux-Arts]”, he made a few friendships, for example with sculptor Jean Cardot (1930-2020), enrolled since June 25, 1951, with Marcel Gaumont and Hubert Yencesse (https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/6.1164) as guarantors. As early as 1954, he began to associate with the sculptor Raymond Martin (1912-1992), who himself had attended the École des Beaux-Arts much earlier, having enrolled in Jules Coutan's studio (https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/6.0077) on May 8, 1928. Charles Auffret left the École des Beaux-Arts in 1956, having been awarded the Second Grand Prix de Rome, like his fellow student Jean Cardot. The First Grand Prix de Rome was Claude Goutin (1930-2018).

Arlette Ginioux, whom Charles Auffret married in 1965, attended the École des Beaux-Arts in two stages (registers show a first enrolment on December 3, 1965, and a second in July 1967: https://regarts.huma-num.fr/eleves/6.2112): this enabled her to give birth to their son and to live on the island of Bendor in the Var region, since Charles Auffret, as winner of the Paul Ricard Foundation's International Sculpture Prize, was granted a one-year residency on the island.

Thanks to this database, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art and the Université de Bourgogne are making vital information available and democratizing access to sources. We hope that other archive digitizations are underway to create new databases.