Roland Bonaparte

Bonaparte was born in Paris on 19 May 1858, the son of Prince Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte and Éléonore-Justine Ruflin. He was a grandson of Lucien Bonaparte, Emperor Napoleon I's brother. Prince Roland was married in Paris on 18 November 1880, to Marie-Félix Blanc (1859–1882), the daughter of François Blanc, who reportedly bought a dowry worth 8,400,000 francs to her husband, as well as a reversionary right to a further 6,000,000 francs which she would receive after her mother's death. They had one daughter, Marie Bonaparte (1882–1962). In 1884, Bonaparte was part of a scientific expedition that photographed and anatomically measured the Sami inhabitants of Northern Norway. The following year he was photographing Aboriginal Australians brought to Europe and the US to be studied by anthropologists and exhibited by the general public. Bonaparte was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1895. Bonaparte was the President of the Société astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1921 to 1923. On the death of his cousin Prince Napoléon Charles Bonaparte in 1899, he succeeded him as the 6th Prince of Canino and Musignano, but he never assumed the title. With Prince Roland's death in Paris on 14 April 1924, the senior line of the House of Bonaparte descending from Lucien Bonaparte became extinct in the male line. He is buried in Les Gonards Cemetery in Versailles, France.