He was born in
Saarbrücken, Rhineland, the son of a civil engineer he won a place at the
Lycée Condorcet and went on to study at the
École Normale Supérieure and the
École d'Athènes, his thesis was on the subject of the chronology of Athenian
archons. It was during his tenure as a curator at the
Louvre that he organised the first meeting of the
Union Académique Internationale aimed at establishing the complete corpus of
Greek vases held in the national collections of every nation in 1919, the Corpus vasorum antiquorum. He produced the first fascicule for the Louvre in 1922.
Under the pseudonym
Jacques Morel his wife was a writer who won the 1912
Prix Femina with the book Feuilles mortes.
Published works
In 1908 his book on the vase painter
Douris, Douris et les peintres des vases grecs, was translated into English and published as "Douris and the painters of Greek vases".[1] Other noteworthy works by Pottier include:
Étude sur les lécythes blancs attiques à représentations funéraires, 1883 – Study on the white
lekythoi of
Attica.
La nécropole de Myrina: recherches archéologiques exécutées au nom et aux frais de l'École française d'Athènes, 1887 (with
Salomon Reinach; A. Veyries; École française d'Athènes) – The necropolis at
Myrina: archaeological research performed on behalf of the French School of Athens.
Les Statuettes de terre cuite dans l'antiquité, 1890 –
Terracotta statuettes of ancient times.
Vases antiques du Louvre, 2 volumes, 1897-1901 – Antique vases of the Louvre.
Diphilos et les modeleurs de terres cuites grecques, 1908 – Diphilos and Greek terracotta modelers.
Le dessin chez les grecs d'après les vases peints, 1926 – Greek design in regards to its painted vases.