Hector-Martin Lefuel

Hector-Martin Lefuel (14 November 1810 – 31 December 1880) was a French architect, best known for his work on the Palais du Louvre, including Napoleon III's Louvre expansion and the reconstruction of the Pavillon de Flore.

Biography

He was born in Versailles, the son of Alexandre Henry Lefuel (1782–1850), a building entrepreneur. He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1829, studied there with Jean-Nicolas Huyot and in 1833 received second place in the Prix de Rome competition. By that time, his father died and he had to spend the next few years managing the family building business, which delayed the completion of his studies but also brought him valuable building experience.

He won of the Prix de Rome in 1839 and subsequently spent the years 1840 to 1844 as a pensionary of the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici, together with Ernest Hébert (laureate in painting) and Charles Gounod (music). On his return to France he opened his own practice and was appointed a building inspector for the Chamber of Deputies (France), Chamber of Deputies.

Having carried out alterations as the Château de Meudon (1848) and for the housing of the Manufacture National de Sèvres, Manufacture Royal de Porcelaine de Sèvres (1852), he was appointed chief architect of the Château de Fontainebleau, one of the residences of Napoleon III under the new monarchical Second French Empire regime; there he designed a new Imperial theatre (1853–1855).

Following the sudden death of the architect Louis-Tullius-Joachim Visconti in 1853, Lefuel was placed in charge of the ambitious project of Nouveau Louvre, completing the Louvre. He kept Visconti's project but enriched it in profuse ornamental detail and completed the project in record time for opening in AUgust 1857, one of the showpieces of the Second Empire. Napoleon III then tasked him with the reconstruction of the pavillon de Flore and much of the Grande Galerie, which he completed by the late 1860s. Lefuel's work at the Louvre Palace, Louvre became an exemplar of the nascent Second Empire (architecture), Second Empire architectural style. Lefuel also created lavish apartments for the imperial household in the Palais des Tuileries, lost when that palace burned in the Paris Commune of 1871.

After the Tuileries Palace was destroyed by fire in 1871, Lefuel was in charge of the repairs to the pavillon de Flore and the symmetrical reconstruction of the pavillon de Marsan to the north, in 1874–1879.

He had been elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in 1855, taking the chair of Martin-Pierre Gauthier. He was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1854, and a Commander of the Legion in 1857.

Lefuel also designed and erected the ''hôtel particulier'' of Achille Fould, Minister of Finance under Napoléon III, and that of the museum director Émilien de Nieuwerkerke (the Hôtel de Nieuwekerke in Parc Monceau) and the Hôtel Émonville in Abbeville.

He designed funeral monuments, such as that to the composers Daniel-François-Esprit Auber and François Bazin (composer), François Bazin at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

His palace in Louis XIII style at Neudeck (Świerklaniec), Polish Silesia, built in 1868–1872, the grandest of three residences there of the Donnersmarcks, was burnt out in 1945 and demolished in 1961.

Hector Lefuel died in Paris and is buried at Passy Cemetery.

Gallery

File:Pavillon Sully du Louvre 002.jpg, Pavillon Sully at the eastern end of the Cour Napoleon
File:Louvre aile Richelieu.jpg, Perspective view of the Richelieu Wing (1857)
File:Appartements Napoléon III 4.jpg, Grand Salon of the Napoleon III Apartments
File:Central chandelier NIII Louvre.jpg, Central chandelier of the Grand Salon
File:Decorative arts in the Louvre - Room 83 - 03.JPG, Great Dining Room of the Napoleon III Apartments
File:P1080712 Louvre salle romaine rwk.JPG, Salle d'Auguste (originally Salle des Empereurs)
File:Paris - palais du Louvre, pavillon Mollien.jpg, Mollien Pavilion of the Denon Wing
File:Paris 75001 Cour Lefuel Louvre horseshoe stairs 20110122 161143.jpg, Cour Lefuel (Denon Wing) with horse ramps leading to the former Emperor's Stables
File:Palais du Louvre - Cour Lefuel -01.jpg, Tympanum over the door to the former stables from the Cour Lefuel
File:Palais du Louvre - Salle du Manège -0a.jpg, Salle du Manège (former stables)
File:Guichets du Louvre, Paris 25 June 2011.jpg, South facade of the Guichets du Carrousel (1861)
File:Le pavillon de Flore 3.jpg, Pavillon de Flore, south facadeJean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Carpeaux's ''Imperial France Enlightens the World'', flanked by the allegorical male figures ''Science'' and ''Agriculture'', surmounts the pediment, and below, his frieze of Flora leaning over a group of children, is "unquestionably the most famous work of sculpture on the whole exterior of the Louvre." (Bautier 1995, p. 129)

Notes

Bibliography

* Aulanier, Christiane (1971). ''Histoire du Palais et du Musée du Louvre: Le Pavillon de Flore''. Paris: Éditions des Musées nationaux. .
* Bautier, Genevieve Bresc (1995). ''The Louvre: An Architectural History''. New York: The Vendome Press. .
* Mead, Christopher (1996). "Lefuel, Hector-Martin", vol.19, pp. 69–70 in ''The Dictionary of Art'' (reprinted with minor corrections in 1998), edited by Jane Turner. London: Macmillan. .

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lefuel, Hector
19th-century French architects
1810 births
1880 deaths
People from Versailles
Burials at Passy Cemetery
Prix de Rome for architecture
Members of the Académie des beaux-arts
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
Commandeurs of the Légion d'honneur
People associated with the Louvre