Hector 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.

Hector Lefuel

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.

Having carried out alterations as the Château de Meudon (1848) and for the housing of the 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).

Pavillon de Flore, north facade

Following the sudden death of the architect Louis-Tullius-Joachim Visconti in 1853, Lefuel was placed in charge of the ambitious project of 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 became an exemplar of the nascent Second Empire architectural style.[1][2] 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.[3]

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's grave at Passy Cemetery

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 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.[4]

Lefuel's exteriors and interiors at the Louvre
  • Pavillon Sully at the eastern end of the Cour Napoleon
    Pavillon Sully at the eastern end of the Cour Napoleon[5]
  • Perspective view of the Richelieu Wing (1857)
    Perspective view of the Richelieu Wing (1857)
  • Grand Salon of the Napoleon III Apartments
    Grand Salon of the Napoleon III Apartments[6]
  • Central chandelier of the Grand Salon
    Central chandelier of the Grand Salon
  • Great Dining Room of the Napoleon III Apartments
    Great Dining Room of the Napoleon III Apartments
  • Salle d'Auguste (originally Salle des Empereurs)
    Salle d'Auguste (originally Salle des Empereurs)[7]
  • Mollien Pavilion of the Denon Wing
    Mollien Pavilion of the Denon Wing
  • Cour Lefuel (Denon Wing) with horse ramps leading to the former Emperor's Stables
    Cour Lefuel (Denon Wing) with horse ramps leading to the former Emperor's Stables
  • Tympanum over the door to the former stables from the Cour Lefuel
    Tympanum over the door to the former stables from the Cour Lefuel
  • Salle du Manège (former stables)
    Salle du Manège (former stables)[8]
  • South facade of the Guichets du Carrousel (1861)
    South facade of the Guichets du Carrousel (1861)[9]
  • Pavillon de Flore, south facade
    Pavillon de Flore, south facade[10]

Notes
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  1. Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1885). Paris in old and present times. p. 38.
  2. Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (1887). Paris. G.Allen. p. 20.
  3. Aulanier 1971, pp. 91–93.
  4. Kirkland, Stephanie (22 December 2011). "Paris Places: Passy Cemetery Archived 2016-04-22 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  5. Imitating Jacques Lemercier's Renaissance-style Pavillon de l'Horloge of 1624 (the eastern face of the same pavilion, on the Cour Carrée), Lefuel refaced the western side in 1856 and transformed Visconti's understated original by adding a profusion of elaborate sculptural detail and a narrow second storey. Criticized by Vitet in 1866, Lefuel's treatment became popular and initiated the widely imitated Second Empire style. (Mead 1996, p. 69)
  6. Decorated by Lefuel with paintings by Maréchal, the Napoleon III Apartments, originally the apartments of the Minister of State, were created for Achille Fould, but inaugurated by his successor, Count Walewski, natural son of Napoleon I and Maria Walewska. The apartments were occupied by the Finance Ministry from 1872 to 1989. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144, 170)
  7. The Assembly of the Gods on the vault was painted by Louis Matout (1865). This room should not be confused with the Salle des Empereurs Romains of the 1790s in the former Summer Apartment of Anne of Austria. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144)
  8. The decoration, conceived by Lefuel and executed in 1861 by Frémiet, Rouillard, Jacquemart, Demay, and Houguenade, includes capitals with heads of horses and other animals evoking the hunt. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144, 154)
  9. A statue of Napoleon III under the pediment was replaced during the Third Republic with The Genius of the Arts by Mercié. (Bautier 1995, pp. 137, 144)
  10. 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)

Bibliography
  • Aulanier, Christiane (1971). Histoire du Palais et du Musée du Louvre: Le Pavillon de Flore. Paris: Éditions des Musées nationaux. OCLC 468520874.
  • Bautier, Genevieve Bresc (1995). The Louvre: An Architectural History. New York: The Vendome Press. ISBN 9780865659636.
  • 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. ISBN 9780333749395.
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