Hector-Martin Lefuel (; 14 November 1810 – 31 December 1880) was a French architect, best known for his work on the

Palais du Louvre The Louvre Palace (, ), often referred to simply as the Louvre, is an iconic French palace located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in Paris, occupying a vast expanse of land between the Tuileries Gardens and the church of Saint-Ger ...

, including Napoleon III's Louvre expansion and the reconstruction of the

Pavillon de Flore The Pavillon de Flore, part of the Louvre Palace in Paris, France, stands at the southwest end of the Louvre, near the Pont Royal. It was originally constructed in 1607–1610, during the reign of Henry IV, as the corner pavilion between t ...

Early life and training

He was born in

Versailles The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...

, the son of Alexandre-Henry Lefuel (1782–1850), a building contractor. He was admitted to the

École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...

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.Mead 1996. He won the

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

in 1839 and subsequently spent the years 1840 to 1844 as a pensionary of the

French Academy in Rome The French Academy in Rome (, ) is an academy located in the Villa Medici, within the Villa Borghese, on the Pincio (Pincian Hill) in Rome, Italy. History The Academy was founded at the Palazzo Capranica in 1666 by Louis XIV under the dire ...

at the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with 7-hectare Italian garden, contiguous with the more extensive Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in the historic ...

Early career

On his return to France, he opened his own practice and was appointed a building inspector for the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourb ...

. Having carried out alterations at the

Château de Meudon Château de Meudon (), also known as the Royal Castle of Meudon or Imperial Palace of Meudon, is a French castle in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine. At the edge of a wooded plateau, the castle offers views of Paris and the Seine, as well as of the Chalais ...

(1848) and for the housing of the Manufacture Royal de Porcelaine de Sèvres (1852), he was appointed chief architect of the

Château de Fontainebleau Palace of Fontainebleau ( , ; ), located southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the French monarchs, includ ...

, one of the residences of

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first president, second emperor, and last ...

under the new monarchical

Second French Empire The Second French Empire, officially the French Empire, was the government of France from 1852 to 1870. It was established on 2 December 1852 by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, president of France under the French Second Republic, who proclaimed hi ...

regime; there he designed a new Roccoco-style theatre (1853).

Imperial architect

Due to his work on the theatre at Fontainebleau, Lefuel had received favourable notice from

. Following the 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 plans but modified the elevations, enriching them in profuse ornamental detail, and completed the project in record time for opening on 14 August 1857, when it became one of the showpieces of the Second Empire. Around 1856–1857, Lefuel also created lavish apartments for the imperial household in the

Palais des Tuileries The Tuileries Palace (, ) was a palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the Seine, directly in the west-front of the Louvre Palace. It was the Parisian residence of most French monarchs, from Henri IV to Napoleon III, until it was ...

(lost when that palace burned in the

Paris Commune of 1871 The Paris Commune (, ) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard (France), Nation ...

). Lefuel's work at the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

and the Tuileries became an exemplar of the nascent Second Empire architectural style. He was elected to the

Académie des Beaux-Arts The (; ) is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the . The current president of the academy (2021) is Alain-Charles Perrot, a French architect. Background The academy was created in 1816 in Paris as a me ...

in 1855, taking the chair of Martin-Pierre Gauthier. He was made a chevalier of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

in 1854, and a Commander of the Legion in 1857. In his private practice, Lefuel designed and erected in Paris the Hôtel Fould (1856, destroyed) for Achille Fould, Minister of Finance under Napoléon III. Napoleon III later tasked him with the reconstruction of the

and the western part of the

Grande Galerie The (), in the past also known as the Galerie du Bord de l'Eau (Waterside Gallery), is a wing of the Louvre Palace, perhaps more properly referred to as the Aile de la Grande Galerie (Grand Gallery Wing), since it houses the longest and largest ...

from the Pavillon de Flore to the Guichets du Carrousel, work which he carried out from 1861 to 1869. In 1869–1876, he built Neudeck Palace for Fürst

Henckel von Donnersmarck The Henckel von Donnersmarck family is an Austro-German noble family that originated in the former region of Spiš in Upper Hungary (now in Slovakia). The founder of the family was Henckel de Quintoforo in the 14th century. The original seat of th ...

at Neudeck bei Bethen in Silesia. The palace was in

Louis XIII style The Louis XIII style or ''Louis Treize'' was a fashion in French art and French architecture, architecture, especially affecting the visual arts, visual and decorative arts. Its distinctness as a period in the history of French art has much to do ...

and was the grandest of three residences there of the Donnersmarcks. It was burnt out by

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

soldiers in 1945 and demolished in 1961. In 1870, he built the Hôtel Nieuwerkerke (in Paris's Parc Monceau) for the museum director Émilien de Nieuwerkerke (and the Hôtel Émonville in Abbeville). After the Tuileries Palace was destroyed by fire in 1871, Lefuel reconstructed the western half of the Louvre’s Galerie Nord (1871–1876) and was in charge of the repairs to the

and the symmetrical reconstruction of the

Pavillon de Marsan The Pavillon de Marsan or Marsan Pavilion was built in the 1660s as the northern end of the Tuileries Palace in Paris, and reconstructed in the 1870s after the Tuileries burned down at the end of the Paris Commune. Following the completion of th ...

to the north, in 1874–1879. Grave of Hector Lefuel - FindAGrave amy7252

He designed funeral monuments, such as that to the composers Daniel-François-Esprit Auber and François Bazin at

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

. Hector-Martin Lefuel died in Paris and is buried at

Passy Cemetery Passy Cemetery () is a small cemetery in Passy, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. History The current cemetery replaced the old cemetery (''l'ancien cimetière communal de Passy'', located on Rue Lekain), which was closed in 1802. ...

Gallery

File:Pavillon Sully du Louvre 002.jpg, Pavillon Sully at the eastern end of the Cour Napoleon 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 548 - 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,

, south facade 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. . * Fonkenell, Guillaume (2010). ''Le Palais des Tuileries''. Arles: Honoré Clair. . * Hamerton, Philip Gilbert (1885). ''Paris in Old and Present Times''
p. 38
* Hare, Augustus John (1887). ''Paris''
p. 20
G.Allen. * Mead, Christopher (1996). "Lefuel, Hector-Martin", vol.19, pp. 69–70 in ''

The Dictionary of Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

'' (reprinted with minor corrections in 1998), edited by Jane Turner. London: Macmillan.
Online reprint
at

Oxford Art Online Oxford Art Online is an Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press ...

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lefuel, Hector-Martin 19th-century French architects 1810 births 1880 deaths Architects from Versailles Burials at Passy Cemetery Prix de Rome for architecture Members of the Académie des beaux-arts École des Beaux-Arts alumni Commanders of the Legion of Honour People associated with the Louvre