Hector Lefuel

He was born in Versailles, the son of Alexandre-Henry Lefuel (1782–1850), a building contractor. 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.Mead 1996.

He won 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.

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 at 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 Roccoco-style theatre (1853).

File:Louvre aile Richelieu.jpg

Due to his work on the theatre at Fontainebleau, Lefuel had received favourable notice from Napoleon III. 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 (lost when that palace burned in the Paris Commune of 1871).Fonkenell 2010, pp. 176–179. Lefuel's work at the Louvre and the Tuileries became an exemplar of the nascent Second Empire architectural style.Hamerton 1885; Hare 1887.

He was 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.

In his private practice, Lefuel designed and erected in Paris the Hôtel Fould (1856, destroyed) for Achille Fould, Minister of Finance under Napoléon III.

File:North facade of the Pavillon de Flore - Jean-Pierre Dalbéra at Flickr (modified).jpg, north facade]]

Napoleon III later tasked him with the reconstruction of the Pavillon de Flore and the western part of the Grande Galerie 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 at Neudeck bei Bethen in Silesia. The palace was in Louis XIII style and was the grandest of three residences there of the Donnersmarcks. It was burnt out by Red Army or Wehrmacht 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 Pavillon de Flore and the symmetrical reconstruction of the Pavillon de Marsan to the north, in 1874–1879.Aulanier 1971, pp. 91–93.

File:Grave of Hector Lefuel - FindAGrave amy7252.jpg

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

Hector-Martin Lefuel died in Paris and is buried at Passy Cemetery.Kirkland, Stephanie (22 December 2011). [http://stephanekirkland.com/passy-cemetery/ "Paris Places: Passy Cemetery] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160422041843/http://stephanekirkland.com/passy-cemetery/ |date=2016-04-22 }}. Retrieved 4 March 2014.

{{center|Lefuel's exteriors and interiors at the Louvre}}

File:Pavillon Sully du Louvre 002.jpg|Pavillon Sully at the eastern end of the Cour NapoleonImitating 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)

File:Appartements Napoléon III 4.jpg|Grand Salon of the Napoleon III ApartmentsDecorated 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)

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)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)

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)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)

File:Guichets du Louvre, Paris 25 June 2011.jpg|South facade of the Guichets du Carrousel (1861)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)

File:Le pavillon de Flore 3.jpg|Pavillon de Flore, south facadeCarpeaux'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)

{{reflist}}

{{Commons category|Hector-Martin Lefuel}}

• 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}}.
• Fonkenell, Guillaume (2010). Le Palais des Tuileries. Arles: Honoré Clair. {{ISBN|9782918371045}}.
• Hamerton, Philip Gilbert (1885). Paris in Old and Present Times, [https://books.google.com/books?id=3pMNAAAAQAAJ&q=pavillon+de+flore+louis+xiv&pg=PA38|pages=38 p. 38].
• Hare, Augustus John (1887). Paris, [https://books.google.com/books?id=3pgQAAAAYAAJ&q=pavillon+de+flore+louis+xiv&pg=PA20 p. 20]. G.Allen.
• 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}}. [https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T050054 Online reprint] at Oxford Art Online {{Oxford Art subscription}}.

• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Hector-Martin Lefuel}}

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Category:19th-century French architects

Category:1810 births

Category:1880 deaths

Category:Architects from Versailles

Category:Burials at Passy Cemetery

Category:Prix de Rome for architecture

Category:Members of the Académie des beaux-arts

Category:École des Beaux-Arts alumni

Category:Commanders of the Legion of Honour

Category:People associated with the Louvre