Search Results

(b Lacochère, Orne, April 29, 1764; d Paris, March 26, 1843).

French cabinetmaker and silversmith. The silver and silver-gilt produced in his workshop rivals that of his contemporaries Henri Auguste and Jean Baptiste Claude Odiot. By 1789 Biennais had established himself at 283, Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris, as a cabinetmaker and tabletier (a dealer in and maker of small objects). After 1797 Biennais, no doubt encouraged by the dissolution of the guild system, expanded his business to include the manufacture of silver. During the Consulate Biennais became Napoleon’s personal silversmith, although he may have provided Napoleon with silver as early as 1798, when it is said that he supplied him with a nécessaire de voyage prior to his Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) and trusted him to pay for it on his return.

Biennais produced large amounts of silver for Napoleon and his family, including, in 1804, the crown and sceptre for his coronation and a number of nécessaires of different types, remarkable for the combination of forms of varying shapes and sizes that are ingeniously accommodated in a restricted space. One (...

(b Schleswig, Oct 13, 1798; d Copenhagen, March 10, 1868).

Danish sculptor. He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, from 1816. Originally intending to become a painter, he decided after a few years to devote himself to sculpture, partly as a result of seeing the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen in 1819. In 1823 Bissen gained the academy’s grand gold medal and a travelling bursary, and he left for Rome in 1824, making several stops in Germany and Italy en route. He stayed in Rome for over ten years, and as well as making a number of small trips to southern Italy with his friend the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund, Bissen got the chance to work in Thorvaldsen’s studio in Rome. He eventually became one of Thorvaldsen’s most trusted collaborators, and in 1833–4 he even carried out a commission in Thorvaldsen’s name, the monument to Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz. After Thorvaldsen’s death in 1844 he completed several of his master’s works....

Norwegian architectural and furniture design partnership formed in 1922 by Gudolf Blakstad (b Gjerpen, 19 May 1893; d Oslo, 1986) and Herman Munthe-Kaas (b Christiania [now Oslo], 25 May 1890; d Oslo, 5 March 1970). Blakstad was awarded his diploma as an architect at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim in 1916. He collaborated with Jens Dunker on the New Theatre, Oslo, from 1919 to 1929. After a preliminary training in Christiania, Munthe-Kaas finished his education at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1919.

From the beginning of their careers Blakstad and Munthe-Kaas played a leading role in Norwegian architecture. After studying in Italy in the early 1920s, they advocated Neo-classicism in architectural projects, furniture designs and writings. In 1922 they won the competition for the new Town Hall in Haugesund (1924–31), a major work of 20th-century Norwegian Neo-classicism. Above a powerfully rusticated basement, the long office wing with its regular fenestration contrasts with the higher City Council Hall, accentuated by pairs of monumental, free-standing columns. In general the effect is of robust strength and an exciting interplay of horizontals and verticals....

(b Chalon-sur-Saône, Aug 30, 1735; d Paris, Dec 9, 1814).

French sculptor, draughtsman and painter. He probably first trained in Chalon, under the sculptor Pierre Colasson (c. 1724–70); later he studied in Paris at the school of the Académie Royale, under Simon Challes. In 1766 he travelled to Italy, remaining there until 1770. The art of Raphael and his school and the Fontainebleau school influenced Boichet’s art (e.g. Agrippina Bearing Germanicus’s Ashes, Lille, Mus. B.-A.) from an early date by giving his work a Neo-classical character. Boichot next worked in Burgundy, where he was responsible for architecture, sculpture and paintings at the château of Verdun-sur-le-Doubs (destr.). He also produced decorative work for the salon of the Académie de Dijon, of which he was a member; for the refectory of the abbey of St Benigne, Dijon, he executed a painting of the Triumph of Temperance over Gluttony (Dijon, Mus. B.-A.). In Paris his studio was in the Passage Sandrier off the Chaussée d’Antin. Introduced by Augustin Pajou, he was approved (...

(fl 1820–50).

American architect. There is evidence that Bond was trained by Solomon Willard. Certain of Bond’s designs suggest the Greek Revival approach that Willard brought from Washington, DC. Bond’s style moved between Gothic Revival and a Neo-classical heaviness. In the Salem City Hall of 1836–37 the two-storey Greek Revival façade shows his carefully proportioned details. An example of Gothic Revival is St John’s Episcopal Church and Rectory (1841), Devens Street, Boston, which has a rather heavy granite façade dominated by a square tower with a battlemented roof-line; there are large quatrefoil windows in the walls below. In the same year Bond was called to Oberlin College in Ohio to design First Church, which had to be a Greek Revival design. He worked on Lewis Wharf (1836–40; later remodelled), Boston, where certain walls reflect his attraction to boldly massed granite surfaces. Bond’s best-known buildings during his life were at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. These included Gore Hall (...

[Giuseppe]

(b Rome, Jan 19, 1739; d London, March 8, 1808).

English architect of Italian birth. A leading Neo-classical architect of the late 18th century, he studied at the Collegio Romano and trained (according to his son Ignatius) under Antonio Asprucci. He also studied under Girolamo Teodoli and may have received tuition from Charles-Louis Clérisseau. Around 1763 James Adam (i), then in Rome, saw some of Bonomi’s student drawings and engaged him to draw Roman antiquities. In 1767 Robert Adam (i) and James Adam invited him to England, where he worked in their office until 1781. He became an independent architect in 1782 and prepared designs (none of which seem to have been executed) for several patrons, but in 1783 he was persuaded to return to Italy (probably by Angelica Kauffman, his wife’s cousin). The following year he returned to London, practising there until his death. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1789 on Joshua Reynolds’s casting vote as President; however, in spite of Reynolds’s nomination in ...

(b Bischofswang, nr Füssen, Feb 28, 1733; d Munich, Dec 19, 1810).

German sculptor. He was the son of a farmer. He first trained as a sculptor in the leading workshop of the region, that of Anton Sturm (1690–1757) in Füssen. Boos then travelled as a journeyman to Munich, where he is believed to have worked for nine years with Johann Baptist Straub. By 1763 he had become a student at the Kaiserliche Kunstakademie in Vienna; he also studied at the Städtische Kunstakademie in Augsburg, where he worked at the studio of the brothers Placidus Verhelst and Ignaz Wilhelm Verhelst. In 1765 Boos returned to Munich. His earliest surviving works were executed the following year: over life-size statues at the entrance to the choir of the monastery church at Fürstenfeldbruck (1766), representing the monastery’s founders, Duke Ludwig II and his son Ludwig IV. That same year Boos became one of the founders of a private school of drawing, which in ...

(b Monaco, March 19, 1768; d Paris, July 29, 1845).

French sculptor of Monegasque birth. He trained in Paris in the studio of Augustin Pajou in the period 1785–8. He was an officer in the French army in Italy during the Revolutionary wars, but by 1802 he had resigned his commission. He stayed in Italy, presumably studying and practising as a sculptor until his return to Paris in 1807. Thanks to Lorenzo Bartolini he was employed to work on some of the stone bas-reliefs (1807–10; in situ) for the Colonne de la Grande Armée in the Place Vendôme, Paris. His first exhibit at the Salon was Cupid Shooting his Arrows (plaster; untraced) in 1808. A marble version (St Petersburg, Hermitage) was ordered by Empress Josephine. Reminiscent of Giambologna’s Mercury, this Neo-classical work was completed in 1812.

Before 1815 the imperial family and court formed a large part of the subject-matter of Bosio’s sculpture: at the 1810 Salon he exhibited marble busts of ...

(b Busto Arsizio, Nov 11, 1777; d Milan, Dec 15, 1815).

Italian painter, collector and writer. He studied painting at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. Between 1785 and 1801 he lived in Rome, where he met such Neo-classical artists as Angelica Kauffman and Marianna Dionigi (1756–1826) as well as writers, scholars and archaeologists, notably Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt, Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754–1827) and Ennio Quirino Visconti. While in Rome he studied Antique and Renaissance works, making copies of the statues in the Museo Pio-Clementino and the frescoes by Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican, also furthering his studies of the nude in the Accademia di Domenico Conti and making anatomical drawings of corpses in the Ospedale della Consolazione. On his return to Milan in 1801 he became secretary to the Accademia di Brera, a post he held until 1807. During this period he devoted all his efforts to the restructuring of the Brera, providing it with new statutes and a major library and also founding the adjoining art gallery. He prevented numerous works from being smuggled abroad or dispersed and was responsible for their inclusion in the ...

(b Chaumont-en-Bassigny, Haute-Marne, May 29, 1698; d Paris, July 27, 1762).

French sculptor and draughtsman. He was a pupil of his father, and his earliest work, the low relief of the Martyrdom of St Stephen (1719–20) for the tympanum above the main portal of the church of St Stephen at Dijon (now Dijon, St Benigne; in situ), was executed in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste. His training must have been solid, for his technique was so competent that only a year after arriving in Paris in 1721, ostensibly to study with Guillaume Coustou the elder, he won the Prix de Rome for sculpture, with Gideon Choosing his Soldiers by Watching them Drinking (untraced). He travelled to Rome in 1723 with the winner of that year’s Prix de Rome, Lambert-Sigismond Adam, and the two became rivals.

While in Rome, Bouchardon made large numbers of drawings in red chalk after ancient sculptures and monuments, and after the paintings of Michelangelo, Raphael and Domenichino (three sketchbooks; New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib.). He also worked on the obligatory copy in marble after an antique sculpture for the French king, in his case a free interpretation (...

(b Paris, Feb 12, 1728; d Feb 6, 1799).

French architect and writer. A gifted designer and admired teacher, Boullée became best known for the magnificent set of drawings he assembled for his treatise Architecture, essai sur l’art (Paris, Bib. N.). His father, Louis-Claude Boullée, was an architect, and his mother, Marie-Louise Boucher, may have been related to the painter François Boucher. Etienne-Louis studied painting with Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre until his father prevailed on him to pursue architectural studies with Jacques-François Blondel, a leading theorist of French classicism. Although he never went to Italy, Boullée was introduced by Jean-Laurent Legeay to the international Neo-classicism germinating in Rome during the 1740s. Legeay urged his students to complete their projects with a presentation drawing rendered in perspective that would be more intelligible to the client than the customary elevation. This encouraged pictorial effects of light and shadow and provided a link between the practice of architecture and the painting of architectural views. At the age of 19 Boullée began teaching at the Ecole des Ponts et Chausées; he was admitted to second-class membership in the Académie Royale d’Architecture in ...

(Ivanovich)

(b St Petersburg, Nov 4, 1784; d Moscow, June 28, 1834).

Russian architect and urban planner. He was the son of the painter Vincenzo Giovanni Bova (1754–1815), an emigré from Naples, and he later changed his name to Bove. He obtained his first knowledge of architecture from the architect Francesco Camporesi (1747–1831) before becoming a pupil and later architectural assistant (1802–12) at the Architecture School of the Kremlin Construction Department in Moscow. His first practical works were in Tver’ and Moscow with the architects Karl Rossi and Matvey Kazakov, who had a great influence on his work. His subsequent activities were associated with his work on the Committee for Construction in Moscow, which was in charge of the restoration of the city following its destruction (1812) during Napoleon’s invasion. As chief architect in the committee’s ‘façade section’, Bove had great influence on the character of building in Moscow after the fire, distinguished by stylistic unity and high artistic standards. He was involved in a wide range of creative activity: he was an outstanding architect, a fine artist, a construction expert and an organizer of construction projects. In ...

(b Avignon, Jan 25, 1801; d Paris, May 1, 1861).

French sculptor. He was introduced to drawing and sculpture in the small private art school opened in Avignon by his father (who ran a barber’s shop next door); he also attended the local Ecole de Dessin. In 1815 he won a prize from the Musée Calvet, Avignon, which enabled him to go to Paris c. 1827; he became a pupil of François-Joseph Bosio and in 1829 won second place in the Prix de Rome competition with the group the Death of Hyacinthus (plaster; Avignon, Mus. Calvet). He spent two years at the Académie de France in Rome, where he was joined by his brother Jean-Louis Brian; thereafter their work is often indistinguishable. They worked on several projects together, mostly in a Neo-classical style, among them the bronze statue of Jean Althen (1847; Avignon, Jardin du Rocher des Doms), which is signed Brian frères. In their partnership Joseph’s role was principally that of entrepreneur....

(b Montignac, Dordogne, Dec 16, 1771; d Poland, 1850).

French painter and designer. He came from a family of shopkeepers and tailors and he served in the Republican army during the wars of the Vendée. By 1798 he was a student of Jacques-Louis David, who provided a small apartment in the Louvre where Broc often lived. With a group of David’s students and some writers, Broc formed a dissenting sect called Primitifs, Les, Barbus (bearded ones), Méditateurs or Penseurs. Broc was typical of the Primitifs in finding inspiration in Greek vase painting and Italian 15th-century art.

The School of Apelles (1800; Paris, Louvre) was Broc’s first Salon entry and the first exhibited work by a member of the Primitifs. The picture represents Apelles speaking to his students about his unfinished allegory of Calumny. The composition derives from Raphael’s School of Athens (Rome, Vatican, Stanza Segnatura), and the picture on the easel is based on a drawing of Calumny...

(Stanisław)

(bapt Warsaw, Dec 26, 1784; d Warsaw, March 31, 1832).

Polish painter and teacher. He studied for a short time under Jean-Baptiste Augustin in Paris between 1805 and 1808, returning later to Paris at the end of 1809 and remaining until the autumn of 1814 as a bursar of the Chamber of Public Education of the Duchy of Warsaw. He wished to study under Jacques-Louis David but was able to do so only on a part-time basis. After a brief period of study under Anne-Louis Girodet, he became a pupil of François Gérard in 1811. At this time Brodowski painted his first oil portraits, one of the best being his Self-portrait (1813; Warsaw, N. Mus.). He also started work on a large composition suggested by Gérard, Saul’s Anger at David (1812–19; Warsaw, N. Mus.), which was exhibited after his return to Warsaw at the first public fine arts exhibition in 1819, where it won first prize. The painting clearly shows the influence of David and Brodowski’s commitment to the strict canons of the French Empire style; it became a model for Neo-classical painting in Warsaw....

(b Paris, Feb 15, 1739; d Paris, June 6, 1813).

French architect. He was educated at the Collège de Beauvais and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he studied (c. 1760) under Jacques-François Blondel and Etienne-Louis Boullée. He never won the Prix de Rome, however, nor did he study in Italy, but in the 1770s he became one of the most fashionable architects of town houses (hôtels particuliers) in Paris, particularly in the northern part of the Chaussée d’Antin quarter and south of Les Invalides, which he helped develop as smart residential areas. His success was largely the result of the patronage of Louis-Philippe I, 4th Duc d’Orléans (1725–85), and Louis-Philippe’s rival the Prince de Condé; this patronage began after the Marquise de Montesson, mistress to the Duc d’Orléans (after 1773 his wife), inherited the Marquis’s fortune in 1769 and commissioned Brongniart to build her a house (destr.; drawing, Paris, Carnavalet). The result was a relatively modest hôtel just east of the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, recalling the early work of Boullée....

(b Ellisburg, NY, 1859; d Burlingame, CA, Jan 21, 1896).

American architect. Despite his tragically brief career and six Neo-classical buildings, A. Page Brown will be remembered for his Ferry Building, the centerpiece of San Francisco’s waterfront; that city’s Swedenborgian Church with its Mission-style chairs, both icons of the American Arts and Crafts Movement; and his Mission-style California building for the 1893 Chicago Exposition, a structure that helped establish Mission and Mediterranean styles as appropriate for both domestic and commercial designs throughout the Southwest.

After briefly attending Cornell University, Brown spent three years with the New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. By December 1884, after two years studying European architecture, he opened his own New York practice. Commissions in San Francisco from the Crocker family in 1889 led him to open a West Coast office. He supervised the completion of the first Grace Cathedral (1890, replaced), designed the city’s second skyscraper and, in February 1892, his Mission Revival style design won the competition for the California State Building for the ...

(b Pawtucket, RI, July 26, 1801; d Providence, RI, Sept 28, 1890).

American architect. Bucklin’s early training in architecture was as apprentice to John Holden Greene. When he was 21 he formed a partnership with William Tallman, a builder and timber merchant, and they remained associates until the early 1850s. Russell Warren worked with them between 1827 and the early 1830s, as did Thomas Tefft between 1847 and 1851.

Tallman & Bucklin was a prolific firm. It engaged in speculative residential construction and was awarded some choice local commissions between the late 1820s and 1850s. Most of these were Greek Revival, including the Providence Arcade (1828), a monumental covered shopping mall; Westminster Street Congregational Church (1829; destr.); Rhode Island Hall, Brown University (1840); the Washington Row (1843–5; destr.); the Providence High School (1844; destr.); and Athenaeum Row (1845), all in Providence. The Tudor-style Butler Hospital (1847), Providence, is probably by Tefft, the architectural prodigy who was working for the firm while a student at Brown University....

(b Boston, MA, August 8, 1763; d Boston, April 15, 1844).

American architect. Bulfinch was a leading architect of the Federal period in America, but had no formal architectural training.

Born to an aristocratic Boston family, Bulfinch graduated from Harvard College in 1781. In 1785 he embarked on a two-year tour of Italy, France and England, during which he developed a special enthusiasm for the Neo-classical style of Adam, Robert. On his return, he married a wealthy cousin and, by his own account, spent the following eight years ‘pursuing no business but giving gratuitous advice in architecture’. Bulfinch designed approximately 15 buildings during this early period, including three churches, a theatre, a state house for Connecticut, seven detached houses and a group of row houses. The style derives clearly from Adam, but it is notably shallow and linear, owing perhaps to the American use of wood and brick rather than stone, and to Bulfinch’s probable reliance on sketches and engravings of the English models. It is also likely that, at this stage of his career, Bulfinch did not supervise his buildings but merely provided elevations and floor plans to builders who constructed them. Notable among his early works are two churches for Pittsfield and Taunton, MA (both begun in ...

(b 1750-29-09 or 1782–3; d London, May 1, 1818).

English cabinetmaker and sculptor. He seems to have acquired an early training in sculpture from his mother, who made a display of life-size waxwork figures, exhibited in and around Birmingham from 1794. By 1798 he had gained a reputation as a portrait sculptor and soon set up independently as a ‘Miniature-painter and Portrait-modeller in Rice-paste’. His brother, William Bullock, opened a ‘Cabinet of Curiosites’ in Birmingham in 1800, moving to Liverpool in 1801. Bullock joined him there and by 1804 had gone into partnership with a looking-glass maker, William Stoakes of Church Street, Liverpool. They advertised themselves as ‘Cabinet Makers, General Furnishers and Marble Workers’ and in 1805 supplied Gothic furniture designed by Bullock to Cholmondeley Castle, Ches (in situ). The following year Bullock set up on his own in Bold Street, Liverpool, selling furniture and bronze ornaments. By 1806 he had acquired the Mona Marble quarries in Anglesey and sold ‘fashionable and elegant Sculptured and Plain Chimney Pieces’ at a separate showroom in Church Street....