(b Picquigny, nr Amiens, bapt Paris, Feb 29, 1750; d Cape Town, Nov 3, 1815).
French architect, teacher, engineer and surveyor, active in South Africa. He studied (1774–5) at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Paris, under Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Richard Mique and Julien-David Le Roy. He then trained as an engineer officer, and in 1781, with the patronage of Colonel C. D. de Meuron, he studied military engineering. He was landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1783, as a mercenary employed by the Dutch East India Company. Here he was privately commissioned to execute such projects as Papenboom (1786; destr.; see Lewcock, pls 43, 43A), a country house in Newlands, and Saasveldt (1791), a Cape Town residence demolished and rebuilt in 1966 as the Huguenot Memorial Museum at Franschhoek. From this period date the series of Cape Dutch houses conventionally attributed to Thibault and for which he is best known. These include the Groot Constantia reconstruction (1791–3), the Tokai Manor House (...
