François-Frédéric Lemot
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François-Frédéric Lemot (Lyon 4 November 1772 — Paris 6 May 1827) was a French sculptor, workiong in the Neoclassical style.
At the age of seventeen he entered the atelier of Claude Dejoux, a minor Neo-classical sculptor who had trained with Guillaume Coustou the Younger. Lemot won the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1790, with a bas-relief of The Judgement of Solomon, and became a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome, where his stay was interrupted in 1793 by a call to the Army of the Rhine. Two years later he was selected by a committee of the National Convention to be among contestants for a sculpture of The French People, which was, however, never commissioned. His first showing at the Paris Salon was in 1801.
Under the Empire he was commissioned to sculpt the quadriga atop the Arc du Carrousel that stands in front of the Tuileries Gardens. He was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l'Institut de France in 1809. With the Restauration Lemot was entrusted with the recasting of the equestrian monument to Henri IV that had been destroyed during the Revolution. Two sculptures of Napoleon provided the bronze, and the cast was taken from a mold of a surviving cast of the original. Lemot also provided an Equestrian Monument of Louis XIV that provides the focal point of Place Bellecour, Lyon, where a street bears his name.
Lemot bought the Château de Clisson and the town, which had been destroyed during the Revolt in the Vendée, was rebuilt according to his plans.
His pupil, Louis Dupaty, obtained a Premier Grand Prix in sculpture, 1799, with his Pericles visiting Anaxagoras. On his return from the French Academy in Rome he was named to the Institut de France, in 1816, then appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. The most famous sculptor to emerge from Lemot's studio was Lorenzo Bartolini.
[edit] Selected works
- Cicero addressing Cataline, statue.
- Sleeping Woman, statue.
- Napoleon in Triumph (1808), lead, (Musée du Louvre). This standing figure stood briefly in the quadriga of the Arc du Carrousel.[1]
- Equestrian Henri IV (1817), bronze. The sculpture on the Pont Neuf, Paris, reproduces the work designed by Giambologna and completed by Pietro Tacca, 1618.
- Louis XIV, bronze, Lyon, Place Bellecour
