LECOMTE, Félix - b. 1737 Paris, d. 1817 Paris - WGA

LECOMTE, Félix

(b. 1737 Paris, d. 1817 Paris)

French sculptor, pupil of Falconet and Louis Vassé. He won the Premier Prix de sculpture in 1758 and entered the École royale des élèves protégés. He went to Rome and stayed there between 1761 and 1768. Returning to Paris he was accepted (agréé) at the Académie with his marble group Oedipus et Phorbas. He became member of the Académie in 1771.

Félix Lecomte’s effigy of François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fenelon holding a voluminous copy of his Telemaque was included in the very first group of four statues commissioned in 1776 by the comte d’Angiviller for the groundbreaking historical series of the great men of France. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1777. He regularly exhibited at the Salon. In 1783 he presented the marble portrait of the Queen Marie-Antoinette, in 1789 the life-size statue of Charles Rollin.

Astronomy and Geography

This decorative group is one of the four groups of children symbolizing the arts, which were commissioned by the Abb� Terray, probably during the abb�’s brief period as Directeur des Bâtiments. Each group was by a different sculptor, though the resulting pieces are homogeneous in style and indeed represent the culmination of sculpture in a private setting, yet not on a miniature scale, playful, graceful, and decorative. Clodion contributed the Music and Poetry (Washington, National Gallery of Art), Jean-Jacques Caffi�ri the Geometry and Architecture, Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert the Painting and Sculpture (Washington, National Gallery of Art).

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Charles Rollin

Charles Rollin (1661-1741) was a French historian and educationist. His famous work is the Ancient History (published in Paris, 1730-38). Lecomte’s life-size statue was exhibited at the Salon of 1789.

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Jean le Rond d'Alembert

Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717-1783) was a French mathematician, mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also co-editor with Denis Diderot of the Encyclop�die. D’Alembert’s method for the wave equation is named after him.

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Marie Antoinette

This is the most famous and duplicated of Lecomte’s busts. Looking at once aloof, imperious, and benevolent, the queen is portrayed more truthfully than in any painted portrait, with a hint of feminine allure.

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Oedipus et Phorbas

This sculpture was the painter’s “morceau de r�ception” at the Acad�mie in 1771.

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