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Louis Pierre Deseine
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Name
Louis-Pierre Deseine
Died
1822, Paris, France
Louis-Pierre Deseine (1749–1822) was a French sculptor, who was born and died in Paris. He is known above all for his portrait busts and imaginary portraits. At the Salon of 1789, he showed a portrait head of Belisarius.
Deseine trained in several ateliers, notably with Augustin Pajou, whose portrait bust he exhibited at the Salon of 1785. He won a first prize from the Académie, which sent him to study further in Rome (1781–84).
In 1814 he published a history of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, of which he had been a member. He described himself in 1814 as a member of the academies of Copenhagen and of Bordeaux, and as holding the post of first sculptor to the prince de Condé, for whom he had executed statues in the 1780s for the dining room at Chantilly, where some drawings and maquettes are preserved.
His elder brother, the little-known sculptor Claude-André Deseine (1740–1823) was a deaf-mute, whose Republican sensibilities and the exaggerated character of his portrait studies has encouraged Michael Levey see him as a contrast to his brother.
Works
Portrait bust of Augustin Pajou (1785), terracotta, Paris, musée du Louvre
Portrait bust of Claude-Pierre-Louis Durand at the age of four (1788),plaster, Paris, musée du Louvre
Portrait bust of Louis XVI (1790), marble, Versailles
Portrait bust of Louis XVII (1790), marble, Versailles
Mucius Scaevola (1791), marble, Paris, musée du Louvre. This was his morceau de reception when he became an Academician
Portrait bust of Robespierre, (1792) terracotta, Musée de la Révolution française, Château de Vizille.
Portrait bust of Charles VIII (1799), terracotta, Paris, école nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Portrait d'Abélard (1801), plaster bust in a stone medallion, Paris, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Portrait bust of Pope Pius VII (1805, shown at the Salon of 1806), plaster, tinted to resemble terracotta, Rueil-Malmaison, château de Malmaison
Portrait bust of Pierre-Nicolas de Fontenay, sénateur (1743–1806) (1807), marble, Versailles
Portrait bust of the duc de Luynes, pair de France, plaster, (1808, signed) sold, Château de Belle Eglise, 5 June 2006, lot 306
Portrait bust of Jean-Baptiste Bessières, duc d'Istrie, maréchal de France (1813), plaster patinated bronze, île d'Aix, musées de l'île d'Aix
Portrait bust of Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, duc d'Enghien (1817), plaster, Chantilly, musée Condé. The monument was finished after his death by his nephew.
Portrait bust of Louis XVIII, (1817), Chantilly, musée Condé
Maquette for the monument of the duc d'Enghien at Vincennes (1817), plaster over wood, Chantilly, musée Condé
Maquette for the monument of the Cardinal de Belloy, plaster, (c 1819) musée du Louvre. The monument to Cardinal de Belloy was erected in Notre-Dame de Paris, 1819
Not dated
Two Nymphs supporting a putto, terracotta, inscribed, sold Sotheby's Arcade, 22 July 1993, lot 292
Terracotta maquette, Virgin and Child (sold Bonham's London, 9 May 1996, lot 7
The Entry at Vienna, bas-relief on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, Paris
Portrait bust of Jean-Joachim Winckelmann, tinted plaster, musée de Versailles,
Comte Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis, over lifesize statue, marble, Versailles
Drawings
Drawings by Deseine are at the musée du Louvre ("Étude d'un homme debout avec une draperie sur l'épaule") and the musée Condé, Chantilly ("Le Déluge", "Deux Romains saluant un empereur assis" and "Lars Porsenna"); the musée Condé also conserves two projects for the monument to the duc d'Enghien.
