Architect, born in Dormans-sur-Marne, NE France. As architect to Louis XVI, his major works include the Château at Louveciennes for Madame du Barry (17713), and the Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (177580). In 1785 he was employed by the Fermes-Général to erect 60 tax buildings around Paris, though only a few were built.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (Dormans, March 21, 1736 — Paris November 18, 1806) was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture.
His greatest works were funded by the French monarchy and came to be perceived as symbols of the Ancien Régime rather than Utopia.
Biography
Ledoux was born in 1736 in Dormans-sur-Marne, the son of a modest merchant from Champagne. However, under the tutelage of Contant d'Ivry and Chevotet, Ledoux was also introduced to Classical architecture, in particular the temples of Paestum, which, along with the works of Palladio, were to influence him greatly.
The two master architects introduced Ledoux to their affluent clientele. One of Ledoux's first patrons was the Baron Crozat de Thiers, an immensely wealthy connoisseur who commissioned him to remodel part of his palatial town house in the Place Vendôme. Another client obtained through the auspices of his teachers was Président Hocquart de Montfermeil and his sister, Mme de Montesquiou.
Early work (1762-1770)
In 1762, the young Ledoux was commissioned to redecorate the Café Godeau, in the rue Saint-Honoré.
The following year the Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac commissioned Ledoux to redesign the old hilltop château on his estate at Mauperthuis. Ledoux rebuilt the château and created new gardens, replete with fountains supplied by an aqueduct.
In 1764, near Antin he designed, for Président Hocquart, a Palladian house using the colossal order. Ledoux would frequently employ this motif that was condemned by the strict French tradition, which embraced the principle of superpositioning the orders on each floor, rising from simplest to the most complex: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc.
On July 26, 1764 in Saint-Eustache, Ledoux married Marie Bureau, the daughter of a court musician.
Among the still extant works from this period are the bridge of Marac, the Prégibert bridge in Rolampont, the churches of Fouvent-le-Haut, Rock-and-Raucourt, Rolampont, the nave and portal of Cruzy-le-Châtel, and the quire of Saint-Etienne d'Auxerre.
in 1766 Ledoux's design of The Hôtel d'Hallwyll, in Le Marais, Paris received widespread praise. However, the limitations of the site made this this impossible, so Ledoux resorted to trompe l'oeil painting a colonnade on the blind wall of the neighbouring convent, thus extending the perspective.
The recognition given to the relatively modest Hôtel d'Hallwyll led in 1767 to a more prestigious commission, the "Hôtel d'Uzès", for François Emmanuel de Crussol on the rue Montmartre. There too, Ledoux preserved the structure of an earlier building.
Ledoux designed the Château de Bénouville (image) in Calvados (1768-1769) for the Marquis de Livry. The Château de Bénouville is the most important of Ledoux's early works.
Ledoux travelled to England in the years 1769-1771. and following that commission the house of Mlle Saint-Germain, in the Rue Saint-Lazare, the house of Attilly in the suburb of Poissonnière, a house for the poet Jean François de Saint-Lambert in Eaubonne, and most notably the the Music Pavilion constructed between 1770 and 1771 at the Château de Louveciennes for the King's mistress Madame du Barry, whose patronage and influence were to be of use to Ledoux in later years.
Later works
His reputation established, Ledoux commenced a period of yet more ambitious designs. However, the Montmorency fortune was depleted, necessitating Ledoux to execute the project with some parsimony.
Ledoux was interested in the work of the Royal Administrations Department and at times considered working for them, even though the positions they offered were often on the borderline between architect and engineer. Through this interest in civic and municipal architecture and due, in no small part, to the notorious influence of Madame du Barry, Ledoux was commissioned with the modernisation of the Salines de l'Est (Eastern Saltworks). In 1771 Ledoux was promoted to Inspector of the saltworks in Franche-Comté, a title he held until 1790 yielding him an annual salary of 6000 livres.
The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (1774-1779)
In the 18th century salt was an essential and valuable commodity.
In Salins-les-Bains or in Montmorot, the saltworks boilers were built close to the wells, and the wood was brought from the adjacent forests.
The megalomaniac design, which received royal approval, of the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans is considered Ledoux's masterpiece.
The entrance building opens into a vast semicircular open air space that is surrounded by ten buildings, which are arranged on the arc of a semicircle.
The significance of this plan is two-fold: the circle, a perfect figure, evokes the harmony of the ideal city and theoretically encloses a place of harmony for common work, but it recalls also contemporary theories of organization and of official surveillance, particularly the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham.
The saltworks entered a painful phase of industrial production and maginal profit, because of competition with the salt-water marshes.
The theatre of Besançon
In 1784 Ledoux was the architect selected to design a theatre at Besançon, Franche-Comté. Ledoux, realising this was not only inconvenient but elitist planned the theatre at Besançon on more egalitarian lines with seating for all but in some quarters such a plan was seen as radical if not revolutionary, the aristocracy had no wish to be seated alongside commoners. However Ledoux found an ally in the Intendant of Franche-Comté, Charles André de la Coré, an enlightened man, he consented to follow this reforming plan. Thus Ledoux achieved his ambition that the theatre could at the same time be a place of social communion and shared entertainment while still maintaining a strict hierarchy of the classes.
The seating was not the only new innovation at the the theatre, With the aid of the machinist Dart de Bosco Ledoux expanded the wings and back stage scenery apparatus , giving it greater depth than was customary, and many other modern improvements. The building was widely acclaimed on its opening in 1784 but when Ledoux submitted plans for the proposed new theatre in Marseilles but they was not accepted.
In 1784, Ledoux was chosen over Pierre-Adrien Pâris for the construction of the new town hall in Neufchâtel. Trouble began in 1789 when construction was interrupted by the French Revolution, when only the ground floor walls had been completed
Domestic and commercial architecture
Ledoux was a Free mason Ledoux took part, with his friend William Beckford, in various masonic ceremonies at the Loge Féminine de la Candeur which met in the town house he had built for Mme d'Espinchal, on the Rue des Petites-Écuries.
On the Rue Saint-Georges, for the creole Hosten, Ledoux designed an ensemble of tenements for rental, designed in such a way they could in future be extended ad infinitum.
Architecture for the ferme générale
In the process of his work in Franche-Comté, Ledoux had become an architect for the ferme générale, for whom he built a salt storehouse in Compiègne and undertook to plan their vast headquarters on the [rue du Bouloi in Paris.
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the Controller-General of Finances, obtained on an idea from the chemist and fermier général Antoine Lavoisier, of drawing a barrier around Paris to limit contraband and evasion of the octrois, or internal customs duties: this notorious Wall of the Farmers-General was to have six towers (one every 24 kilometers) and to comprise sixty tax-collecting offices. Ledoux was charged to design these buildings, which he baptized pompously "les Propylées de Paris"and to which he wanted to give a character of solemnity and magnificence while putting into practice his ideas on the necessary links between form and function.
To cut short the protests of the Parisian population, the operation was carried out rapidly: fifty barriers to access were built between 1785 and 1788.
This audacious construction met with political criticism, as well as aesthetic criticism of the architect, accused by commentators such as Dulaure and Quatremère de Quincy of taking excessive freedoms with the ancient canons.
Difficult times
At the same time, work on the law courts of Aix-en-Provence was suspended, and Ledoux was accused of embroiling the Treasury in ill-considered expenditure. As of June 1790, the Ferme générale had been able to install its employees in the buildings by Ledoux, but the octroi was abolished in May 1791, which rendered the facilities useless. A symbol of fiscal oppression, Ledoux, who had amassed a handsome fortune, was arrested and thrown in La Force Prison.
He still made a project for a school of agriculture for the duc de Duras, his companion in captivity.
Ledoux, who was eventually released, ceased building and attempted to prepare the publication of his complete œuvre. Ledoux evolved towards an architecture always more detailed and colossal, with vast walls that were increasingly smooth, and with increasingly rare openings.
During his imprisonment, Ledoux had started to write a text to accompany the engravings. Only the first volume appeared during his lifetime, in 1804, under the title L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation.
He died in Paris in 1806.
Utopianism
Around the time of the royal saltworks, Ledoux formalized his innovative design ideas for an urbanism and an architecture intended to improve society, of a Cité idéale charged with symbols and meanings.
In 1775, he presented Turgot with the first drafts of the town of Chaux, centered on the royal saltworks.
As a radical utopian of architecture, teaching at the École des Beaux-Arts, he created a singular architectonic order, a new column formed of alternating cylindrical and cubic stones superimposed for their plastic effect.
Works
Constructions
Decoration of Café militaire (or Café Godeau), rue Saint-Honoré, Paris, 1762 (Musée Carnavalet, Paris) Château de Mauperthuis (Seine-et-Marne), 1763 (destroyed) Hôtel du président Hocquart, 66 rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, Paris, 1764-1765 (destroyed) Hôtel d'Hallwyll, 28 rue Michel-le-Comte and 15 rue de Montmorency, Paris, 1766: It is the only private construction of Ledoux which remains in the capital. Hôtel de la présidente de Gourgues, 53 rue Saint-Dominique, Paris (reconstructed) Maison de Mlle Guimard, chaussée d'Antin, Paris (destroyed) Maison de Mlle Saint-Germain, rue Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1769-1770 (destroyed) Pavillon Saint-Lambert, Eaubonne (destroyed) Pavillon d'Attilly, faubourg Poissonnière, Paris, 1771 (destroyed) Pavillon de musique de Mme du Barry, Louveciennes, 1770-1771 Hôtel de Montmorency, intersection of rue de la chaussée d'Antin and boulevard, Paris, 1772 (detroyed) : The woodwork of the circular salon are preserved at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans (1774-1779) (classified as monuments historiques of France and a World Heritage Site of UNESCO in 1982) Théâtre de Besançon, 1778-1784 Hôtel Thélusson, rue de Provence, Paris, 1778 (destroyed in 1826 at the time the prolongation of rue Laffitte) Hôtel de Mme d'Espinchal, rue des Petites-Écuries, Paris (destroyed) Parc de Bourneville, La Ferté-Milon (Aisne) Grenier à sel de Compiègne (OiseÂ) Siège de la Ferme générale, rue du Bouloi, Paris Pavillons et barrières de l'Octroi de Paris (see Wall of the Farmers-General) (1785).Projects
Some of his other "visionary" designs:
Project of the town of Chaux, around the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, published in 1804: Overall plan Market House of the gardener Project for the prison and law courts of Aix-en-Provence, 1785-1786 The project of immeuble-loyer , 1792Publications
In 1804 was published a volume including the works from 1768 to 1789 : L'Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l'art, des mœurs et de la législation.
Criticism
When they were published in 1804, the engraved plates of Ledoux were admired for their quality of execution but the text which accompanied them was considered to be delirious.
The work of Ledoux has been re-evaluated since 1925. Recognized as a visionary by cubists, surrealists and the postmodernists, Ledoux is now regarded as one of the premier architects of his time.
One could speak of a veritable "Ledoux myth" as testified to by the films of Pierre Kast (La Morte saison des amours, 1952 ;
In 2006, the bicentenary of the death of Claude Nicolas Ledoux is celebrated. Michel Gallet, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806), Paris, 1980. Michel Gallet, Architecture de Ledoux, inédits pour un tome III, Paris, 1991. Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux and Lequeu, Philadelphia, 1952. Levallet-Haug, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 1736-1806, Paris and Strasbourg, 1934. Raval, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, architecte du Roi, Paris, 1945. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Architecture and Social Reform at the End of the Ancien Régime, Cambridge (Mass.) and London. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux: Architect of the Revolution Between Vision and Utopia, Birkhauser, 2006. ISBN 3764374853 Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Claude Nicolas Ledoux
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ledoux, Claude Nicolas |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | French neoclassical architect, urbanist, and architectural theorist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 21, 1736 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dormans, Marne, France |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 18, 1806 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Paris France |
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