Laurent Marqueste

Laurent-Honoré Marqueste (1848-1920) was a French sculptor in the neo-Baroque Beaux-Arts tradition. He made his official debut at the Paris salon of 1874 with his painting Jacob and the Angel.In 1893, he became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris.

In 1884 he received the Legion of Honour (becoming an officer in 1894, and commander in 1903). He became a member of the Institute de France in 1894.

Marqueste’s virtuosic work, often combining two figures, tended to be executed by specialist carvers working by pointing up his models, as had become common studio practice among French sculptors in the later nineteenth century.

Among his commissions are a large number of allegorical architectural figural sculptures, historical portraits (Victor Hugo, and Geographie for the Sorbonne, 1901) and others for the monumental Gare d’Orsay (now the Musée d’Orsay), the Beaux-Arts de Paris, the Grand Palais for the 1900 Exposition, and the Hôtel Dufayel, Avenue des Champs-Élysées (1906, demolished).