Abraham César Lamoureux (c. 1640, Metz – c. April 1692, Copenhagen) was a French sculptor and stonemason who worked in Sweden and in Copenhagen, Denmark.[1] He is best known for creating the first equestrian statue in northern Europe.
Life and work
Little is known about Lamoureux's early years. He was born in Metz in the Lorraine region of France, and he had a younger brother Claude,[2] also a sculptor, as well as a younger sister Magdalena,[3] who was born in Hamburg (Germany) around 1660.[4] Their father, whose first name is unknown, was a sculptor who had worked in the Netherlands, in England and in Hamburg, and might have been an assistant of the sculptor François Dieussart.[3] Lamoureux first appears around 1664 in Stockholm with his stepfather, the sculptor Jean Baptiste Dieussart,[5] when the latter entered service with count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, the Lord High Chancellor of Sweden, who was his stepfather's main employer and patron until around 1668.[6] In the same year Lamoureux's mother, who was originally from Antwerp,[7] died in Stockholm.[5] In the years before 1668, Lamoureux (and presumably also his brother Claude) is believed to have been an apprentice or assistant of his stepfather.[8]
In 1681, Abraham César Lamoureux and his family, including his brother Claude his sister Magdalena and her husband, the Swedish sculptor and stonemason Johann Gustav Stockenberg,[3] moved to Copenhagen in Denmark (it has been speculated that Lamoureux was convinced to leave Swedish Service by Jens Juel)[4] to become court sculptor for Christian V of Denmark,[2] where he received an annual salary of 400 rigsdalers, which was topped up by an additional 200 rigsdalers from 1685.[1] He is likely to have started work on the Equestrian statue of Christian V around 1682, when he first purchased materials for its creation,[2] and 1687 its installation on Kongens Nytorv was witnessed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger.[11]
Abraham César Lamoureux died in Copenhagen around April 1692 where he was buried in the Trinitatis Church on 27 April 1692.[1]
Unfortunately there do not seem to be any works completed by Lamoureux in Sweden that still exist.[8] All of his known surviving works are located in Denmark:
^ abcdBertil Waldén[in Swedish] (1942), Nicolaes Millich och hans krets: studier i den karolinska barockens bildhuggarkonst (in Swedish), Stockholm: Saxon & Lindströms förlag, p. 162
^ abEmil Marquard (1925), "Abraham Cæsar Lamoureux", in Østifternes historisk-topografiske selskab (ed.), Fra arkiv og museum, Serie 2 (in Danish), Copenhagen: Arnold Busck, pp. 245–247, retrieved 28 February 2019
^Osvald Sirén (1914), Nicodemus Tessin d. y:s studieresor i Danmark, Tyskland, Holland, Frankrike och Italien; anteckningar, bref och ritningar (in Swedish), Stockholm: Norstedt, p. 65
^Fulton, Torbjörn. "Lamoureux [L’Amoureux], Abraham-César", Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press (accessed 8 September 2023), Grove Art Online (subscription access).
^Hjalmar Friis (1933), Rytterstatuens historie i Europa fra oldtiden indtil Thorvaldsen (in Danish), Copenhagen: Gyldendal
^Vagn Poulsen; Erik Lassen; Jan Danielsen, eds. (1973), "Abraham-César Lamoureux", Dansk kunsthistorie: Billedkunst og skulptur (in Danish), vol. 2, Copenhagen: Politikens Forlag, p. 311
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