Laurent Marqueste

Laurent-Honoré Marqueste (Toulouse 12 June 1848 — Paris, 5 April 1920) was a French sculptor in the neo-Baroque Beaux-Arts tradition. He was a pupil of François Jouffroy and of Alexandre Falguière and won the Prix de Rome in 1871.

He was born at Toulouse, 12 June 1848. He made his official debut at the Paris salon of 1874 (Jacob and the Angel).In 1893, he became a professor at theÉcole des Beaux-Arts.He became a member of the Institute in 1894, he received the Legion of Honour in 1884, (officer, 1894; commander, 1903).

His 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 Collège des Beaux-Arts, the Grand Palais for the 1900 Exposition, and the Hôtel Dufayel, Avenue des Champs-Élysées (1906, demolished). Public monuments by Marquest are to be found also, in which was very much criticised; as well as monuments for North and South America. He was also the author of portrait busts and statues of Victor Hugo, Léo Delibes, Ferdinand Fabre and a large output of classical subjects. He gained the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.

His portrait bust, sculpted by Ernest Henri Dubois, is at the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, which also has a considerable series of statuettes and maquettes, or sculptural sketches. His papers are conserved at the Centre historique des archives nationales.

• Velléda (seated figure, 1877) (At the entrance to the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)
• The Sorrow of Orpheus (1879)
• Diana Surprised at the Bath (1880)
• Cupid (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse)
• Galatea (1884)
• L'Art et la Fortune (1887)
• Nessus and Deianira (1892) (Tuileries Gardens, Paris).
• Perseus and the Gorgon 1890. (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Palais Saint-Pierre;Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen).
• La Cigale (1900)
• Hebe (1909, shown at the Salon des artistes français)