Jean-Laurent Le Geay

1708 - 1786

Jean-Laurent Le Geay was a French neoclassical architect with an unsatisfactory career largely spent in Germany. His artistic personality remained shadowy until recently, though he was allowed to have had numerous pupils among the avant-garde of neoclassicism. He won the Prix de Rome in architecture in 1732, which, after an unaccountable delay, sent him for study to the French Academy in Rome from December 1738 to January 1742, when the Director, Jean François de Troy, remarked of him on his departure "il y a du feu et du génie". After he returned to Paris, there is no record of him, but about 1745 he was in Berlin, where he published eight etchings of plans and elevations for St Hedwig's Church, Berlin, which he produced in collaboration with Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, until recently the chief architect to Frederick II of Prussia; the church was eventually built to a modified version of the plan, by Johann Boumann, from June 1748, and Johann Gottfried Büring, in 1772–3.
Le Geay served as architect to Christian Ludwig II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin from October 1748 until the Duke's death in 1756.
Show lessRead more
Wikipedia

Discover this artist

78 items

More art movements

Interested in Visual arts?

Get updates with your personalized Culture Weekly

You are all set!

Your first Culture Weekly will arrive this week.

Home
Discover
Play
Nearby
Favorites