Circle of Pierre-Louis MOREAU-DESPROUX
Paris 1727 - Paris 1794
Biography
Although Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux competed for the Prix de Rome in architecture for three consecutive years between 1750 and 1752 without success, he was nevertheless able to go to Rome to study when his friend, the architect Charles de Wailly, offered to share his prize. The two were in Rome between 1754 and 1757, and Moreau-Desproux took part in excavations with de Wailly and a fellow architect, Marie-Joseph Peyre. Among Moreau-Desproux’s first architectural commissions was the design of the Hôtel de Chavannes in Paris in 1758, for the financier Jacques de Chavannes. He was accepted into the Académie Royale de Architecture in 1762, and the following year was appointed surintendant des bâtiments for the city of Paris, a post he held until 1787. In this capacity, in which he succeeded his uncle Jean-Baptiste-Augustin Basire, Moreau-Desproux was entrusted with the supervision of a wide range of public works in the city, including the design of decorations of important festivals. He was also charged with the rebuilding of the Opéra at the Palais-Royal, on which he worked between 1763 and 1770, as well as the remodeling of the interior of the Hôtel de Luynes in 1767 and the Hôtel de Ville. Moreau-Desproux died on the guillotine in 1793.
