1829 - 1906

Sculptor. He was born in Nantes, where he studied under the sculptor, Amédée Ménard. He travelled to Paris in 1851, entering the studio of François Rude. He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1852, and, the following year, his Negro Boy Playing with a Lizard was purchased by the state. During the Second Empire he worked on the new Louvre and the church of La Trinité, and in 1881 carved a figure of Nantes for the rebuilt Paris Hôtel de Ville. Lebourg was patronised by Sir Richard Wallace, designing for him the drinking fountains which Wallace persented to the city of Paris in 1872, executing a bust of Lady Wallace, shown at the Salon in the same year, and one of Sir Richard himself in 1897 (both now in the Wallace Collection, London). Wallace also bought a Discobolus, which Lebourg had exhibited at the Salon of 1874. A very characterful statue of Dr Guépin by Lebourg, inaugurated in 1893 in the Place Delorme, Nantes, was melted down by the Vichy regime in 1942. Lebourg conducted ruinously expensive experiments in lost wax casting and was also interested in artistic ceramics. His bronze statue of Joan of Arc was shown after his death at the Salon of 1906.