Last week I discovered a French draftsman and architect that I did not know yet: Jean‐Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826).
Lequeu’s meticulous drawings in pen and wash include highly detailed renderings of buildings and imaginary monuments populating invented landscapes. His mission was to see and describe everything systematically - from the animal to the organic, from erotic fantasy to his own visage. Solitary and obsessive, he created the fantastic worlds shown in his drawings without ever leaving his studio, and enriched them with characters and stories drawn from his library.
Six months before he died in poverty and obscurity, architect and draftsman donated more than 800 drawings to the French Royal Library. They remained there, in the institution that would become the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Lequeu’s meticulous drawings in pen and wash include highly detailed renderings of buildings and imaginary monuments populating invented landscapes. His mission was to see and describe everything systematically - from the animal to the organic, from erotic fantasy to his own visage. Solitary and obsessive, he created the fantastic worlds shown in his drawings without ever leaving his studio, and enriched them with characters and stories drawn from his library.
Six months before he died in poverty and obscurity, architect and draftsman donated more than 800 drawings to the French Royal Library. They remained there, in the institution that would become the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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