Jean Baptiste Joseph Debay

Training under Henri Joseph Bernard Nieuwenhuysen and Antoine-Denis Chaudet is recorded. The recorded working language is French and Dutch. Works named in the authority record are Statue of René Castel. Work by Jean Baptiste Joseph Debay is recorded in the collections of Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp and Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour.

• Illustration — Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Cassagnet He was the son of Philippus de Bay (1754–1810) and his wife Anna Catharina Taeymans. De Bay was a pupil of Willem Egidius van Buscum and Jan Frans van Geel in Mechelen and subsequently Antoine-Denis Chaudet at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He was active in France where he first worked in Nantes from 1801. From 1817 he was in Paris where he became in conservator of the collection of antiquities of the Louvre. He was awarded various distinctions including the titles of Knight of the Legion of Honour and Knight of the Order of Leopold. In Paris he provided support and training to visiting sculptors from Mechelen such as Joseph Tuerlinckx and Louis Royer. He was the father of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Joseph Debay (1802–1862) and the sculptor and painter Auguste-Hyacinthe Debay. He died in Paris in 1863.

He is mainly known for portrait sculptures of historical and contemporary figures. His work was executed in a classicist style. Jean Baptiste Joseph De Bay created statues of historical figures as well as a number of busts. Several of his works are exhibited at the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre museum in Paris, Fine Arts Museum of Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. He sculpted the ten statues in Palais de la Bourse (Nantes), the statue of Argus Asleep to the Sound of the Flute by Mercury in the Fine Arts Museum of Nantes, the statue of Pericles in the Tuileries Garden in Paris, the Equestrian statue of Louis XIV (Montpellier) in collaboration with Auguste-Jean-Marie Carbonneaux, the marble statues of Charles Martel in Versailles and of Colbert in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. He won the second prize in the Prix de Rome for sculpture in 1823.

The authorities additionally record the headings Jean-Baptiste Joseph Debay, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph De Bay, Jean-Baptiste Joseph De Bay, Jean-Baptiste De Bay and Jan Baptist Jozef de Bay. His recorded languages were French and Dutch. 2 children are recorded: Jean Baptiste Joseph Debay and Auguste-Hyacinthe Debay.