Robert Le Lorrain

At age eighteen, Le Lorrain entered François Girardon's studio; aside from collaborating with him, he was commissioned to instruct Girardon's children in drawing and to supervise his other pupils. Le Lorrain won the Prix de Rome in 1689, On his return to Paris he first joined the Académie de Saint-Luc, and then was received into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris) in 1701; he became Rector of the Académie in 1737. His major non-royal clients were members of the house of Rohan. His students included Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1704–1778) and Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714–1785). Lorrain died in Paris in 1743. Disappointingly few works by this highly accomplished master have survived. His best-known work is the stone relief, The Horses of the Sun, over the stable doors at the Hôtel de Rohan, Paris; sculptures executed in 1718-21 for the Cardinal de Rohan at the Château de Saverne were lost in the fire in the château in 1779, but sculptures for the palais Rohan, Strasbourg, survive. Though Le Lorrain's works for Marly have been dispersed or lost, as have church monuments in Paris and Orléans, sculpture in the chapel at Versailles survives. The Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Liechtenstein Museum (Vienna), the Louvre, and the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), and are among the public collections holding sculpture by Robert Le Lorrain. He is known to have been a prolific draughtsman: no drawings securely attributed to him survive.

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne is recorded as having studied under Robert Le Lorrain. The recorded working language is French. Work by Robert Le Lorrain is recorded in the collections of The Frick Collection, Musée Cognacq-Jay and J. Paul Getty Museum. Distinctions recorded are Prix de Rome.

Robert Le Lorrain is recorded as sculptor.