LEON BENOUVILLE

(1860-1903)

French Art Nouveau architect and designer, Leon Benouville, was born in Rome in 1860 into an art-loving family. His father was the painter Achille Benouville, a friend of Camille Corot. By 1884 he had completed his studies in France at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris and was working as an architectural associate. He worked with his brother, Pierre, also an architect, in 1888 and won a silver medal at the International exhibition of 1889. From 1891 he exhibited at the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts. He studied the monuments of the Middle Ages and was also influenced by his own thorough study of Gothic art. And in 1900 he won a gold medal and a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris where his participation ranged from the design for Ancient Paris to fittings of stained-glass windows, to fittings of leather and hides. In 1901 he exhibited furniture including a bedroom and a glass-works cabinet. His exceptional Art Nouveau designs are alive with exuberant whiplashes and curves, stylized marquetry, hand-hammered brass fittings. By 1903 he had turned his attention to the design of affordable housing for working class residences. Benouville died in 1903 at the age of just 43.

LEON BENOUVILLE (Obituary from The American Architect, Volume 82, October-December, 1903)

M. Leon Benouville, who died recently in Paris, at the age of forty-three, was a remarkable example of the versatility and artistic instict which are so common among the French. Although already an architect of great distinction, an expert in mediaeval art, as well as Vice-President of the Society of Artist-Decorators, Diocesan Architect of Lyons, and an honored member of most of the professional societies, he was educated as an engineer, graduating ninth in his class at the Ecole Centrale, with the diploma of Engineer of Arts and Manufactures. It is not impossible that his scientific education inclined him to the study of that wonderful system of practical statics, the mediaeval construction, for immediately after his graduation, he devoted himself fo this, with such success that he won, in a brilliant competition, an appointment in the service of the “Monuments Historiques” in which he was soon promoted to the most distinguished position. He carried out also many buildings in private practice, among them being several large country houses of great interest; and made, for his own amusement, studies of decoration which were exhibited and attracted so much attention that he soon became an acknowledged authority on the subject. In addition to these artistic labors he interested himself deeply in the question of affordable and wholesome dwellings for the poor, and was an important contributor to the success of the Dwelling-house Exhibition, now open in Paris.