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Dejoux, Claude
(b Vadans, Jura, 23 Jan 1732; d Paris, 18 Oct 1816). French sculptor. He worked as a carver and joiner in his native village before studying at the Académie de Peinture et Sculpture in Marseille, where he won second place in the sculpture competition of 1763. He then entered the studio in Paris of Guillaume Coustou (ii). In 1768 he accompanied his fellow student Pierre Julien to Rome at his own expense. He remained in Rome until 1774. On his return to Paris, he was received (reçu) as a member of the Académie Royale in 1779. His morceau de réception, a very traditional statue of St Sebastian (h. 1.08 m; Paris, Louvre), was carved from a block of marble given to him by the Académie because he was too poor to buy his own. In the same year he executed busts of Aesculapius and Hygeia (bronze versions, Arbois, Hôp.). He was later awarded a commission by the Comte d’Angiviller, Directeur des Bâtiments du Roi, for a statue in the patriotic series of Illustrious Frenchmen, producing the standing marble statue of Nicolas, Maréchal de Catinat (exh. Salon 1783; Versailles, Château). The bulk of his work has, however, disappeared: his statue of a Doctor of the Greek Church for St Geneviève, Paris, was destroyed in 1791, and a colossal statue of Fame designed for the same church during its transformation into the Panthéon never got beyond the stage of a model (untraced). His monument to Gen. Louis Desaix de Veygoux (bronze, 1808) in the Place des Victoires, Paris, was demolished after the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, and his sculpture for the façade of the Pavillon de Flore at the Louvre, Paris, was destroyed during the reconstructions of the Second Empire (1851–70). Nevertheless, the surviving low-relief of Charity (marble, 1788), which serves as a monument to the Curé Dubuisson in the church at Magny-en-Vexin, Val-d’Oise, and the terracotta bust of Marie-Christine de Brignole, Princesse de Monaco (h. 570 mm, 1783; Paris, Louvre) show Dejoux as a competent portrait sculptor and a modeller of sensibility.
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