(b Parcay-les-Pins, Maine-et-Loire, 20 Dec 1851; d Autheuil, Paris, 2 Oct 1935). French sculptor. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Pierre-Jules Cavelier, and made his Salon début with a head of Orpheus in 1875. His exhibit of 1877, Othryades (untraced), was bought by the state. Around this time he met Rodin in the studio of Eugène Legrain (1837–1915), where both Desbois and Rodin were assisting with the ornamental sculpture for the Palais du Trocadéro. After spending two years in the United States in the studio of John Quincy Adams Ward, Desbois returned to France. He collaborated with Rodin on several major works including the Burghers of Calais, and, at certain points, there is close correspondence between their works. Misery (wood, 1894; Nancy, Mus. B.-A.), an aged, emaciated female figure, may be compared with Rodin’s La Vieille Heaulmière. More typical of Desbois’s production is the massive sensualism of his Leda (1891; marble version, Luxembourg, Mus. Etat; bronze version, Stockholm, Nmus.). From the mid-1890s he aligned himself with the group of decorative sculptors whose works were sold through Siegfried Bing’s shop, La Maison de l’Art Nouveau. His ‘art pewters’ were exhibited at the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1896, and at the exhibition of the Société des Six in 1899. His vigorous monumentalism is in evidence in the two allegorical figures that he executed for the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, Calais (1911–18). From 1924 to 1929 Desbois was the Vice-president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.