(b Rodez, Aveyron, 25 Oct 1777; d Paris, 4 May 1858). French sculptor and medallist. He trained in Paris as a goldsmith with Jean Baptiste Claude Odiot before turning to the engraving of medals; about 1808 he joined the workshop of the gem-engraver and medallist Romain-Vincent Jeuffroy. In 1819 he showed his first work of sculpture, a marble statue in Neo-classical style of Cupid Testing his Arrows (untraced), at the Paris Salon. In 1823 he became medal-engraver to Charles X, and he remained a prolific engraver of commemorative and portrait medallions throughout his life. He competed unsuccessfully in the competition (1829) for allegorical sculpture for the pediment of the church of the Madeleine, Paris. That same year, however, he received an official commission for two seated marble statues representing the Power of the Law and Universal Suffrage for the courtyard of the Chambre des Députés, Palais Bourbon, Paris; these ponderous and academic works were not put in place until 1860. Gayrard was largely excluded from major state commissions during the July Monarchy (1830–48) because of his pro-Bourbon sympathies. Instead, he began to devote himself to religious statuary and funerary monuments in a Neo-classical style; among these works is the tomb of his friend Denis-Antoine-Luc Frayssinous, minister of ecclesiastical affairs under Charles X (marble, 1844; St Geniez, Aveyron, parish church). He was also a portraitist, and produced several busts and medallions of private clients (examples in Rodez, Mus. Fénaille), as well as small-scale groups of children and animals with moralizing themes, as in Child, Dog and Serpent (marble, exh. Salon 1841; Paris, priv. col.). Under the Second Empire (1851–70) Gayrard was much in demand as a medallist, but he received only one official commission, a bust of Napoleon III (marble, 1854; Paris, Acad. N. Médec.). His son and pupil Paul Gayrard (1807–55) was also a sculptor, producing popular family groups and statuettes of actors and animals.