(b Paris, c. 1590; d Paris, after 1658). French sculptor and bronze-founder, active also in England. He was the son of an armourer, Pierre Le Sueur (d 1616) and trained in Paris, where in 1614 he was appointed Sculpteur Ordinaire du Roi to Henry IV. Little survives from his early documented commissions for tombs and an equestrian monument of Henri de Montmorency, but several busts and some equestrian portrait statuettes of the King and the Dauphin (later Louis XIII; examples London, V&A) are attributed to him. In 1625, having been recruited as Court Sculptor by Charles I of England, he travelled to London. His first task was to model temporary statues to decorate the catafalque of James I; these are known from a drawing (Oxford, Worcester Coll.) by its designer, Inigo Jones. Though untraced, they are probably reflected in the bronze mourning caryatids that support the canopy of the tomb of Ludovick Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and 1st Duke of Richmond and his Duchess, which had been established in Westminster Abbey by 1628. The effigies of the deceased are still and lifeless images, redeemed only by a laborious rendering of the pattern on armour and dress. The complex was crowned by an ambitious winged figure of Fame, recalling the bronze Fame (1597; Paris, Louvre) on Pierre Biart’s tomb (destr.) of the Duchesse d’Epernon in Cadillac, Gironde. Le Sueur was also influenced by the neighbouring tomb of Henry VII (1512–18) by Pietro Torrigiano. In the 1630s Le Sueur contributed another great tomb to the abbey, that of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (assassinated in 1628), and of Katherine Manners, his Duchess (d 1634). It included marble portrait statues of their children, as well as monumental bronze effigies and grand seated mourners. At the same period his practice extended also to public portraits: a statue of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (Oxford, Schools Quadrangle) for Wilton House, and the celebrated equestrian statue of Charles I (1633; London, Trafalgar Square), for Roehampton House. In both statues Le Sueur failed in his attempt to emulate Giambologna; however, he did succeed in introducing new portrait types into English art.

• Le Sueur, Hubert
  • London, §III, 3: Art life and organization, 1536–1659
  • assistants
    • Besnier, Peter
  • patrons and collectors
    • England, §XII, 3: Patronage, c 1500–c 1700
    • Laud, William
    • La Vrillière, Louis Phélypeaux de
    • Stuart, House of: (6) Charles I, §3: Sculpture and architecture
    • Walpole: (1) Robert Walpole
  • works
    • England, §IV, 2: Sculpture, c 1530–c 1660
    • Equestrian monument, §3: High Renaissance and Baroque
    • Gerbier, Balthazar
    • Huguenots, §2(ii): Work and influence in England
    • London, §V, 2(ii)(b): Westminster Abbey: Sculpture, 1511 and later
    • Oxford, §1(ii): History and urban development, after c 1535
    • Saint-Denis Abbey, §II, 2(ii): Tomb sculpture, after c 1500
    • Screen (i), §5: Baroque and Neo-classical
    • Warin, Jean