Boullée, Étienne-Louis

(1728-1799)

   architect, artist

   Born in Paris, Étienne-Louis Boullée was a neoclassical architect, best known for his visionary but unrealized designs for ideal buildings. At first trained as a painter, after 1740 he built private mansions (hôtel de Brunoy, 1774) and châteaux (Chaville, 1764), in which, going against the prevailing rococo style, he employed many ancient Greek and Roman architectural elements, recalling the classicism of the 17th century now considered characteristic of the louis XV style. Influenced by the drawings of Piranesi and documents on early Hellenic, oriental, and Egyptian architecture published as a result of numerous archaeological expeditions done at the time, he conceived projects of colossal monuments (the cenotaph for Isaac Newton, 1788-Boulée's best-known design—with an immense exterior sphere of light). Developing a symbolism in accord with the secular spirit of the Revolution of 1789 and its ideals, he put forth an esthetic founded on an imitation of ancient architecture and, above all, inspired by geometric forms found in nature (Essai sur l'art, 1783-93). A gifted teacher, Boullée influenced a generation of French architects. And certain of his revolutionary and monumental conceptions would prefigure those of the Russian avant-garde movement of the 1920s.