Jean-Jacques Lequeu : autonomie et hétéronomie de la couleur dans la représentation architecturale

The art of architectural drawing, which Lequeu claimed as an autonomous and personal genre, opened up important new perspectives at the beginning of the 19th century. However, the Jean- Jacques Lequeu collection, which contains manuscripts with didactic intent and clear intention of dissemination, is lacking in any documentation that might suggest an attempt to commercialise his work. The reinterpretation proposed in recent years sees Lequeu working autonomously and very introspectively on his drawings, which are very carefully prepared both in terms of drawing and colour skills. Like the watercolour plates of the Architecture Civile, these works seem to have waited for their rediscovery for almost two centuries, remaining unpublished productions. Even in the colouring of his drawings, Lequeu stands out from his contemporaries, choosing discreet colours without eccentric chromatism, letting the colour grey - with variations of light and few shadows - predominate in the scene