(b Mechelen, 2 Aug 1793; d Amsterdam, 5 June 1868). Flemish sculptor. He studied at the Academie in Mechelen. In 1810, after winning a prize for draughtsmanship, he studied in the studio of the sculptor Jan Frans van Geel. The numerous mythological and religious sculptures and drawings that he produced there until 1818 were imbued with the Flemish Baroque style of his master: for example Hebe Pouring Nectar (1816), St Anthony of Padua (1818) and Apollo (1818; all Mechelen, Stadsmus. Hof van Busleyden). Although Royer was appointed assistant instructor at the Mechelen Academie in 1818, he left for Paris the following year for further study with J. B. J. de Bay (1779–1863). When he won the Prix de Rome in 1823 with the sculpture Greek Shepherd Fleeing from a Serpent which Attempts to Wound Him in the Heel (ex-Rijksakad. Beeld. Kst., Amsterdam), he left that same year for Rome. The reports that he sent to the Netherlands from Rome indicate that he worked hard while there; the artistic results of the four-year stay, however, are not particularly impressive. Seven plaster reliefs, executed in Rome, of scenes from the lives of famous Jesuits (1825; Amsterdam, De Krijtberg Presbytery) are lacking in personality but helped to revive early 19th-century Dutch religious sculpture from its moribund condition. Hermes with the Young Dionysus (1826; Mechelen, Stadsmus. Hof van Busleyden) is heavily indebted to Bertel Thorvaldsen, and although the marble bust of Leo XII (1827; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) is a striking portrait, it is again derivative, in this case of the Neo-classical style of Canova. Other portrait busts, of his fellow countrymen and colleagues in Rome, including the painters Philippe Jacques Van Brée (Brussels, Mus. A. Mod.) and Cornelis Kruseman (1824; The Hague, Gemeentemus.), are perhaps the most successful.

• Royer, Lodewijk
  • pupils
    • Allebé, August
    • Artz, Adolphe
  • teachers
    • Cabanel, Alexandre
    • Geel, Jan Frans van
  • works
    • Netherlands, the, §IV, 3: Sculpture, c 1800–1900