He was born in Versailles, the son of Alexandre-Henry Lefuel (1782–1850), a building contractor. He was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1829, studied there with Jean-Nicolas Huyot and in 1833 received second place in the Prix de Rome competition. By that time, his father died, and he had to spend the next few years managing the family building business.[1]
Due to his work on the theatre at Fontainebleau, Lefuel had received favourable notice from Napoleon III. Following the death of the architect Louis-Tullius-Joachim Visconti in 1853, Lefuel was placed in charge of the ambitious project of completing the Louvre. He kept Visconti's plans but modified the elevations, enriching them in profuse ornamental detail, and completed the project in record time for opening on 14 August 1857, when it became one of the showpieces of the Second Empire.[1] Around 1856–1857, Lefuel also created lavish apartments for the imperial household in the Palais des Tuileries (lost when that palace burned in the Paris Commune of 1871).[2] Lefuel's work at the Louvre and the Tuileries became an exemplar of the nascent Second Empire architectural style.[1][3]
In his private practice, Lefuel designed and erected in Paris the Hôtel Fould (1856, destroyed)[1] for Achille Fould, Minister of Finance under Napoléon III.
Napoleon III later tasked him with the reconstruction of the Pavillon de Flore and the western part of the Grande Galerie from the Pavillon de Flore to the Guichets du Carrousel, work which he carried out from 1861 to 1869.[1]
In 1869–1876, he built Neudeck Palace for Fürst Henckel von Donnersmarck at Neudeck bei Bethen in Silesia.[1] The palace was in Louis XIII style and was the grandest of three residences there of the Donnersmarcks. It was burnt out by Red Army or Wehrmacht soldiers in 1945 and demolished in 1961.
In 1870, he built the Hôtel Nieuwerkerke[1] (in Paris's Parc Monceau) for the museum director Émilien de Nieuwerkerke (and the Hôtel Émonville in Abbeville).
After the Tuileries Palace was destroyed by fire in 1871, Lefuel reconstructed the western half of the Louvre’s Galerie Nord (1871–1876)[1] and was in charge of the repairs to the Pavillon de Flore and the symmetrical reconstruction of the Pavillon de Marsan to the north, in 1874–1879.[4]
↑Imitating Jacques Lemercier's Renaissance-style Pavillon de l'Horloge of 1624 (the eastern face of the same pavilion, on the Cour Carrée), Lefuel refaced the western side in 1856 and transformed Visconti's understated original by adding a profusion of elaborate sculptural detail and a narrow second storey. Criticized by Vitet in 1866, Lefuel's treatment became popular and initiated the widely imitated Second Empire style. (Mead 1996, p. 69)
↑Decorated by Lefuel with paintings by Maréchal, the Napoleon III Apartments, originally the apartments of the Minister of State, were created for Achille Fould, but inaugurated by his successor, Count Walewski, natural son of Napoleon I and Maria Walewska. The apartments were occupied by the Finance Ministry from 1872 to 1989. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144, 170)
↑The Assembly of the Gods on the vault was painted by Louis Matout (1865). This room should not be confused with the Salle des Empereurs Romains of the 1790s in the former Summer Apartment of Anne of Austria. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144)
↑The decoration, conceived by Lefuel and executed in 1861 by Frémiet, Rouillard, Jacquemart, Demay, and Houguenade, includes capitals with heads of horses and other animals evoking the hunt. (Bautier 1995, pp. 144, 154)
↑A statue of Napoleon III under the pediment was replaced during the Third Republic with The Genius of the Arts by Mercié. (Bautier 1995, pp. 137, 144)
↑Carpeaux's Imperial France Enlightens the World, flanked by the allegorical male figures Science and Agriculture, surmounts the pediment, and below, his frieze of Flora leaning over a group of children, is "unquestionably the most famous work of sculpture on the whole exterior of the Louvre." (Bautier 1995, p. 129)
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