The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (272 page)

 
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(1808–80).
German painter, one of the leaders of the Düsseldorf School of history painting. He combined earnestly melodramatic poses with studiously correct historical detàil, so that many of his pictures look like scenes from plays or pageants. His best-known works have subjects taken from the Hussite Rebellion of the 15th cent. (
Hussite Prayer
, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1836) and were identified with the spirit of rebellion against the political and religious repression of the day. Lessing also painted landscapes. In 1858 he became Director of the gallery at Karlsruhe, and settled there permanently.

 
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Lessore , Thérèse
.

See
SICKERT
.

 
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(1616–55).
French painter, active throughout his career in his native Paris. He was a pupil of
Vouet
, whose influence is strong on his early works (
The Presentation of the Virgin
, Hermitage, St Petersburg,
c.
1640). In the 1640s he was profoundly affected by the paintings of
Poussin
(who visited Paris 1640–2) and his work became more
classical
. He lacked Poussin's heroic grandeur, but he added a tenderness of his own to the master's manner, as in his most important works, a series of paintings (begun 1648) illustrating the life of St Bruno, done for the Charterhouse of Paris and now in the Louvre. In the last years of his life his chief model became
Raphael
, whom he imitated in an uninspired manner. Le Sueur was a founder member of the French
Academy
in 1648. In his own day and throughout the 18th cent. he was almost as well thought of as Poussin, but he now has the status of an attractive but minor master.

 
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(
c.
1580–after 1658).
French sculptor, active chiefly in England, where he is first recorded in 1626. He worked much for Charles I, his most famous work being the equestrian statue of the king (1633) at Charing Cross in London. This shows the skill as a bronze caster for which he was renowned, but also his smooth, lifeless surfaces, which give his works, in the words of Margaret Whinney (
Sculpture in Britain
1530 to 1830, 1964), ‘a curious, inflated appearance, as if they were not modelled, but blown up from within’. He was remarkably conceited, on occasions signing himself ‘
Praxiteles Le Sueur
’, but Charles recognized him as a second-rate artist and sometimes reduced the prices he asked for his work. By 1643 Le Sueur was back in Paris. His main influence in England was in popularizing the bust portrait.

 
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(1816–68).
German-born painter who lived in America from 1825 to 1841 and again from 1859 and is usually considered a member of the American School. He is remembered mainly for his
Washington Crossing the Delaware
(Met. Mus., New York, 1851), painted in Düsseldorf, where he spent most of his career, and for another work that similarly appeals more for its patriotic sentiments than for any aesthetic merit—his large mural
Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way
(1861–2) in the Capitol at Washington. His portraits and rare landscapes are more distinguished, but remain virtually unknown.

 
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