Théophile Bra

Théophile François Marcel Bra (23 June 1797, Douai - 1863) was a French Romantic sculptor and exact contemporary of Eugène Delacroix.

His fantastical inspiration evokes the universes inhabited by Goya, William Blake or Victor Hugo - he was at one and the same time a Bonapartist and an anglophile, a passionate Christian disciple of Swedenborg and an admirer of Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

He won second prize in the Prix de Rome in 1818 and was made a Freemason in 1824 in Douai's "la Parfaite union" lodge.

He left his birthplace of Douai 100 boxes and albums of torrential writings, holding 5,000 drawings associated with the texts.

His marble and plaster sculptures are numerous, in Douai's Musée de la Chartreuse, Paris churches and the museums at Versailles, Lille and Valenciennes, many of them being commissions under the Bourbon Restoration and July Monarchy.