Rivoire Raymond Léon

Raymond Léon Rivoire, born October 21, 1884 in Cusset and died September 27, 1966, was a French sculptor.
Antoine Joseph Léon Raymond Rivoire was born into a bourgeois family, his father, Pierre Barthélemy Arthur Rivoire, was a proprietor in Cannes and his paternal grandfather was head of division at the Rhône prefecture.

As one of Injalbert’s students at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Raymond exhibited at the Salon of French artists in 1905. He received a silver medal in 1921 and a gold in 1929. He exhibited in France and abroad in London, Rome and Buenos Aires.

For the SS Normandie ocean liner, he produced a bronze cast representing Neptune pulled by a sea horse that disappeared in the ship’s fire in New York in 1942; a second copy still adorns a fountain in Cannes.

Another of his major works is Diana (also known as Artemis) with the Greyhound. Like with the SS Normandie ocean liner, a monumental copy of this statue was exhibited in the large salon of the SS L’Atlantique. Scattered pieces of the work were found during the demolition that followed the fire.

Drawings of the artworks can be found in several museums (Louvre Museum, Newark Museum (New Jersey, United States), as well as at the Cusset Museum which conserves several of his creations.

He was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour on December 29, 1932 and recipient on January 13, 1933 by Jean Gautier, Deputy Director of the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.
In his later years, he was a resident at Ris-Orangis, a retirement home for artists founded by Dranem.