Louis Jean Desprez (1743–1804)

• Was a French painter and architect.
• He worked in Sweden during the last twenty years of his life.
• Desprez, who was born in Auxerre in Bourgogne, France.
• He studied architecture and was awarded the Great Prize of the Académie royale d'architecture in 1776.
• He lived in Italy from 1777 to 1784 and was associated with Piranesi in Rome.
• King Gustav III of Sweden offered him a two-year contract as director of scenic decorations at the new Stockholm Opera founded by the King two years earlier.
• His first task there was the decorations for the new opera Gustaf Wasa.
• As an architect, Desprez designed in a monumental, neoclassical style influenced by his study of Greek and Roman ruins in the south of Italy and in Sicily.

• His most significant completed project was the conservatory building in the new botanical garden in Uppsala, inaugurated after his death on May 13, 1807, the 100th anniversary of Linnaeus's birth.

• He also built the Villa Frescati in 1791-92 for Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, after which the whole Frescati area in Stockholm later was named.

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