Drué, Juconde (Missionary, Church designer, Montreal,Canada)

Drué, Juconde (Missionary, Church designer, Montreal,Canada)

As mentioned previously, Juconde Drué was an artist and spent a lot of his time redesigning churches. Although he is originally from Paris, France, he travelled to Canada and there are numerous churches affiliated with and influenced by his design style, however not all of them survived. Nevertheless, there were numerous evidence of his work in Montreal, such as the Recollet Church, designed in 1706, which Pierre Janson, dit Lapalme, was said to have been hired to finish. Drué influenced many designers. The church of Pointe-aux-Trembles had many of his trademark features and was decorated by Pierre-Nöel Levasseur, although it was destroyed in 1937. He was last seen in the city of Montreal, in 1726.

1726

Person

He worked across Canada, mostly in the province of Quebec.

Alan Gowans, “DRUÉ, JUCONDE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/drue_juconde_2E.html.

1664

Paris, France

after 1726

possibly died in Paris, France

Church interior designer; painter; missionary

Not explicitly told, but most likely French

Juconde Drué is a French designer from Paris who decorated the interior of churches. Before his travels, he learned how to paint and design at Recollet monastery, where Frère Luc, (Claude François) lived and introduced the Recollet style. Drué took those techniques, such as the woodcarving, and brought them to Canada, where he used them to design churches, one of which was the Recollet church of Montreal in 1706. Although he was very talented artistically, Drué decided to dedicate most of his time to missionary work and he was referred to as “prêtre missionnaire”, in Quebec. It is evident that he had spent some time at Saint-Augustin de Portneuf. He stopped his missions for a couple of years in order to become the first chaplain of the Hôpital Générale of Quebec. The last mention of Juconde Drué in Canada was in 1726, in Montreal.

Conflict and Change in Early Canadian History (Carleton HIST 1301)

Jana Ksibati-Mathieu