A Nymph at the Bath

1744

Admitted to the Royal Academy

A Parisian joiner’s son who trained with his uncle, a marble worker, and with the court sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, and who studied the work of French masters in the gardens of Versailles, he is admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (as an associate member) for his group “Milo of Croton”.

1754 · Medlemskab

Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture

1757

Director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory

Madame de Pompadour appoints him director of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory: at first he works from drawings by François Boucher, then from his own models, creating more than seventy types of biscuit figurines. The best works of his French years — the portrait of Madame de Pompadour, the paired figures of Cupid and Psyche and the “Bather” — were made in biscuit.

1764

Death of his patron, Madame de Pompadour

The death of the marchioness, for whom he had made “Music”, “Menacing Cupid” and the “Bather” in the Rococo manner then fashionable at court, leaves his “Winter” unfinished.

1766

Departs for St Petersburg

Sets out for Russia, taking the unfinished “Winter” with him; by the time of his arrival Catherine II has agreed to buy the sculpture and all the unfinished works of his workshop at the expense of the Russian treasury.

1767

Honorary free associate of the Academy of Arts

Becomes an honorary free associate of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg.