Etienne-Maurice FalconetFrench, 1716–1791Figure
About the sculpture
Étienne-Maurice Falconet (1716–1791) was director of the modelling workshop at Sèvres porcelain manufactory 1755-1766. He was inspired by various classical sources, including ancient Roman marble sculpture, and work by the French Rococo artist François Boucher. This figure is based on Falconet’s marble sculpture, La Baigneuse, or Nymphe qui descend au bain, exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1757, and now in the Louvre.
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Porcelain figures were typically made from moulds with various parts that were meticulously assembled before the first firing. They were created as table decorations, evolving from the tradition for wax or sugar statuettes. Biscuit porcelain was first produced around 1751, and was considered a good substitute for sugar sculptures specifically. As biscuit porcelain was unglazed and unpainted, faults and blemishes were difficult to conceal which made it both highly valued and highly expensive.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 383-1874
Meanwhile, in the life of Etienne-Maurice Falconet
The whole life1 December 1716
Born
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”.
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.
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.
1778
Leaves Russia
Because of his poor relations with the Russian court he decides to leave: first for Holland to stay with friends, then for France.
24 January 1791
