Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne was born in Paris in 1705. His father Jean-Louis Lemoyne, was also a sculptor, and was first teacher. He later became a student of another prominent sculptor, Robert Le Lorrain.[2] He is sometimes referred to as Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne or "the younger" to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name, another sculptor, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Elder.[3]

He received the prix de Rome awarded by the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, but remained in Paris to aid his blind father. He became a member of the Academy in 1838, and, later became its director. Like the other royal sculptors, made statuary for the Gardens of Versailles. He was a particular favorite of Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of the King and an important patron of the arts. He made a graceful rococo sculpture of Vertumnus and Pomone, two characters from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which was a favorite theme of Madame Pompadour. The sculpture is now in the Louvre. He also made a state of Madame Pompadour in the costume of a nymph. He made several busts of Louis XV, and an equestrian statue of the King for the courtyard of the new Ecole Militaire, but this was destroyed during the French Revolution.[4]

He was especially known for the quality of his portrait busts, which captured the passing nuances of expression and gave a sense of movement. His important portrait busts included those of the naturalist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1751); the painter Noël-Nicolas Coypel (1760);[5] the scientist Fontenelle (at Versailles); Madame de Pompadour; and Marie-Antoinette in 1771. He is considered the most skilled of the French rococo sculptors.[6]

Lemoyne's students included Étienne Maurice Falconet Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, and Augustin Pajou.[7]

• 
  The Comtesse de Feuquieres by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. Terracotta, circa 1738 CE. From Paris, France. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• 
  A plaster bust of his friend Noel-Nicolas Coypel, 1730 (Snite Museum of Art)
• 
  Louis XV (1749), Palace of Versailles
• 
  Model for a Monument to Louis XV in Rennes (1746–48), Art Institute of Chicago
• 
  Vertumnus and Pomona, 1760 (the Louvre)
• 
  Essaying and scientist Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1749) Carnegie Museum of Art
• 
  Geneviève-Françoise Randon de Malboissière (1768), Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Marie-Antoinette (1771) (Musée d'Histoire de l'art, Vienne)
• 
  The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld (1774), Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Rococo
• French sculpture

• Brocvielle, Vincent (2017). La Petit Larousse de l'Histoire de l'Art (in French). Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-5936-39-4.
• Jeancolas, Claude (1992). Sculpture Française. Paris: CELIV. ISBN 2-86535-162-9.
• Geese, Uwe, Section on Baroque sculpture in L'Art Baroque – Architecture – Sculpture – Peinture (French translation from German), H.F. Ulmann, Cologne, 2015. (ISBN 978-3-8480-0856-8)
• Duby, Georges and Daval, Jean-Luc, La Sculpture de l'Antiquité au XXe Siècle, (French translation from German), Taschen, (2013), (ISBN 978-3-8365-4483-2)

• Media related to Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger at Wikimedia Commons
• Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website