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(b Copenhagen, Sept 11, 1743; d Frederiksdal, Copenhagen, June 4, 1809).

Danish painter, designer and architect. His paintings reveal both Neo-classical and Romantic interests and include history paintings as well as literary and mythological works. The variety of his subject-matter reflects his wide learning, a feature further evidenced by the broad range of his creative output. In addition to painting, he produced decorative work, sculpture and furniture designs, as well as being engaged as an architect. Successfully combining both intellectual and imaginative powers, he came to be fully appreciated only in the 1980s.

He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1764–72), and in 1767 he assisted Johan Edvard Mandelberg (1730–86) in painting the domed hall of the Fredensborg Slot with scenes from the Homeric epic the Iliad. In 1772 he was granted a five-year travelling scholarship from the Kunstakademi to study in Rome. During his Roman sojourn he extensively copied works of art from the period of antiquity up to that of the Carracci family. His friendships with the Danish painter Jens Juel, the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fuseli placed him among artists who were in the mainstream of a widespread upheaval in European art. In these years Abildgaard developed both Neo-classical and Romantic tastes; his masterpiece of the period is ...

(b Tarazona, 1741; d Madrid, 1816).

Spanish sculptor. He was trained in Saragossa with José Ramirez. In 1765 he went to Rome, where he won a scholarship from the Spanish Academia de Bellas Artes and was appointed Director of the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. Adán’s early work became known in Spain through the drawings and sculptures he sent from Rome, the finest being a Lamentation. He returned to Spain in 1776 and worked in Lérida, Granada and Jaen, finally settling in Madrid in 1786. In 1793 he was appointed court sculptor (Escultor de Cámara) by Charles IV (reg 1788–1808). He made many carvings in wood, such as a St Joseph and a Virgin of the Sorrows, for churches in Madrid. Other characteristic works are the portrait busts of leading contemporary figures such as Manuel Godoy, the Prince de la Paz, and José Monino, the Conde de Floridablanca. The busts of Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa...

(b Logroño, Dec 26, 1759; d Madrid, 1842).

Spanish sculptor and ceramicist. He moved to Madrid at an early age and was apprenticed to the French sculptor Robert Michel (i), who was employed at the court. He won first prize in a competition at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes, and organized the royal workshop for the carving of precious stones, where he executed two magnificent cameo portraits of Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa (c. 1796; Madrid, Pal. Real). He was a leading sculptor in the Buen Retiro porcelain factory, for which he produced a large amount of work. In 1797 he entered the Real Academia de Bellas Artes and was promoted until he was finally appointed Director-general in 1821. He was also appointed Honorary Chamber Sculptor to Charles IV. His successful career made him an influential figure in Spanish art. He was one of the leading exponents of Neo-classical sculpture, producing works that were technically accomplished although stylistically rather cold. He executed a large amount of work between ...

(b Belas, 1769; d Lisbon, 1841).

Portuguese sculptor. He was probably trained by his father, a stone mason employed at the Palacio Nacional de Queluz, near Lisbon. In 1784 João Aguiar went to the drawing school of the Casa Pia do Castelo, Lisbon, and in 1785 to Rome on a scholarship from the Intendência with the support of D. I. de Pina Manique (1735–1805). There he studied drawing with Tomaso Labruzzi, modelling with Giuseppe Angellini (1735–1811) and then moved to the workshop of Antonio Canova. Aguiar’s first recorded works made in Rome were Cippus, Aeneas and Creusa (1792–3; Lisbon, Pal. Belém Gdns) and a portrait medallion of Giovanni Antinori (1792; untraced), Professor of Architecture at the Academia de Portugal in Rome, which is known from an engraving (1792) by João Caetano Rivara (studying in Rome, 1788–99).

In 1794 Pina Manique was engaged on a project to erect a monument to Queen Mary I that would also celebrate the achievements of Portuguese artists who had received scholarships to study in Rome. After finding that Canova and the Genoese Nicolò Stefano Traverso would be too expensive, he turned to Aguiar for the statues and bas-reliefs and to ...

(b Tarragona, 1832; d Barcelona, 1901).

Spanish sculptor. He entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Lonja, Barcelona, when still very young and was a student of the Neo-classical artist Damián Campeny y Estrany, who was also influenced by Romanticism and naturalism. In 1855 Aleu y Teixidor applied for the Chair in Modelling at the Escuela, a position to which he was eventually appointed after the committee had been involved in intrigues and disputes. He taught Catalan sculptors for half a century and wielded an enormous, though not entirely positive, influence. He became Deputy Director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes, belonged to the Academia de Ciencias y Artes of Barcelona and won first prize at the Exposición Nacional de Madrid in 1871.

Almost all the work of Aleu y Teixidor is in Barcelona. The best is the over life-size stone sculpture of St George (1871) for the façade of the Palau de la ...

(b New Haven, CT, Feb 21, 1791; d New Haven, CT, Jan 10, 1858).

American sculptor. Although as a youth he showed talent for handling tools, his father, a joiner and carpenter, discouraged him from becoming a wood-carver. After opening a fruit shop in New Haven, he began carving musical instruments and furniture legs for a local cabinetmaker. With his invention of a lace-making machine, he was able to settle his business debts and devote himself entirely to sculpture.

About 1825 Samuel F. B. Morse encouraged Augur to try working in marble. Among his earliest attempts in this medium was a bust of Professor Alexander Metcalf Fisher (c. 1825–7; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), which was exhibited in 1827 at the National Academy of Design in New York. The impact of the Neo-classical style is clearly evident in his most ambitious work, Jephthah and his Daughter (c. 1828–30; New Haven, CT, Yale U. A.G.), a pair of free-standing half life-size marble figures. The treatment of the heads shows Roman influence, which Augur must have absorbed from engravings; this is borne out by the detailed work on Jephthah’s armour. The bold handling of the hair and drapery reveals his experience as a wood-carver. In ...

(b Bristol, March 10, 1788; d London, May 22, 1867).

English sculptor and designer . He was the son of a ship’s carver and began his career as ‘a modeller of small busts in wax’. He spent seven years in John Flaxman’s studio, acknowledged as his favourite and most devoted pupil. He attended the Royal Academy Schools, London, won the first silver medal of the Society of Artists and was awarded gold and silver medals by the Royal Academy in 1809 and 1811. He was elected ARA in 1817, the year he exhibited Apollo Discharging Arrows against the Greeks (plaster; destr.). Full membership followed in 1820 with the exhibition of Eve at the Fountain (probably plaster, untraced; marble version, 1822, Bristol, Mus. & A.G.), one of the most famous pieces of British sculpture in the 19th century.

From 1809 Baily worked for the firm of Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, goldsmiths to the royal family, and on Flaxman’s death in 1826 he became Chief Modeller and Designer. In ...

(b Savignano, nr Prato, Jan 7, 1777; d Florence, Jan 20, 1850).

Italian sculptor and draughtsman. He was one of the most independent-minded sculptors in Italy in the generation after Antonio Canova. His early work is in the Neo-classical style predominant throughout Europe around the turn of the century. While in the Paris studio of Jacques-Louis David he became interested in the art of the Quattrocento, an interest confirmed when he settled in Florence after 1815. His later works combine Neo-classical and neo-Renaissance elements with, particularly in his portraits, a strong taste for naturalism. In 1812 he held a series of classes at the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti, astonishing his colleagues by instructing his model to take up a series of instantaneous and casual poses, instead of the customary carefully contrived stance taken from a famous work of art. In 1839 he was made a professor at the Accademia, and again overturned traditional academic notions, this time by presenting the pupils in the life class with a hunchbacked model. (For a detailed discussion of Bartolini’s unusual views on the imitation of nature see ...

(b Le Havre, June 21, 1750; d Paris, April 15, 1818).

French sculptor, draughtsman and engraver. He arrived in Paris in 1765 to become a pupil of Augustin Pajou. Although he never won the Prix de Rome, he appears to have travelled to Rome in the early 1770s. About 1780 or 1781 he was involved in the decoration of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s Hôtel Thélusson, Paris. From 1784 to 1785 he carried out work at the château of Compiègne, including the decoration of the Salle des Gardes, where his bas-reliefs illustrating the Battles of Alexander (in situ) pleasantly combine a Neo-classical clarity of composition with a virtuosity and animation that are still Rococo in spirit.

Beauvallet was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in 1789. During the French Revolution he was a passionate republican and presented plaster busts of Marat and of Chalier (1793–4; both destr.) to the Convention. He was briefly imprisoned after the fall of Robespierre in ...

(b Madrid, Feb 23, 1845; d Madrid, Dec 20, 1924).

Spanish sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Francisco Bellver (1812–89), with whom he undertook his first studies until attending the Madrid Escuela Superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado. Ricardo soon started to submit to the Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes works on historical subjects, such as Tucapel (1862), on mythology, such as Satyr Playing the Flute and a Young Faun Playing with a Goat (both 1864), and others that were religious, such as Piety (1866).

In 1874 Bellver y Ramón obtained a grant to study at the Academia Española de Bellas Artes in Rome; there his most significant works included a bust of Don Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, El Gran Capitán (1453–1515), executed in 1875, and a relief entitled the Burial of St Agnes, which shows traces of Neo-classicism (Madrid, S Francisco el Grande). During this period he sculpted his popular and dynamic ...

(b Carrara, March 2, 1795; d Rome, April 17, 1878).

Italian sculptor. In 1818 he won the Rome Prize at the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Carrara and then went to Rome, where he entered Bertel Thorvaldsen’s studio, a centre for the production of sculpture and an important attraction for foreign visitors and clientele. He soon became a popular exponent of his master’s style and, in addition to taking his own commissions, he finished many of Thorvaldsen’s pieces and made authorized copies of his work, for example six copies of Tsar Alexander I (1822). By 1827 he was in charge of the studio. After Thorvaldsen’s death in 1844 he taught at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca and continued to work in both Rome and Carrara, frequently collaborating with his brother Pietro Antonio Bienaimé (1781–1857). In 1839 Prince Alexander of Russia (later Tsar Alexander II) acquired from him his series of figures of ...

(b Schleswig, Oct 13, 1798; d Copenhagen, March 10, 1868).

Danish sculptor. He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen, from 1816. Originally intending to become a painter, he decided after a few years to devote himself to sculpture, partly as a result of seeing the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen in 1819. In 1823 Bissen gained the academy’s grand gold medal and a travelling bursary, and he left for Rome in 1824, making several stops in Germany and Italy en route. He stayed in Rome for over ten years, and as well as making a number of small trips to southern Italy with his friend the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund, Bissen got the chance to work in Thorvaldsen’s studio in Rome. He eventually became one of Thorvaldsen’s most trusted collaborators, and in 1833–4 he even carried out a commission in Thorvaldsen’s name, the monument to Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz. After Thorvaldsen’s death in 1844 he completed several of his master’s works....

(b Chalon-sur-Saône, Aug 30, 1735; d Paris, Dec 9, 1814).

French sculptor, draughtsman and painter. He probably first trained in Chalon, under the sculptor Pierre Colasson (c. 1724–70); later he studied in Paris at the school of the Académie Royale, under Simon Challes. In 1766 he travelled to Italy, remaining there until 1770. The art of Raphael and his school and the Fontainebleau school influenced Boichet’s art (e.g. Agrippina Bearing Germanicus’s Ashes, Lille, Mus. B.-A.) from an early date by giving his work a Neo-classical character. Boichot next worked in Burgundy, where he was responsible for architecture, sculpture and paintings at the château of Verdun-sur-le-Doubs (destr.). He also produced decorative work for the salon of the Académie de Dijon, of which he was a member; for the refectory of the abbey of St Benigne, Dijon, he executed a painting of the Triumph of Temperance over Gluttony (Dijon, Mus. B.-A.). In Paris his studio was in the Passage Sandrier off the Chaussée d’Antin. Introduced by Augustin Pajou, he was approved (...

(b Monaco, March 19, 1768; d Paris, July 29, 1845).

French sculptor of Monegasque birth. He trained in Paris in the studio of Augustin Pajou in the period 1785–8. He was an officer in the French army in Italy during the Revolutionary wars, but by 1802 he had resigned his commission. He stayed in Italy, presumably studying and practising as a sculptor until his return to Paris in 1807. Thanks to Lorenzo Bartolini he was employed to work on some of the stone bas-reliefs (1807–10; in situ) for the Colonne de la Grande Armée in the Place Vendôme, Paris. His first exhibit at the Salon was Cupid Shooting his Arrows (plaster; untraced) in 1808. A marble version (St Petersburg, Hermitage) was ordered by Empress Josephine. Reminiscent of Giambologna’s Mercury, this Neo-classical work was completed in 1812.

Before 1815 the imperial family and court formed a large part of the subject-matter of Bosio’s sculpture: at the 1810 Salon he exhibited marble busts of ...

(b 1750-29-09 or 1782–3; d London, May 1, 1818).

English cabinetmaker and sculptor. He seems to have acquired an early training in sculpture from his mother, who made a display of life-size waxwork figures, exhibited in and around Birmingham from 1794. By 1798 he had gained a reputation as a portrait sculptor and soon set up independently as a ‘Miniature-painter and Portrait-modeller in Rice-paste’. His brother, William Bullock, opened a ‘Cabinet of Curiosites’ in Birmingham in 1800, moving to Liverpool in 1801. Bullock joined him there and by 1804 had gone into partnership with a looking-glass maker, William Stoakes of Church Street, Liverpool. They advertised themselves as ‘Cabinet Makers, General Furnishers and Marble Workers’ and in 1805 supplied Gothic furniture designed by Bullock to Cholmondeley Castle, Ches (in situ). The following year Bullock set up on his own in Bold Street, Liverpool, selling furniture and bronze ornaments. By 1806 he had acquired the Mona Marble quarries in Anglesey and sold ‘fashionable and elegant Sculptured and Plain Chimney Pieces’ at a separate showroom in Church Street....

(b Filipstad, Värmland, Dec 18, 1783; d Rome, March 13, 1848).

Swedish sculptor. He studied under Johan Tobias Sergel at the Konstakademi in Stockholm from 1803 to 1809, and in 1810 moved to Rome where he lived thereafter when not working or teaching in Sweden. In Italy he owned a marble quarry at Carrara and thus executed most of his sculptures in this high-quality stone. In Rome he studied antique sculpture and made copies of works there, such as Head of Bacchus (Stockholm, Nmus.). In his own work he invariably used subjects derived from Classical mythology, executing them in a Neo-classical style influenced by Antonio Canova, as in Juno with the Baby Hercules (1818; Stockholm, Nmus.), of which various versions exist. In this large work Juno is shown asleep with the young Hercules playing by her side. The outstretched goddess is elegantly carved and the drapery is especially fine, though the overall composition is rather heavy and lifeless, a fault of much of Byström’s work....

(b Florence, Sept 22, 1807; d Florence, April 7, 1895).

Italian sculptor. The son of the sculptor Pietro Cambi, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico in Florence and in 1833, after winning a four-year stipendium, continued his training in Rome. While there he completed several works in gesso, including a Daphnis and Chloe (1834; Florence, Pitti; marble version, 1841) executed in an academic classical style. He returned to Florence about 1837 and for a time struggled to gain recognition, but by 1841, after having been nominated to, and given a professorship in, the Accademia, he began to obtain numerous important commissions. He gained esteem for his funerary monuments, among them one to the painter Luigi Sabatelli (1844; Florence, Santa Croce) that is noted for its unsparingly realistic depiction of the dying man’s wasted body. Commissions for other memorials followed: Benvenuto Cellini (1845; Florence, Uffizi) and the dramatist Carlo Goldoni (1873...

(b Mataró, April 12, 1771; d Barcelona, July 7, 1855).

Spanish sculptor and teacher. He began studying at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Lonja in Barcelona at the age of 14, and he worked in the studio of Salvador Gurri (fl 1756–1819), a late Baroque sculptor with Neo-classical tendencies. Campeny left the studio after he was attacked by Gurri, who, as a teacher at the Escuela (1785), continued to persecute him and threw him out. Campeny then worked in Lérida, Cervera and Montserrat. He produced his first major work, St Bruno (1795; destr. 1831), in carved polychromed wood. He also trained with Nicolás Traver and José Cabañeras, both late Baroque artists. Stylistically, Campeny began with a moderate and personal naturalism, later assimilating some of the Baroque influences from his Catalan teachers. Readmitted to the Escuela, in 1795 he won a scholarship to complete his studies in Rome, where he went in 1796...

(b Possagno, nr Treviso, Nov 1, 1757; d Venice, Oct 13, 1822).

Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and architect. He became the most innovative and widely acclaimed Neo-classical sculptor. His development during the 1780s of a new style of revolutionary severity and idealistic purity led many of his contemporaries to prefer his ideal sculptures to such previously universally admired antique statues as the Medici Venus and the Farnese Hercules, thus greatly increasing the prestige of ‘modern’ sculpture. He was also much in demand as a portraitist, often combining a classicizing format with a naturalistic presentation of features.

Antonio Canova was the son of Pietro Canova (1735–61), a stonecutter of Possagno. He was brought up by his grandfather, Pasino Canova (1714–94), a mediocre sculptor who specialized in altars with statues and low reliefs in late Baroque style (e.g. Angels; Crespano, S Marco). In 1770 or 1771 Antonio was apprenticed to the sculptor Giuseppe Bernardi (d 1774) in Pagnano, near Asolo, later following him to Venice. After Bernardi’s death he worked for a few months in the studio of the sculptor ...

(b Tramore, Co. Waterford, c. 1782; d London, Nov 30, 1868).

British sculptor. Possibly the son of an Irish sculptor, he may have received some instruction in Dublin before going to London, where he assisted Sir Richard Westmacott from 1809 to 1823 and set up his own studio in 1821. His marble Arethusa (Petworth House, W. Sussex, NT) was bought by George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, in 1823. This led to a close association with Egremont; Petworth House has a superb collection of Carew’s work in marble, including Adonis and the Bear (1826), The Falconer (1831) and Prometheus and Pandora (1838), all examples of his Neo-classical mythologies, and a series of busts, one of which is a portrait of Egremont (1831).

Carew also made commemorative marble statues of public figures, including William Huskisson (1833; Chichester Cathedral), Edmund Kean (1835; London, Drury Lane Theat.) and his best-known, Sir Richard Whittington Listening to the London Bells...