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| The terracotta study - which, frankly, I much prefer - is in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge. |
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| The finished marble bust is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
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Philippe-Laurent Roland (13 August 1746, Pont-à-Marcq – 11 July 1816, Paris), French sculptor. He studied first at the École de Dessin in Lille, near his hometown. He then moved to Paris where he entered the studio of the celebrated sculptor Augustin Pajou, who would be a powerful and persistent influence in Roland's own work. He collaborated on Pajou's decorations at the Palais-Royal and at the Royal Opéra at Versailles, and he later secured employment as a decorative sculptor in the private apartments of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. He was accepted into the Académie Royale in 1782, and during the French Revolution, he became a founder-member of the Institut de France and a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts. His naturalistic portraits were greatly admired, and in 1800 he received a generous prize for his bust of his teacher Pajou. He passed on his particular combination of Neoclassical austerity and lyrical realism to his own most famous pupil, Pierre-Jean David d'Angers, who wrote a biography of his beloved teacher, remembering Roland as a man of average height and with a high-strung disposition: His "ruddy complexion revealed a sanguine character but with a predominantly nervous aspect. [...] His eyes were lively and penetrating like those of an artist. His mouth was large but well delineated. Like people occupied with serious matters, he spoke little. In his social relations he showed a dignified reserve and loyal sincerity which heightened his great austerity of principle."
He looks like Matthew Rhys.
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