Three portraits of sculptors

Guillaume Coustou the Elder (29 November 1677, Lyon - 22 February 1746, Paris), French sculptor, brother of sculptor Nicholas Coustou, nephew of sculptor Antoine Coysevox; all three worked under Louis XIV, the two brothers under Louis XV as well. Coustou the Elder is best remembered for his contributions to the garden ensemble at Marly, especially the celebrated Chevaux de Marly, copies of which, placed at the entrance to the Champs-Élysées, are one of the great landmarks of Paris.

Guillaume Coustou the Elder, by Jacques-François Delyen.

Jacques-François Delyen (25 July 1684, Ghent - 3 March 1761, Paris), French/Belgian artist, principally a portrait painter. Stylistically, his work is similar to that of Largillière; he had studied for five years with the better known painter. He was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1725 - one of his admission pieces was his portrait of the sculptor Guillaume Coustou - and showed there regularly between 1737 and 1747.

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Louis Claude Vassé (1717, Paris - 30 November 1772, Paris), French sculptor, he was the son and grandson of sculptors, and a pupil of Edmé Bouchardon. He won the Prix de Rome in 1740 and later became a member of the Royal Academy. He exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1748 to 1771.

Louis Claude Vassé, by Étienne Aubry.

Étienne Aubry (10 January 1746, Versailles - 24 July 1781, Versailles), French painter, known for his portraits and genre subjects. Having studied under Silvestre and Vien, he began exhibiting at the Salon in 1771, and became a member of the Royal Academy in 1775. He went to Rome in 1777 to study, with the goal of becoming a history painter - at that time the most respected genre of painting - but his death four years later, at the age of thirty-six, left his plans unfulfilled.

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Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain (8 or 11 October 1710, Paris – 17 April 1795, Paris), French sculptor whose work was a blend of the Rococo and the Neoclassical, and was much influenced by his more famous brother-in-law, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. In the early part of his career he often collaborated with Pigalle, though probably in a subordinate capacity. He was accepted into the Royal Academy in 1748 and became a full member in 1751. He later completed important commissions for both the marquise de Pompadour and the comtesse du Barry.

Christophe-Gabriel Allegrain, by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis.

Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (22 September 1725, Carpentras – 1 April 1802, Versailles), French portrait painter. Born the son of an amateur artist, he arrived in Paris in 1752. His work didn't elicit much notice until the Salon of 1769, when his ten portraits were well received. He was accepted into the Academy, and his portrait of Marie Antoinette in 1771 and his appointment as a peintre du Roi assured his success. Most of his best known work dates from the 1770s and 1780s. During the Revolution, he retreated to the relative safety of his home town, but from 1796 he served as curator at the newly founded museum that had been formed in the emptied out palace of Versaillles.