?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
ÉTIENNE MAURICE FALCONET (Paris 1716-1791 Paris) Terpsichore.
Pencil on cream laid paper. 208x145 mm; 8 1/4x6 inches. Ex-collection private collection, London.
Falconet came from a poor family and was initially apprenticed to a carpenter in Paris, but some of the clay figures he made in his leisure time attracted the notice of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1704-1778) and under his tutelage gained entry to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1754. Falconet had success at the Paris Salons of 1755 and 1757 and was invited to Russia by Catherine the Great in September 1766.. At St. Petersburg he executed what is considered his masterwork, a colossal statue of Peter the Great on horseback in bronze. He returned to Paris where he remained the rest of his career, becoming the director of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1788.
