Nicolas François Gillet (1712-1791) Hébé White... Lot 1

Nicolas François Gillet (1712-1791) Hébé White marble bust Signed and dated "N.F. GILLET. 1753". H. 58 cm, on a marble pedestal H. 14.5 cm Small chips and chips in the rose wreath and ribbon on the back of the head. If Nicolas-François Gillet is a rare artist, it's because his works are scattered between Rome, Paris and Saint Petersburg. Born in Metz and trained in Lambert Sigisbert Adam's workshop, he followed the official career path of sculptors of his generation, and after winning two second prizes in sculpture at the Académie royale in 1743 and 1745, he was accepted as a boarder at the Académie de France in Rome. In the Eternal City, where he stayed for six years, he sculpted a remarkable Saint Augustine for the church of Saint Louis des Français. Returning to Paris in 1752, he was admitted to the Académie in 1753 and became an Academician in 1757. His reception piece, Le berger Pâris prêt à donner la pomme qui doit être le prix de la beauté, is now in the Musée du Louvre (inv. MR1863; N15457). His departure for Russia was the turning point in his career. He helped found the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg and became its director. For twenty years, he fulfilled official commissions from Empress Elisabeth Petrovna and then Catherine II, training most of the great Russian sculptors over two generations before coming to France to end his days. Works by Gillet are sufficiently rare to suggest that our bust is the one presented by the artist as Hébé at the Salon of 1757 (N°141). The bust from the 1757 Salon has not been located, the iconography matches and it is entirely conceivable that the artist presented a bust sculpted a few years earlier at the Salon. It would be equally appealing to see our Hébé depicted on a saddle to the sculptor's left in the fine portrait of him painted by Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre (1734-1802), now in the Hermitage Museum. Related literature Stanislas Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'École Française au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1910, Kraus Reprint, 1970, pp. 372-374.