Nicolas François Gillet (1712 -1791)

Most probably 1757 Salon, no. 141.

S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l’école française au dix-huitième siècle, tome I, Paris, 1910, pp. 372-373;

J.-P. Poussou, A.Mézin et Y. Perret-Gentil (dir.), L’influence française en Russie au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 2004, pp. 140-148.

Nicolas-François Gillet belongs to the generation of sculptors who helped disseminate the French style throughout Europe during the Age of Enlightenment. Trained according to the precepts of the French Royal Academy, he studied under Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, one of the leading figures of sculpture under Louis XV, whose pupils also included Jean-Baptiste II Lemoyne, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Étienne-Maurice Falconet, and Clodion. Awarded a sculpture second prize in 1743 and again in 1745, Gillet subsequently obtained a royal scholarship to study at the French Academy in Rome. During his extended stay in the Eternal City, from 1747 to 1752, he acquired an in-depth knowledge of ancient models. Upon his return to Paris, he was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1753 and became an Academician in 1757, presenting as his reception piece a marble of The Shepherd Paris about to offer the Apple, the prize of beauty (Louvre Museum, inv. MR 1863).

While an official career was opening before him in France, Gillet gave it an entirely new dimension by accepting the invitation of Count Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov, founder of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Under the reigns of Elisabeth Petrovna, and above all Catherine II, imperial Russia sought to assert itself as an enlightened power, drawing from Paris the artists who would form the first generation of Russian neoclassical sculptors. Whilst Étienne-Maurice Falconet’s tenure at the imperial court (1766–1778) is the best documented of all French sculptors, Gillet had preceded him by nearly a decade, arriving in Russia in 1758. There, he exerted a lasting influence on the emergence of a national school of sculpture. As director of the newly founded Imperial Academy, he introduced the French academic principles, whose emphasis on the study of ancient models and human anatomy served as a model throughout Europe. Gillet remained in Russia for twenty years, playing a decisive role in training the first generation of Russian sculptors, including Fedot Ivanovich Shubin, Mikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky, and Ivan Petrovich Martos. When he returned to France in 1779 Gillet was an elderly man nearing the end of his career.

Gillet’s legacy among French sculptors was largely obscured by his long absence from the Parisian art scene. During his brief career as a member of the Royal Academy, he exhibited only twice at the Salon, in 1755 and 1757. Nevertheless, two of his works from that short interlude—between his admission to the Academy and his departure for Russia—are preserved in the Louvre. In addition to the aforementioned reception piece, there is the marble group figuring Two Children Playing with Flowers, left unfinished by Jean-Jacques Vinache (inv. MR 2006)[1]. Other portraits by Gillet survive in Russia, including two busts: a plaster portrait of Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (circa 1760) and a bronze bust of Grand Duke Paul Petrovich (circa 1765; Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, from the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, inv. SK-1411 and SK-1023). A plaster by Gillet also appeared in the posthumous sale of Ange Laurent Lalive de Jully, one of the foremost sculpture collectors of his time, on 5 March 1770 (no. 219: “A man wearing a cap, a kind of sailor, seated and playing dice. This plaster is by M. Gillet”).

Among the few works by Gillet known in France, the present female bust is most likely the marble Hebe exhibited at the Salon of 1757 (no. 141). At his first Salon, in 1755, the sculptor had presented a Portrait Bust of Madame *** (whereabout unknown), followed at the Salon of 1757 by a Portrait of Mademoiselle *** (idem). However, the perfectly idealised features of her face, with modestly lowered eyes, correspond more plausibly to a representation of Hebe, daughter of Zeus and Hera, goddess of youth and cupbearer to the gods of Olympus. Around 1770, the painter Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre, a compatriot of Gillet also active at the imperial court, portrayed the sculptor at work, his tools in hand (State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg). On a pedestal to the left of the composition appears an idealized bust of a young woman in profile, whose outline closely matches the present example. With the present marble Hebe, Gillet thus established at an early stage a classical archetype that he would continue to refine throughout his career.

The flawless mastery of marble carving—particularly visible in the delicate treatment of the roses in the crown—the deep understanding of the classical ideal emanating from this youthful face, and the subtle polish of the surface, perfectly imitating the texture of skin, all bear witness to the art of a sculptor moving towards Neoclassicism, whose life and work still deserve further scholarly investigation.

[1] Along with another group representing Dawn (whereabout unknown), also begun by Vinache before 1747, this marble was completed by Gillet between 1755 and 1757, then offered by the King to the Marquis de Marigny, and installed in his château at Ménars.