Louis-François Roubiliac

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Portrait of Louis-François Roubiliac sculpting, by Adrien Carpentiers, 1762

Louis-François Roubiliac (more correctly Roubillac) (1695 - January 11, 1762), 18th century French sculptor.

[edit] Style

One of Roubiliac's marble busts for Trinity College, Cambridge

Part of the memorial placed by Ann Bellamy Lynn to her husband George at St Mary's church Southwick, Northamptonshire

Roubiliac was largely employed for portrait statues and busts, and especially for sepulchral monuments. His chief works in Westminster Abbey are the monuments of Handel, Admiral Warren, Marshal Wade, Mrs Nightingale and the Duke of Argyll, the last of these being the first work which established Roubiliac's fame as a sculptor. The statues of George I, Sir Isaac Newton, and the Duke of Somerset at Cambridge, and of George II erected in Golden Square, London, were also his work. Trinity College, Cambridge, possesses a series of busts of distinguished members of the college by him. His most celebrated work is the Nightingale monument in Westminster Abbey. The celebrated bust of Shakespeare, known as the Davenant bust, in the possession of the Garrick Club, London, must be attributed to Roubiliac. The statue of Shakespeare, a commission from David Garrick, and bequeathed by the actor to the English nation, is in the British Museum, and shows the talent of the sculptor in a flattering light. He was also commissioned by Jonathan Tyers to make a sculpture of Handel for his pleasure gardens at Vauxhall.

[edit] Bibliography

• Esdaile, K.A.M. (1924). Roubiliac's Work at Trinity College Cambridge. Cambridge University Press (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 9781108002318)
• Le Roy de Sainte-Croix, Vie et ouvrages de L. F. Roubiliac, sculpteur lyonnais (1695-1762) (Paris, 1882). (An extremely rare work, of which a copy is in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum) Allan Cunningham,
• The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 3, pp. 31-67 (London, 1830)the fount of information of later biographies. Dutton Cook, *Art in England ("A Sculptor's Life in the Past Century") (London, 1869); Austin Dobson, *The Magazine of Art, "Little Roubiliac," vol. 17, pp. 202 and 231 (London, 1894).
• JT Smith, Nollekens and his Times (London, 1829 passim).
• Henry B Wheatley has also devoted research to the work and life of Roubiliac.

[edit] External links

• "Roubiliac's Handel". Sculpture. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/sculpture/stories/Roubiliac's_Handel/index.html. Retrieved 2007-09-01. 

• "Tomb of Sir Joseph and Lady Elizabeth Nightingale". Sculpture. http://www.btinternet.com/~j.lillie/nightingale.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-23. 

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.