Claude Michel Clodion (French, 1738 to 1814)
In 1755 Clodion went to Paris and entered the workshop of his uncle Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, and upon his uncle’s death became a pupil of the noted J. B. Pigalle. In 1759 he won the grand prize for sculpture at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, and in 1762 went to Rome. Catherine II tried to convince him to come to work for her court in St. Petersburg, but he returned to Paris in 1771 where he enjoyed enormous success and exhibited regularly at the Salon. Clodion’s favorite medium was terracotta, and his preferred subjects were nymphs, satyrs, bacchantes and other sensual mythological figures he relished portraying with energetic movement.
Together with his brothers, Claude-Michael Clodion also produced figurative decoration for candelabra, clocks and vases. Perhaps because he never had an interest in producing sculpture on a monumental scale, Clodion was never admitted to the Academie Royale. Nevertheless, after the Revolution had driven him to Nancy in 1792, where he remained until 1798, he was flexible enough to adapt himself to Neoclassical monumentality, as is demonstrated by his relief for the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, representing the entry of the French into Munich. He died in Paris.
Information courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, June 2009.