ROUBILIAC, LOUIS-FRANOIS

born c. 1695, /1702/1705, Lyons, Fr. died Jan. 11, 1762, London also spelled Roubillac the most important late Baroque sculptor working in 18th-century England. Roubiliac was apprenticed to a sculptor of ivory and porcelain, Balthasar Permoser, and later became assistant to Nicolas Coustou, a French Baroque sculptor. He moved to London about 1732. His first independent commission was a statue of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens in 1737. A year later he opened his own studio. In 1746 he carved a monument of the Duke of Argyll in Westminster Abbey, one of his greatest works, though his more dramatic Monument of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale (1761) in the same building is better known. Besides monuments and full length-portrait statues, Roubiliac executed masterly portrait busts, several of which were modelled in terra-cotta for a Chelsea pottery factory (c. 1750)e.g., the busts of William Hogarth and of Alexander Pope. Outstanding technically, Roubiliac's likenesses were also admired for their acute observation of the sitter and the perceptive revelation of his character.