Jean-Louis Prieur

French sculptor, bronzeworker, decorator lithographer. In 1765, he was accepted as a sculptor into the Paris Académie de Saint-Luc and began collaborating with Victor Louis in preparing detailed projects for the outfitting and decorative elements of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Some of the few dozen designs he made up were carried out by Pierre Caffieri and by Prieur himself. He is said to have continued his education in the workshop of his cousin Jean-Joseph de Saint-Garmain, who was a carver and bronzeworker (1719-91). He continued to work with Louis on such projects as the decoration of the chancel of the Chartres Cathedral (1766). He carried out a series of commissions from the court under the title of the king’s sculptor, carver and goldsmith. He designed and produced clocks for the wedding of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette (1770), decorative elements in bronze for Louis XVI’s coronation carriage (1774) and decoration for the fireplaces of the Bourbon Palace (1776). In the 1980s, he published a series of etchings featuring his ornamental designs, along with projects for furnishings, vases and arabesques, compiled in seven volumes. The bronze elements made in Prieur’s workshop and his design projects earned him a considerable degree of fame, while also shaping and spreading the neo-classic style in Europe at the turn of the century.