Portrait of Guillaume Coustou II (1716-1777), bust-length in a brown coat and black wrap

An old label on the reverse of the portrait records that this is a portrait of the sculptor Guillaume Coustou, brother of Charles Pierre Coustou (presumably so described to differentiate the sitter from their father Guillaume Coustou I), painted when he was a pupil at the Ecole de Louvre. This probably means in fact the Académie de France in Rome where he studied from 1736-40. In 1742 he was received as a member of the Académie Royale and went on to pursue a successful official career, his eclectic style ranging from the Baroque of the Apotheosis of Saint Francis Xavier (Bordeaux, St Paul) to the cold classicism of his statue of Apollo commissioned by Mme de Pompadour for the park at the château of Bellevue, Hautes-de-Seine (Versailles, Château). Among his most important sculptures are the statues of Mars and Venus, commissioned by Frederick II of Prussia (Potsdam, Schloss Sanssouci); the pedimental reliefs executed in conjunction with Michel-Ange Slodtz for Ange-Jacques Gabriel's buildings on the Place de la Concorde (originally Place Louis XV), Paris; and the monument in Sens Cathedral to the Dauphin (son of Louis XV), Louis de Bourbon and his Wife.