Name Guillaume the | Uncles Nicolas Coustou | |
 | ||
Role Guillaume Coustou the Elder's son Died July 13, 1777, Paris, France Parents Guillaume Coustou the Elder | ||
Guillaume Coustou the Younger (March 19, 1716 – July 13, 1777) was a French sculptor.
The son of Guillaume Coustou the Elder and nephew of Nicolas Coustou, he trained in the family atelier and studied at the French Academy in Rome, 1736–39, as winner of the Prix de Rome (1735). He returned to Paris, where he completed the famous "Horse Tamers" (Chevaux de Marly) commissioned from his father in 1739 for Marly, when the elder Coustou was too infirm to actively carry out the commissions. They were completed and installed in 1745.
He was accepted at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1742) and pursued a successful official career, working fluently in styles that ranged from the Late Baroque of his morceau de reception, a Seated Vulcan (illustrated) to the sentimental early neoclassicism of the Ganymede, whose affinities with Roman sculptures of Antinous have been suggested by Michael Worley. He produced portrait busts as well as his religious and mythological subjects.
His most prominent and ambitious official commission was the Monument to the Dauphin for the cathedral of Sens. The elaborate iconography of its somewhat overcharged design was worked up by the artist and connoisseur Charles-Nicolas Cochin.
His pupils included two minor neoclassical sculptors, Claude Dejoux and Pierre Julien, who were fellow pupils in the 1760s and went on to collaborate on sculptural projects and the young Danish sculptor, Johannes Widewelt, who was placed in his workshop through the offices of the secretary of the Danish legation. In the process, Widewelt picked up some of Coustou's clarity and his language of rhetorical gesture.