Nicolas Sébastien Adam

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Prometheus

Nicolas Sébastien Adam , also Adam le Jeune (born March 22, 1705 in Saint-Eyre in Nancy , † March 27, 1778 in Paris ), was a French sculptor.

Life and works

Nicolas Sébastien Adam was a son of Jacob-Sigisbert Adam , with whom he was apparently trained. He later worked with his brother Lambert Sigisbert in Paris until he went to Rome . Then, in 1824, at the request of the Treasurer of the Languedoc States, Nicolas Sébastien Adam moved to Montpellier to make models for the facades of the Château de la Mosson . In 1726 Adam came to Rome, where he and his brother restored ancient statues for the Cardinal of Polignac . In 1728 the Accademia di San Luca awarded him a prize. Returning to Paris at the end of 1734, he worked from 1736 on the bas-relief The Martyrdom of St. Victor , which later found its way into the Palace Chapel of Versailles . He was also involved in the interior decoration of the Hôtel de Soubise, later the Palais des Archives Nationales. For the bedroom of the Princess of Rohan he created four mythological groups in stucco work. In 1738 he was commissioned to design two allegorical figures of Justice and Wisdom. They were supposed to adorn the facade of the former Chambre des Comptes in the courtyard of the Sainte-Chapelle and fell victim to a fire in 1871. Together with Lambert Sigisbert Adam he worked on the decoration of the Neptune Fountain in Versailles: The group Triumph Neptune and the Amphitrite was set up in 1740. In the following years he was busy with the new building of the Abbey of Saint-Denis.

Frederick the Great wanted Adam to be his first sculptor with a salary of 4,000 livres in 1747, but the official he had sent to France for this purpose negotiated with Adam's younger brother François Gaspard , who promptly seized the opportunity and spent the next 13 years in royal service in Germany. Instead, Nicolas Sébastien Adam went to Nancy, where King Stanislaus had called him to design the mausoleum for Katharina Opalińska . He returned to Paris towards the end of 1752, where he decorated the chapel of the College de Grammont. Around this time he also created a group of children who, playing with a lion and a tiger, were to decorate the gable of the former Hôtel de Choiseul, and various bas-reliefs for the house of Monsieur de la Bouescière in Rue de Clichy. Other works by Adam were B. a Madonna and an altar canopy for the cathedral in Beauvais and a silver Christ which he made for the King of Portugal.

After he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1737, he achieved the rank of academic on June 16, 1762 with his marble group Prometheus , which came to the Louvre , and became a professor on January 30, 1778. In the same year, however, he went blind and died. Stanislas Lami assessed Adam as "moderate talent, very much in the wake of his brother Lambert-Sigisbert."

His house at 6 rue des Amadiers in Paris, which he had acquired in 1753, became the property of the porcelain manufacturer Johann Nepomuk Hermann Nast in 1789 , who had moved his business to this street.

literature

Web links

Commons : Nicolas Sébastien Adam  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Régine de Plinval de Guillebon: La porcelaine à Paris sous le Consulat et l'Empire. Librairie Droz, 1985, ISBN 978-2-600-04619-0 , p. 69 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
personal data
SURNAME Adam, Nicolas Sébastien
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adam le Jeune
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1705
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Eyre , Nancy
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1778
Place of death Paris