ROUBILIAC (more correctly ROUBILLAC), LOUIS FRAN COIS (1695-1762), French sculptor, was born at Lyons and became a pupil of Balthasar of Dresden and of N. Coustou. It is generally stated that he settled in London about 172o, but as he took the second grand prize for sculpture in 1730, while still a pupil of Coustou, it is unlikely that he visited England at an earlier date. The date as given by Dussieux, is incorrect. He was at once patronized by Walpole and soon became the most popular sculptor in England, superseding the success of the Fleming Rysbraeck and even of Scheemakers. He died on the 11th of January 1762, and was buried in the church of St. Martin in-the-Fields. Roubiliac was largely employed for portrait statues and busts, and especially for sepulchral monuments. His chief works in Westminster Abbey are the monuments of Handel, Admiral Warren, Marshal Wade, Mrs. Nightingale and notably that of the duke of Argyll, which established his fame. He possessed skill in portraiture and was technically a master, but lived at a time when his art had sunk to a low ebb. His figures
are frequently uneasy, devoid of dignity and sculpturesque breadth, and his draperies treated in a manner more suited to painting than sculpture. There are, however, noteworthy excep tions, his bust of Pope, for example, reaching a high standard.
His most celebrated work, the Nightingale monument, in West minster Abbey, a marvel of technical skill, is saved from being ludicrous by its ghastly and even impressive hideousness. The celebrated bust of Shakespeare, known as the Davenant bust, in the possession of the Garrick Club, London, is his.
See Le Roy de Sainte-Croix, Vie et ouvrages de L. F. Roubillac, sculpteur lyonnais (1695-1762) (Paris, 1882). (An extremely rare work, of which a copy is in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London.) Allan Cunningham, The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, vol. 3, pp. 31-67 (London, 1830)—the fount of informa tion of later biographies. (M. H. S.)