Jean-Robert-Nicolas Lucas de Montigny (1747-1810) Gabriel-Honoré Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791) Bust in plaster Standing on a splayed plinth, signed on the edge of the left arm "J.R.N. /LUCAS/ MONTIGNY/ FECIT 1790". H. 80 cm (31 ½ in.) l. 58 cm (22 ¾ in.) Provenance: Former Alphonse Kann collection (1870 -1948); Sold in Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, M. F Lair-Dubreuil, 6-8 December 1920, lot 172; Galerie Bellanger, Paris. Bibliography: H. Mercier, Mirabeau protecteur de Jean Robert Nicolas Lucas de Montigny (1747-1810), Mémoire de thèse Ecole du Louvre, 1972, p. 20, n°33. Comparative bibliographies: S. Lami, Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de l'Ecole Française au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1910, pp. 95-96. La revue de l'art ancien et moderne, Paris, 1901, t. I, p. 279. H. Mercier, Mirabeau protecteur de Jean Robert Nicolas Lucas de Montigny (1747-1810), Mémoire de thèse Ecole du Louvre, 1972. A plaster bust by Jean-Robert-Nicolas Lucas de Montigny (1747-1810), depicting Gabriel-Honoré Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791) Lucas de Montigny, originally from Rouen, studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris from 1773 to 1777, and became a fashionable and much sought-after sculptor. He was a pupil of Pigalle. Early in his career, he produced a series of mythological and historical figures in plaster and terracotta, all of which were lost. On 10 January 1777, he married Edmée-Adélaïde Baignères, daughter of the king's first physician, who was also Mirabeau's doctor. Mirabeau was to be the sculptor's protector, and he owed his relative activity during the revolutionary period to Mirabeau's friendship. The artist adopted Mirabeau's political ideas and joined the National Guard in 1789. It was no doubt thanks to this relationship that he executed several busts of Mirabeau during his lifetime. Mirabeau had a son on 10 February 1782 with the sculptor's wife and adopted him in 1784. He exhibited several sculptures at the Salon de l'Académie des Beaux-Arts du Louvre from 1791 to 1808. During the convention of the Estates General in 1789, Mirabeau was elected deputy for the Marseilles Third Estate and befriended Jean-François Lieutaud, Commander General of the Marseilles National Guard. Lieutaud wanted a bust of Mirabeau for the city, and the latter recommended Lucas de Montigny to him, placing the order towards the end of 1789. The sculptor sent the marble bust (no longer extant) to Marseille on 7 May 1790. Mercier states in his thesis that the original plaster cast for the Marseille bust "still existed in the first half of our century" (op. cit. p. 10) and that it is the second portrait of Mirabeau executed by Lucas de Montigny. We can now confirm this thanks to the reappearance of this bust from the prestigious Alphonse Kann collection. The bust is also described with its history: "Presented by the artist to the National Assembly, 19 April 1791; Coll. Alphonse Kann; Coll. part". (ibid. p. 20). This plaster cast is a portrait of Mirabeau full of vigour and character.