Figural study of a man kneeling

Jacques-Edmé Dumont was a highly accomplished Neoclassical miniaturist. His family, a dynasty of sculptors, preserved a great many of these captivating little terracottas (see 2015.378–.382a, b). This figural study shows how Dumont expertly wielded a flat-sided stick to carve the clay along rectangular planes.

Credit: Purchase, Friends of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gifts, 2015