19th-century French sculptors

Ernest Chaplet (1835 in Sèvres – 1909 in Choisy-le-Roi) was a French designer, sculptor and ceramist. He was a key figure in the French art pottery movement, and his works are held in international public collections such as the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Having worked in industry for over 30 years, he opened an atelier with the sculptor Albert-Louis Dammouse in 1882, producing stoneware often influenced by Japanese designs and Chinese prototypes. From 1875 he worked with Félix Bracquemond. Chaplet became head of the Parisian workshops of Charles Haviland of Haviland & Co. in 1882, working in stoneware and porcelain for them. He worked on ceramics with Paul Gauguin from 1886; together they created some 55 stoneware pots with applied figures or ornamental fragments, multiple handles, painted and partially glazed. He later worked with Jules Dalou and Auguste Rodin.
From 1887 Chaplet took up permanent residence at Choisy-le-Roi, often collaborating with the ceramics manufacture Alexandre Bigot. He won acclaim at the 1900 International Exhibition, but lost his sight in 1904, after which his son Emile Lenoble took over his studio. He committed suicide in 1909.

Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret (30 January 1782, Bordeaux – 21 February 1863, Paris) was a French painter, pioneer lithographer and designer of medals and costumes for the stage, who studied with Jacques-Louis David.
He was born in Bordeaux, where he received his early training, then moved to Paris, where he worked in the ateliers of François-André Vincent and then Jacques-Louis David, where he met François Marius Granet and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.The high point of his early career was marked by one painting in particular, shown at the Salon of 1806 and considered by Bergeret among his greatest works. Reminiscent of both Poussin and David, the "Homage Rendered to Raphael on His Deathbed"(engraved in 1812 by J.L. Charles Pauquet) was praised by critics for its mood of restrained emotion as well as denigrated by some for the heaviness of its figures. The Emperor Napoleon I purchased "Homage" for his wife, the Empress Josephine, and subsequently it was hung in the gallery of her residence at Malmaison. At some point the painting was removed, stored away, sold, and eventually was purchased for the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio. A second version of the painting, likely autograph and previously believed to be the original Salon version, exists and is now found at Malmaison.
Bergeret played a major role in introducing lithography, in part through his reproductive prints after paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Raphael: his lithograph Mercury (1804), reproducing a detail from Raphael’s fresco in the Villa Farnesina, and his caricatures of current Paris fashion, e.g. Les Musards de la Rue du Coq, Le Suprême Bon Ton Actuel (by 1805) are among the earliest examples of lithographic technique.Bergeret was commissioned to design Napoleonic medals, or provide frieze-like panels en camaïeu to be painted on Sèvres porcelains and to provide designs for the bas-reliefs on the Column in the Place Vendôme, built 1806–11 and directly inspired by Trajan's Column in Rome. The Column suffered the vicissitudes of French politics, having been destroyed and restored twice.
Bergeret too, having led a successful career during the first Empire, was increasingly caught up in artistic rivalries and disputes with government officials of the Bourbon Restoration, which eventually led to his decline. His long standing contract to provide costume designs for the Opera Comique in Paris ended in a protracted lawsuit, which he eventually lost. He had the bad luck to cross the Comte de Forbin, Vivant-Denon's successor as director of the Louvre, who did little to further Bergeret's career, even actively working against him. Bergeret's efforts to win public commissions (such as the ceiling of the Bordeaux Opera House) often fell through due to ill fate as well as political machinations and person intrigues against him. Increasingly in debt and without commissions or patrons, in 1848, Bergeret published his "Lettres d'un artiste sur l'etat des arts en France" an attempt to vindicate himself in which he set out his views regarding the artistic bureaucracy in France, exposing the various problems that it presented to talented artists (such as himself). Bergeret, once in the forefront of artistic trends and technology found himself sidelined from royal and imperial patronage and national influence. He painted little of importance during his final years and died embittered and empoverished.
The subjects of his paintings tend towards the vividly anecdotal. He was early among artists drawing subject matter from the culture of the Renaissance, in the style Troubadour: Honors Rendered to Raphael on His Deathbed 1806 (Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio). Charles V Picking up Titian's Brush 1808; Anne Boleyn Condemned to Death ca. 1814 (Musée du Louvre); Aretino in the Studio of Titian ca 1822; Fra Lippo Lippi Enslaved in Tangiers, Painting a Portrait of His Captor ca 1819; Another major history painting by Bergeret is Marius Meditating on the Ruins of Carthage.
Other typical subjects are propagandistic allegories and representations of current events of the French Empire.

Étienne Marin Mélingue (1807–1875) was a French actor, sculptor and painter.
He was born in Caen, the son of a volunteer of 1792, He early went to Paris and obtained work as a sculptor on the church of the Madeleine, but his passion for the stage soon led him to join a strolling company of comedians. Finally chance gave him an opportunity to show his talents, and at the Porte Saint Martin he became the popular interpreter of romantic drama of the type popularized by Alexandre Dumas, père.One of his greatest successes was as Benvenuto Cellini, in which he displayed his ability both as an actor and as a sculptor, really modelling before the eyes of the audience a statue of Hebe. He sent a number of statuettes to the various exhibitions, notably one of Gilbert Louis Duprez as William Tell. Mélingue's wife, Théodorine Thiesset (1813–1886), was the actress selected by Victor Hugo to create the part of Guanhumara in Burgraves at the Comédie-Française, where she remained ten years. He created the part of D'Artagnan in The Youth of The Musketeers and The Musketeer (a dramatization of 20 Years After by Dumas) and also the part of Lagardere in Feval and Anciet-Bourgeois's Hunchback.

Mathilde de Morny (26 May 1863 – 29 June 1944) was a French aristocrat and artist. Morny was also known by the nickname "Missy" or by the artistic pseudonym "Yssim" (an anagram of Missy), or as "Max", "Uncle Max" (French: Oncle Max), or "Monsieur le Marquis". Active as a sculptor and painter, Morny studied under Comte Saint-Cène and the sculptor Édouard-Gustave-Louis Millet de Marcilly.

François-Rupert Carabin (17 March 1862, in Saverne, Bas-Rhin – 28 November 1932, in Strasbourg) was a French cabinetmaker, photographer and sculptor. His work was representative of the Art Nouveau style.

Louis-Oscar Roty usually known as Oscar Roty (11 June 1846 – 23 March 1911) was one of the most celebrated medallists of the Art Nouveau period.

Charles René de Paul de Saint-Marceaux (23 September 1845 – 23 April 1915) was a French sculptor.

Eugène-Louis Lequesne (or Le Quesne) (15 February 1815 – 3 June 1887) was a French sculptor. Lequesne was born and died in Paris. In 1841, he entered the École nationale des beaux-arts, in James Pradier's workshop. In 1843, he won the second Prix de Rome, and in 1844 the first prize, with a plaster bas-relief entitled Pyrrhus tuant Priam (Pyrrhus killing Priam). He lived at the Académie de France à Rome from 1844 to 1849, alongside Jean-Louis Charles Garnier. In 1855, he was awarded the Great Prize for sculpture at the Exposition Universelle, and received the Légion d'honneur.

Léon-Joseph Chavalliaud (French pronunciation: [leɔnʒozɛf ʃavaljo]; 29 January 1858 – 5 February 1919) was a French sculptor. He created several notable works in France and in England, where he lived for 15 years.

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (born Albert-Ernest Carrier de Belleuse; 12 June 1824 – 4 June 1887) was a French sculptor. He was one of the founding members of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honour.