(b Rouen, 9 Dec 1747; d Paris, 29 Jan 1810). French sculptor. He trained with Jean-Baptiste Pigalle and also from 1773 at the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, but, despite his undoubted talents as a sculptor, he never became an academician. In 1777 he set up on his own in Paris and was soon in fashionable demand, producing portraits such as that of Mlle d'Oligny (terracotta, 1778; Paris, Mus. Cognacq-Jay). Portraits of actors, such as his bust of Pr?ville as Figaro (patinated plaster, 1782) or the statuette of Mme de Saint-Huberty as Dido (plaster, 1784; both Paris, Louvre), show a responsive delicacy, but the uncompromising realism of his portraiture is seen at its best in the powerful busts of his patron Honor? Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, whom he sculpted in plaster in 1781 and 1790 (both in priv. cols) and in marble in 1791 (Aix-en-Provence, Mus. Arbaud). From 1781 to 1792 Lucas produced a series of plaster and terracotta statuettes of mythological subjects and historical characters, now all lost.
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