Aime-Jules Dalou was a French sculptor, recognized as one of the most brilliant virtuosos of nineteenth-century France, admired for his perceptiveness, execution, and unpretentious realism.

Dalou was born in Paris, into from a working-class family of Huguenot background, who raised him in an atmosphere of secularity and Republican socialism. He was the pupil of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who sponsored him for the Petite École (future École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs), where he sympathysed with Alphonse Legros and Fantin-Latour. In 1854 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts* de Paris in the François-Joseph Duret classroom. He combined the vivacity and richness of Carpeaux, for "he was, technically, one of the most dist...