Johan Tobias Sergel
Gustav III's sculptor.
Johan Tobias Sergel studied in Rome and brought Neoclassicism to Sweden. He made the statue of Gustav III at Skeppsbron and was also a sharp draughtsman.
Johan Tobias Sergel was born in Stockholm in 1740. His father had come from Germany and was an embroiderer at court. As a teenager Sergel was apprenticed to the French sculptor Pierre Hubert L'Archevêque, who was working on the decoration of the Royal Palace in Stockholm. He received scholarships early on and made a study trip to Paris.
From 1767 to 1778 Sergel lived in Rome. There he encountered classical sculpture and the new ideas of Neoclassicism. He mixed with artists from all over Europe, among them Johann Heinrich Füssli. In Rome he produced his first masterpieces. The Drunken Faun (1774) in the Nationalmuseum shows a sleeping, relaxed figure in marble. He also made sculptures such as Diomedes and Mars and Venus, in which the bodies are both ideal and full of movement.
In 1779 Gustav III called him home to Stockholm. He became court sculptor and a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He made portrait busts of the king and the court, and the marble group Cupid and Psyche (1787) in the Nationalmuseum. His best-known public work is the bronze statue of Gustav III at Skeppsbron, unveiled in 1808, many years after the king's death. He also completed the statue of Gustav Vasa at the House of Nobility.
Sergel was also a brilliant draughtsman. He made quick sketches, caricatures of friends and courtiers, and emotional drawings of mythological and erotic scenes. They reveal a lively, humorous side that is not always apparent in the marble. At times he suffered from melancholy. He never married, but had two children with his housekeeper, Anna Rella.
Sergel died in Stockholm in 1814. He is regarded as Sweden's foremost sculptor of the 18th century and one of the most important Neoclassical sculptors in Europe. Sergels torg in Stockholm is named after him, and his studio stood nearby.