Jean Antoine Houdon a French Neoclassical portrait sculptor, best known for his busts of contemporary political and cultural figures of the French Enlightenment. He was born in Versailles, France on March 25, 1741, and after attending several French institutions of fine art during his youth—notably including the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture—Houdon found success after submitting his terra-cotta patinated plaster cast Morpheus to the Paris Salon of 1771. Influenced by Classical masters such as Michelangelo, he often sculpted directly from life or by casting his model’s faces, sculpting such prominent figures as Napoleon Bonaparte, Voltaire, and even George Washington. Though he fell out of popularity and narrowly avoided imprisonment at the hands of the French Revolution for his bourgeois ties, his popularity later resumed and he was inducted into the Legion of Honor in 1804.