Sculptor. Jean-Joseph Marie Carriès was a French sculptor, ceramist, and miniaturist of the late 19th century. He is considered the founder of the Art Nouveau. Born the son of a simple shoe maker, he was orphaned by the age of six years old, spending his childhood in a Roman Catholic orphanage. He apprenticed with a local sculptor before moving to Paris in 1874 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts under well-respected Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. In 1875 he held his first showing at the Paris Salon, receiving monetary gains and considerable recognition. However, after seeing an exhibition of Japanese works at the 1878 World's Fair in Paris, he began to devote himself to the creation of polychrome Horror Masks, with the grotesque facial expressions. He made several pieces that were part frog, such as a rabbit with a frog face. Successfully, he had an exhibition for his sculpted busts at the Paris Salons of 1879 and 1881. His portrait was painted by his friend John Singer Sargent in 1880. Besides this portrait, there is a portrait of him in his studio by Louise Catherine Breslau, which is today on display Petit Palasi Musee in Paris. In February of 1889, he established a studio, receiving many commissions. His works, which were exhibited at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars in 1892, were widely acclaimed and were acquired by the French Ministry of Culture and by a museum in Hamburg, Germany. In 1892 he was honored as a member of the Legion of Honor. He consulted with chemists to help with the best materials to make his items. He had been commissioned by royalty to make a huge door of 600 bricks of demonic design for 60,000 francs within 2 years, but the cost of the door would actually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This miscalculation in the budget financially ruined him and he never finished the project. In 1894, a year after he had sculpted perhaps his most famous work entitled "Faune," he died of pleurisy at the age of thirty-nine. Some of the best-known works are "Le Grenouillard" in 1892, "Masque d`horreur" in 1891 to 1892, "Loyse Lab" in 1890, "Le mineur de la Loire" in 1886 and "Charles ler d`Angleterre in 1881 to 1883, which are on all exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay. His 2007 biography "Jean Carriès 1855-1894 : La matière de l'étrange" was written by Amélie Simier. His grave is marked with a bronze self-portrait of the sculptor, with him holding in his left hand a statuette, "The French Gentleman," while one of his grotesque masks is resting below his right hand and a demonic figure hiding under the left hem of his jacket.