Pierre-Adrien
Graillon (Dieppe,
France 1807-Dieppe,
France 1872)

French ivory sculptor

Do you think that you may own an ivory sculpture by Pierre-Adrien Graillon? We authenticate, appraise, research and issue certificates of authenticity (COA) and provide consultations for all ivory sculptures by Pierre-Adrien Graillon.

As a child in Dieppe, Graillon and his widowed mother worked in a chalk-quarry. Graillon saw the lovely ivory carvings in the windows of Dieppe shops and decided to learn the craft of ivory working. He was encouraged in his studies by one of the families of Dieppe ivory masters: the Blard. In adolescence Graillon worked as a cobbler in Paris. At age twenty he went back to Dieppe to study art and marry. While in art school, he learned to work ivory, alabaster, terracotta, wood and clay. Graillon was also a painter. Unlike most of the other Dieppe ivory masters, Graillon did not come from a family ivory-workers. Several years after moving back to Dieppe, Graillon returned to Paris as a well-regarded sculptor and worked in the studio of the eminent sculptor Pierre-Jean David d'Angers. In 1838, unhappy with the competition of the Salons, he left Paris for Dieppe.

Graillon's sympathetic but not sentimental reliefs of the working people of Dieppe won him enormous renown throughout Europe. Graillon's subject matter was realistic, and unlike many artists of his age, he shunned historical or religious subjects.