Early Life
Born in the port city of Nantes in Brittany in 1726, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont became one of the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats in all of France. He made a fortune in shipping and, in 1750, he acquired the Château de Chaumont as a country home where he established a glassmaking and earthenware factory. In 1772, Le Ray signed a contract with the renowned Italian sculptor Jean-Baptiste Nini to oversee his factories and set up the production of portrait medallions: a sculpture in miniature done in terracotta usually for the very wealthy and European Royalty.
Read more about this topic: Jacques-Donatien Le Ray De Chaumont
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)