the imperial court. Sculpting also suited him due to the freedom that attached to it and meant that he did not have to find another. He took on official commissions and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1842 with a marble bust of the comte Charles de Ganay. One of those commissions was a 4.65m high "Equestrian statue of Napoleon I", inaugurated on 20 September 1852 in the sculptor's presence by the Prince-President on 20 September 1852 on the largest square on the Perrache peninsula (now called place Carnot) in Lyon. This was destroyed between November 1870 and February 1871 and the only surviving copy of it is that inaugurated on 20 August 1854 at the centre of place Napoléon in La Roche-Sur-Yon (the former "Napoléon-Vendée"), main town and prefecture of this Napoleon-founded department. However, in 1860 the Susse foundry did cast copies in five different metals (one such copy is now at the château de Compiègne, and another was sold at Compiègne on 17 March 2001 for 30,000 francs [requires verification - no reference, and the franc was no longer in use in 2001, having been replaced by the Euro]). One of his best known other works is "The battle of the duke of Clarence", bronze copies of which were cast by the Susse foundry from 1839 to 1875 - one copy entered the English royal collection at Osborne House in 1901, and another was sold at public auction at Chartres on 23 March 2003. In 1845, during a trip into Italy with Henri de Bourbon, comte de Chambord, he visited the collection of the Russian millionaire Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidov, 1st Prince of San Donato and became the lover of Demidov's wife Princess Mathilde (niece of Napoleon). The following year she left Demidov and moved to lodgings found for her by Nieuwerkerke at an hôtel at 10 rue de Courcelles in Paris - their liaison lasted until August 1869. Following the elimination of the Republican civil-servants, he was made director-general of museums on 25 December 1849 and installed in the Louvre the following day. A Colonel d'État-Major of the National Guard, he supported the coup d'état of 2 December 1851. Made a free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts on 19 November 1853, on 5 July 1853 he became intendant des Beaux-Arts of the Emperor's Household and finally in 1870 surintendant of the Imperial Museums. Until the fall of