JOHANN TOBIAS VON, an eminent Swedish sculptor, was born at Stockholm on the 8th of September 1740. He was at first apprenticed to a stone-mason, and was engaged in that capacity at the royal palace of Stockholm, where he had the good fortune to draw upon himself the notice of the sculptor L'Archeveque, who at once took him as a pupil. After assisting his master for some years he obtained, in 1767, a travelling pension, when he went to Rome, and remained there for twelve years. During his stay in Italy he executed numerous works of great merit; and, on his visiting Paris, his "Othryades," or the figure of a wounded Greek soldier, now placed in the Luxembourg, gained him admission to the Academy of the Fine Arts. He had just reached London when he received an offer from Gustavus III. of Sweden of the office of court sculptor. He lost no time in reaching Stockholm, and in 1784 accompanied his majesty to Rome, and induced him to purchase the celebrated "Endymion" for the royal museum of Stockholm. Catherine II. of Russia was anxious to secure the services of Sergel, and made him very flattering offers to go and reside at St Petersburg. But the sculptor was too much attached to his master to think of leaving him; and when, in a few years, the untimely end of Gustavus cast a gloom over all the court, it plunged Sergel in so deep a melancholy that he is reported never to have recovered. He died in his native city on the 26th of February 1814, in his seventy-fourth year.

Sergel's works are all marked by great vigour of conception, by simplicity, and grace of style, and by an entire freedom from the mannerism which tainted the most graceful productions of the chisels of his contemporaries. His best statues are his "Karl III," "Juno," "Cupid and Venus," "Diomedes carrying off the Palladium," "Othryades," "a Faun," "Gustavus III," "Oxenstierna," "Mars and Venus," and a "Venus Callipyge." He executed a number of excellent groups, and some fine busts and portrait medallions.