[1] He was accepted at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1742) and pursued a successful official career, working fluently in styles that ranged from the Late Baroque of his morceau de réception, a Seated Vulcan (illustrated) to the sentimental early neoclassicism of the Ganymede, whose affinities with Roman sculptures of Antinous have been suggested by Michael Worley.

His most prominent and ambitious official commission was the Monument to the Dauphin for the cathedral of Sens.

The elaborate iconography of its somewhat overcharged design was worked up by the artist and connoisseur Charles-Nicolas Cochin.

[3] His pupils included two minor neoclassical sculptors, Claude Dejoux and Pierre Julien, who were fellow pupils in the 1760s and went on to collaborate on sculptural projects[4] and the young Danish sculptor, Johannes Widewelt, who was placed in his workshop through the offices of the secretary of the Danish legation.

In the process, Widewelt picked up some of Coustou's clarity and his language of rhetorical gesture.