François-Auguste-René Rodin was largely self-educated although he did take drawing classes from Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran. Like many great artists of the period (look up the Impressionists), his work was not appreciated by the Academy. His work has a very loose expressive quality with great mastery of anatomy. He breathed life into his work through his treatment of form.
3) Scott Eaton
Scott Eaton studied both engineering and art as an undergraduate at Princeton University. He later received his master’s degree from the renowned MIT Media Lab and continued his art studies at the Florence Academy of Art in Florence, Italy. He is a master anatomist who teaches courses in anatomy and digital sculpture through his website. He developed an anatomy app for the iPhone with Michael Defeo called L’Ecorché.
4) Kris Costa
Kris Costa trained at Universidade de Brasília (UnB), Brasilia, Brazil. He works for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and was responsible for sculpting the incredible Hulk in the Avengers movie (2012). He has a tighter realistic style.
5) Magdalena Dadela
Magdalena Dadela is a 3D Character artist educated at the Vancouver Film School in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her work has a very delicate realism and has a very high level of polish. She has worked on some of the most popular video games in the world including Assassin’s Creed. Her work has been used by Pixol0gic to illustrate the documentation and training videos for ZBrush. Her work shows echoes of Bernini.
6) Phillipe Faraut
7) Bernini (1598-1680)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini trained under his father in Rome and became an important sculptor in the Seventeenth century patronized by Cardinals and Popes. His delicate realistic style is impressive even now. He turns marble into living humanity. Compare his dynamic energetic David to Michelangelo’s David. Bernini’s David looks like he is about to kill a giant.
8) Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Although best known for his political cartoons, Honoré Daumier sculptures are another example of a loose painterly approach to sculpture.
9) Rembrandt (1606-1669)
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn is the only painter on this list. I put him here because he applied paint as though he were sculpting especially in his later works.