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Dictionary of Art
and Artists
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CHAPTER ONE
NEOCLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM
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NEOCLASSICISM
PAINTING
SCULPTURE and
ARCHITECTURE-
Part 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT
PAINTING
SCULPTURE and
ARCHITECTURE -
Part1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19,
20
PHOTOGRAPHY
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SCULPTURE and ARCHITECTURE
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SCULPTURE
France
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Jean-Antoine Houdon
(1741-1828),
unlike most of his
contemporaries, built his career on portrait sculpture. He would have
been glad to accept state commissions had they been available. However,
he discovered quite soon his special gift for portraits, for which there
was a growing demand. Portraiture proved the most viable field for
Neoelassic sculpture. How else could modern artists rise above the
quality of the Greek and Roman classics, which they were everywhere
assured were the acme of sculptural achievement?
Houdon's portraits still retain the acute sense of individual
character introduced by Coysevox (see fig.
822).
Indeed, they established entirely new standards of
physical and psychological verisimilitude that reflect Enlightenment
ideals. Houdon, more than any other artist of his time, knew how to give
them visible form. His portraits have an apparent lack of style that is
deceptive: his style consists of the uncanny ability to make all his
sitters into Enlightenment personalities while remaining conscientiously
faithful to their individual physiognomies. He even managed this on the
rare occasions when he had to make portrait busts of figures long dead,
or when he had to work from a death mask only.
With Voltaire, he was more fortunate, modeling him from life a few
weeks before the famous author's death in Max 1778, and then making a
death mask as well. From these he created Voltaire Sealed (fig.
866),
which was immediately acclaimed as towering above all
others of its kind. The original plaster has not survived, but a
terracotta cast from it, retouched by Houdon, offers a close
approximation. As contemporary critics quickly pointed out, the
Voltaire Seated was a "heroicized" likeness, enveloping the frail
old man in a Roman toga and even endowing him with some hair he no
longer had so as to justify the classical headband. Yet the effect is
not disturbing, for Voltaire wears the toga as casually as a dressing
gown, and his facial expression and the turn of his head suggest the
atmosphere of an intimate conversation. Thus Voltaire is not cast in the
role of classical philosopher—he
becomes the modern counterpart of one, a modern classic in his own
right! In him, we recognize ourselves. Voltaire is the image of modern
man: unheroic, skeptical, with his own idiosyncratic mixture of
rationality and emotion. That is surely why Voltaire strikes us as so
"natural." We are, after all, the heirs of the Enlightenment, which
coined this ideal type.
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866.
Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Voltaire Seated
1781
Terra-cotta, height 120 cm
Musee Fabre, Montpellier
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866.
Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Voltaire Seated (details)
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Voltaire Seated.
Marble, height 138 cm
Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russian Federation
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Voltaire Seated (details)
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Bust of Voltaire. 1778
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Portrait of Voltaire in a Toga 1778
Marble
Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russian Federation
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Bust of Voltaire. 1778
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Bust of Voltaire
ca. 1781
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Aside from his Voltaire Seated, the Virginia George
Washington (fig. 867)
is Houdon's finest effort. In 1778,
the year he portrayed Voltaire, Houdon became a
Freemason and modeled Benjamin Franklin. Replicas of the Franklin bust spread the
artist's lame in the New World. American colonial sculpture hardly
existed aside from weathervanes, tombstone carvings, and cigar-store
Indians. Public monuments were few. and imported from England rather
than produced at home. Thus the newborn republic had to look to France
for a sculptor to immortalize its Founding Father. It could not be
entrusted to an Englishman, for obvious reasons, and there was, it
seems, no contact with British sculpture from
1776 until after the fall of. Napoleon. Thus when
the Virginia legislature decided to commission a marble statue of George
Washington, the natural choice was Houdon. Houdon insisted on coming
over to model his sitter directly, and in October
1785, he spent two weeks at Mount
Vernon as Washington's guest. The figure was finally erected in the
rotunda of the State Capitol 11
years later.
Houdon initially made two versions, one in classical and one in
modern costume, the final form of the statue. Even the latter, though
meticulously up-to-date in detail, has a classical pose, and we can feel
the chill breath of the Apollo Belvedere (fig.
209). as it were, on the
becalmed, smooth surfaces. By this time, Washington no longer held public office; he was simply a
gentleman farmer. Houdon has given him a general's uniform, but the
sword, no longer needed in peacetime, is suspended from a bundle of
13 rods (the fasces,
representing the original states of the Union) and his right hand rests
on a cane. Behind his feet is a plow, the symbol of peace. These
attributes, with their classical allusions, blend easily with the
contemporary dress, and the contrapposto stance of the figure is so well
motivated that the beholder is hardly aware of its antique origin. Above
all, Houdon has created a powerful impression of Washington's character
along with a meticulous record of his physical appearance, in the
framework of the personality type of the Enlightenment. Far more than
any other portrait, Houdon's statue, and the busts associated with it,
determined how the nation visualized the Father of His Country.
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867.
Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Bust of George Washington
1788-92
Marble
Mount Vernon, Virginia
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Jean-Antoine Houdon
Jean-Antoine Houdon, (born March 20, 1741, Versailles,
France—died July 15, 1828, Paris), French sculptor whose
religious and mythological works are definitive expressions of
the 18th-century Rococo style of sculpture. Elements of
classicism and naturalism are also evident in his work, and the
vividness with which he expressed both physiognomy and character
places him among history’s greatest portrait sculptors.
Houdon began sculpting at age nine and underwent the long
training prescribed by the Académie Royale. In 1761 he won the
Prix de Rome, and while in Rome (1764–68) he established his
reputation with a large marble statue of St. Bruno (1767) and an
anatomical study of a flayed man, L’Écorché (1767), which
brought him immediate fame and served later as the basis for
replicas widely used for instruction.
In 1770, two years after his return to Paris, he presented a
reclining figure, Morpheus (marble version, 1777), as his
reception piece for membership in the Académie Royale. He earned
his livelihood, however, through portraiture; his sitters
included Denis Diderot, Empress Catherine the Great of Russia,
and Benjamin Franklin.
Houdon created four different busts of Voltaire in addition
to the renowned seated figure at the Comédie-Française, for
which the sculptor made first studies shortly before the death
of the aged philosopher in 1778. Five weeks later, on hearing of
the death of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Houdon hastened to the
philosopher’s home at Ermenonville and took a cast of the dead
man’s face, from which he developed the bronze bust that is now
in the Louvre. In 1785 Houdon crossed the Atlantic to carry out
a commission for a statue of George Washington. Several weeks
spent at Washington’s home at Mount Vernon were sufficient for
him to complete his studies, which he took back to France. The
marble statue, signed and dated 1788, was set up in the Virginia
state capitol at Richmond in 1796.
Houdon modeled his sculptures in clay, although subsequent
versions might be of marble, bronze, or plaster. A skilled
technician in all of these mediums, Houdon either took full
charge of repetitions or limited himself to finishing touches
upon his assistants’ work. He preferred retaining the toolmarks
in his sculptures rather than polishing them out, choosing to
suggest a sense of freshness in execution that accorded with his
concern for a characteristic pose and for the effect of a direct
and vivid glance.
The most celebrated of Houdon’s mythological works is his
supple, elegant statue of Diana, first shown in 1777, although
not at the Salon—possibly to avoid questions of propriety
because of the artist’s frank treatment of the life-size
undraped figure. At the Salon of 1791 Houdon exhibited busts of
the marquis de Lafayette, Benjamin Franklin, the count de
Mirabeau, the banker Jacques Necker, and the astronomer J.-S.
Bailly. Houdon’s prestige continued during the turbulence of the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. After the downfall of
the French Empire in 1815, however, he passed out of vogue for a
time.
Encyclopædia Britannica
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Diana
c. 1776
Marble
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Diana by Houdon in the Gulbenkian Museum
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Diana. Bronze, 1790
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Summer
1785
Marble, height 155 cm
Musee Fabre, Montpellier
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Winter (The Cold Girl)
1783
Marble, height 145 cm
Musee Fabre, Montpellier
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
Morphee
Marbre
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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Jean-Antoine Houdon.
La Frileuse
Terre cuite. 1793
Musee du Louvre, Paris
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