Jean-Antoine Houdon
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Unsubst". Script error: No such module "Template wrapper".Script error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters". Jean-Antoine, chevalier Houdon (Script error: No such module "IPA".;[1] 20 March 1741 – 15 July 1828) was a French neoclassical sculptor.
Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment. Houdon's subjects included Denis Diderot (1771), Benjamin Franklin (1778-1809), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778), Voltaire (1781), Molière (1781), George Washington (1785–1788), Thomas Jefferson (1789), Louis XVI (1790), Robert Fulton (1803–04), and Napoléon Bonaparte (1806).
Biography
Houdon was born in Versailles, on 20 March 1741.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". In 1752, he entered the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he studied with René-Michel Slodtz, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, and Jean-Baptiste Pigalle.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". From 1761 to 1764, he studied at the École royale des élèves protégés.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Houdon won the Prix de Rome in 1761, but was not greatly influenced by ancient and Renaissance art in Rome. His stay in the city is marked by two characteristic and important productions: the superb écorché[2] (1767), an anatomical model which has served as a guide to all artists since his day, and the statue of Saint Bruno in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome. After four years in Italy, Houdon returned to Paris.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
He submitted Morpheus to the Salon of 1771.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He developed his practise of portrait busts. He became a member of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture in 1771, and a professor in 1778. In 1778, he modeled Voltaire, producing a portrait bust with wig for the Comédie-Française; one for the Palace of Versailles, and one for Catherine the Great.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
In 1778, he joined the masonic lodge Les Neuf Sœurs, where he later met Benjamin Franklin, and John Paul Jones.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". For Salon of 1781, he submitted a Diana which was refused without drapery.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Houdon's portrait sculpture of Washington was the result of a specific invitation by Benjamin Franklin to cross the Atlantic in 1785, specifically to visit Mount Vernon, so that Washington could model for him. Washington sat for wet clay life models and a plaster life mask. These models served for many commissions of Washington, including the standing figure commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly, for the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". Numerous variations of the Washington bust were produced, portraying him variously as a general in uniform, in the classical manner showing chest musculature, and as Roman Consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus clad in a toga.
In the 1780s, Houdon produced two semi-nude sculptures, Winter and Bather.[3]
Perceived as bourgeois for his connections to the court of Louis XVI, he fell out of favour during the French Revolution, although he escaped imprisonment. Houdon returned to favor during the French Consulate and Empire, being taken on as one of the original artistic team for what became the Column of the Grande Armée at Wimille.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
He was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, on 17 December 1804.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". He was created a Chevalier de l'Empire in 1809, which was made hereditary by letters patent in 1816.
Houdon died in Paris on 15 July 1828,Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". and was interred at the Montparnasse Cemetery.[4]
Family
On 1 July 1786, he married Marie-Ange-Cecile Langlois;Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". they had three daughters: Sabine, Anne-Ange, and Claudine.Script error: No such module "Footnotes".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".
Legacy and influence
Houdon's sculptures were used as models for the engravings used on various U.S. postage stamps of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which depict Washington in profile.[5]
Gallery
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Bust of Armand Thomas Hue de Miromesnil, 1775, Victoria and Albert Museum
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Bust of Washington based on a life mask cast in 1786, National Portrait Gallery
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Bust of Voltaire, 1778, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers
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Voltaire, 1778, National Gallery of Art
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Bust of Madame Récamier after Joseph Chinard
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George Washington, Virginia State Capitol complex
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Seated Voltaire, Musée Fabre
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Skinned Man, Musée Fabre
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Winter, 1783, Musée Fabre
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The Summer, 1785, Fabre Museum
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Diana, 1780, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum
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Bust of Anne-Marie-Louise Thomas de Domangeville de Sérilly, Comtesse de Pange (1780), Art Institute of Chicago
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Madame Houdon, Louvre
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See also
Notes
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References
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External links
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- Virtual Gallery
- Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828) (Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History)
- Art and the empire city: New York, 1825–1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Houdon (see index)
- Template:FrenchSculptureCensus
- Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) an exhibition organized and exhibited by the National Gallery of Art, Washington (exhibited May 4 - September 7, 2003), the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (November 4, 2003 - January 25, 2004), and the Réunion des musées nationaux and l'Etablissement public du musée et du domaine national de Versailles, France (March 1 - May 30, 2004). The exhibit was curated by Anne Poulet, curator emerita of European sculpture and decorative arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Pages with script errors
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- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
- 1741 births
- 1828 deaths
- Artists from Versailles
- 18th-century French sculptors
- French male sculptors
- 19th-century French sculptors
- Members of the Académie des beaux-arts
- Prix de Rome for sculpture
- People of the French Revolution
- Les Neuf Sœurs
- French Freemasons
- Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
- 19th-century French male artists
- 18th-century French male artists
- Knights of the First French Empire