Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
artist promptly sold, will be familiar to playgoers. His diploma work,
The River, 518 (L. of entrance), and a bust of the poet Nivelle de la
Chaussee, 519 (embrasure of window), will be found in this room. J.A.
Houdon (1741-1828), whose admirable bust of Moliere, and marvellously
vivid statue of the seated Voltaire--the greatest production of
eighteenth-century French sculpture--will be also known to playgoers
at the Francais, gives his name to Room IV. Few artists maintained so
high and consistent a standard of excellence.[201] 716 is a replica in
bronze of a statue of Diana, executed for the Empress Catherine II. of
Russia; 708, Diderot; 711, Rousseau; 712 Voltaire; 713, Franklin; 715,
Washington; 717, Mirabeau, are busts of revolutionary heroes of which
many replicas exist, executed at seventy-two francs each (if with
shoulders ninety-six francs), to save himself from starvation during
the revolutionary period. Two exquisitely charming terra-cotta busts
in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and
1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine
Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an _habitue_ of
the Francais, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported
by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite
exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the
decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou (1730-1809) here
represented by 775, a Bacchante, and 772, Maria Leczinska as Charity.
Other two works by Pigalle, 782, Love and Friendship, and 783, bust of
Marshal Saxe, may be noticed before quitting this room. Room V. is
dedicated to A.D. Chaudet (1763-1810), whose diploma work, Phorbas and
OEdipus, 533, is here shown; 537, a Bacchante, is a rather poor
example of the art of Claude Michel (1738-1814), known as Clodion
whose popularity rivalled that of his master Pajou, and whose
prodigious output of marble and terra-cotta sculpture failed to keep
pace with the demands of his clients. 777 is Pajou's, The Forsaken
Psyche. By the seductive and sentimental Canova are 523 and 524,
variants of a favourite theme, Love and Psyche.[202] With some sense
of relief we enter the more invigorating atmosphere of Room VI., named
after the sturdy Francois Rude (1784-1855), who flung off the yoke of
the Roman classicists, and from whose simple, austere atelier issued
works instinct with a new life, such as the dramatic group, The
Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, on the E. base of the Triumphal
Arch of the Etoile. Rude, who rescued the art from the fetid
atmosphere of a corrupt society and emancipated it from a hide-bound
pedagogy, is here represented by his Jeanne d'Arc, 813; Maurice de
Saxe, 811; and 815, Napoleon awakening to Immortality, a model for a
monument to the Emperor. In the centre are 810, Mercury in bronze, and
the Neapolitan fisher lad (no number). Rude's contemporary and
fellow-liberator, David d'Angers (1789-1856), chiefly renowned for his
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