the first, the chief representatives are Lemoyne and his pupil
Falconet, who executed the equestrian statue of Peter the Great
at St Petersburg; of the other, Clodion, whose real name was
Claude Michel (c. 1745–1814). The latter worked largely in
terra-cotta, and modelled with great spirit and invention, but
in the sensual unsculpturesque manner prevalent in his time.
In the later part of the 18th century France produced two sculptors of great eminence in Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714–1785) and Jean Antoine Houdon (1740–1828). Houdon may be regarded as the precursor of the modern school of French sculpture of the better sort. Towards the end of the 18th century a revolution was brought about in the style of sculpture by the suddenly revived taste for antique art. A period of dull pseudo-classicism succeeded, which in most cases stifled all original talent and reduced the plastic arts to a lifeless form of archaeology. Regarded even as imitations the works of this period are very unsuccessful: the sculptors got hold merely of the dry bones, not of the spirit of classic art; and their study of the subject was so shallow and unintelligent that they mostly picked out what was third-rate for special admiration and ignored the glorious beauty of the best works of true Hellenic art. Thus in sculpture, as in painting and architecture, a study which might have been stimulating and useful in the highest degree became a serious hindrance to the development of modern art; this misconception and misdirection occurred not only in France but in the other countries of Europe. In France, however, the victories of Napoleon I. and his arrogant pretension to create a Gaulish empire on the model of that of ancient Rome caused the taste for pseudo-Roman art to be more pronounced than elsewhere. Among the first sculptors of this school were Antoine Chaudet (1763–1810) and Joseph Bosio (1769–1845). Early 19th century. The latter was much employed by Napoleon I.; he executed with some ability the bronze spiral reliefs round the column of the Place Vendome and the statue of Napoleon on the top, and also modelled the classical quadriga on the triumphal arch in the Place du Carrousel. Jacques Pradier of Geneva (1792–1862), produced the “Chained Prometheus” of the Louvre and the Niobe group (1822). He possessed great technical ability, but aimed in most of his works at a soft sensuous beauty which is usually considered to be specially unsuited to sculpture. François Rude (1784–1855), worked in a style modelled on Graeco-Roman sculpture treated with some freedom. His bronze Mercury in the Louvre, is a clever work and the enormous high-relief on the Arc de l’Etoile in Paris, representing “The Song of Departure to Battle,” is full of vigour and movement, but his statues of Marshal Ney in the Luxembourg Gardens and of General Cavaignac (1847) in the cemetery of Montmartre are conspicuously poor. The reliefs on the pediment of the Panthéon are by Pierre Jean David of Angers (1789–1856); his early works are of dull classic style, but later in life he became a realist and produced very unsculpturesque results. A. bronze statue of a Dancing Fisher-lad modelled by Francois Joseph Duvet, now in the Luxembourg collection, is an able work of the genre class. Other French sculptors who were highly esteemed in their time were Ottin, Courtet, Simart, Etex and Carpeaux. The last was an artist of great ability, and produced an immense number of clever but often, sculpturesquely considered, offensive statues. He obtained the highest renown in France, and, hailed as a great innovator by those who welcomed a greater measure of naturalism, he was denounced by the “ pure” and classic school as a typical example of the sad degradation of taste which prevailed under the rule of Napoleon III.
The modern schools of French sculpture are the most important in the world; they are dealt with in a separate section later. Technical skill and intimate knowledge of the human form are possessed by French artists to a degree which has probably never been surpassed. Many of their works have a similar fault to that of one class of French painters: they are much injured by an excess of sensual realism; in many cases nude statues are simply life-studies with all the faults and individual peculiarities of one model. Very unsculpturesque results are produced by treating a statue as a representation of a naked person,—one, that is, who is obviously in the habit of wearing clothes,—a very different thing from the purity of the ancient Greek treatment of the nude. Thus the great ability of many French sculptors has been degraded to suit, or rather to illustrate, the taste of the voluptuary; An extravagance of attitude and an undignified arrangement of the figures do much to injure some of the large groups which are full of technical merit, and executed with marvellous anatomical knowledge. This is specially the case with much of the sculpture that decorates the buildings of Paris. The. group of nude dancers by Carpeaux outside the opera-house is a work of astonishing skill and sensual imagination, unsculpturesque in style and especially unfitted to decorate the comparatively rigid lines of a building. The egotism of modern French sculptors, with rare exceptions, has not allowed them, when professedly aiming at providing plastic decoration for buildings, to accept the necessarily .subordinate reserve which is so necessary for architectonic sculpture. Other French works, on the other hand, have frequently erred in the direction of a sickly sentimentalism, or a petty realism, which is fatal to sculpturesque beauty; or they seek to 'render modern life, sometimes on the scale of life-size, even to the point of securing atmospheric effect. This exaggerated misconception of the function of sculpture can only be a passing phase; yet as any movement issuing from Paris finds adherents throughout other countries, the effect upon sculptors and upon public taste can hardly be otherwise than mischievous. The real power and merits of the modern French school make these faults all the more conspicuous.
Whatever work of importance was produced by Netherlandish sculptors in the 17th and 18th centuries, was due entirely to Italian training and influence. Francois Duquesnoy (usually called “The Fleming”) (1594–1644) has already been mentioned; he worked principally inNetherlandish sculptors. Rome, in rivalry with Bernini, and most of his works have remained in Italy, but, inasmuch as his style is conspicuously French, he is here included in the French school. His pupil Arthur Quellinus is best known by his allegorical groups on the pediments of Amsterdam 'town-hall, and has also left some traces of his activity in Berlin. P. Buyster, native of Brussels (b. 1595), passed into France and is also often classed as a French sculptor.
By far the greatest sculptor of the classical revival was Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770–1844), an Icelander by race, whose boyhood was spent at Copenhagen, and who settled in Rome in 1797, when Canova’s fame was at its highest. The Swedish sculptors Tobias Sergell and Johann ByströmScandinavian sculptors. belonged to the classic school; the latter followed in, Thorwaldsen’s footsteps. Another Swede named Fogelberg was famed chiefly for his sculptured subjects taken from Norse mythology. H. W. Bissen and Ierichau of Denmark produced some able works,—the former a fine equestrian statue of Frederick VII. at Copenhagen, and the latter a very spirited and widely known group of a Man attacked by a Panther.
During the troublous times of the Reformation, sculpture, like the other arts, continued to decline. Of 17th-century monumental effigies that of Sir Francis Vere (d. 1607) in the north transept at Westminster is one of the best, though its design-a recumbent effigy overshadowedSeventeenth century in England. by a slab covered with armour, upborne by four figures of men-at-arms—is almost an exact copy of the tomb of Engelbert II. of Vianden-Nassau.[1] The finest bronze statues of this century are those of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham (d. 1628), and his wife at the north-east of Henry VII.’s chapel. The effigy of the duke, in rich armour of the time of Charles I., lies with folded hands in the usual medieval pose. The face is fine and well modelled and the casting very good. The allegorical figures at the foot are caricatures of the style of Michelangelo, and are quite devoid of merit, but the kneeling statues of the duke’s children are designed with
- ↑ See Arendt, Chateau de Vianden (Paris, 1884).
