Houdon

Magazine Antiques, May, 2003 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon, who Thomas Jefferson thought was "unrivaled in Europe," is still considered to have been the finest sculptor in Europe during the Enlightenment. Yet until now there has not been an international exhibition devoted to this remarkable artist. A traveling exhibition entitled Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment opens on May 4 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it remains on view until September 7. It then travels to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and finally to the Musee national du chateau de Versailles. The show comprises more than sixty of Houdson's finest works in marble, plaster, terracotta, and bronze as well as a painting of Houdon at work in his studio by Louis Leopold Boilly.

Houdon's oeuvre is fascinating for the penetrating and accurate likenesses he created of many of the most important figures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They included such writers and philosophers as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Moliere; the founding fathers of the United States, George Washington, Benjamin Franidin, and Jefferson; and rulers such as Catherine the Great and Napoleon land Josephine. In addition he created statues of biblical, mythological, and allegorical figures of great psychological depth.

Houdon took a less traditional route than most artists in eighteenth-century Paris. He did not show all his work at the Salon (all his female nudes were rejected during the reign of Louis XVI), but opened his studio in the Bibliotheque du Roi to the public. Although members of the royal court generally preferred the work of Jean Jacques Caffieri, Houdon enjoyed widespread patronage. He took painstaking measurements with calipers for his portraits, had a unique technique for rendering eyes, and was not averse to mass-producing his sculptures (particularly of famous people), which was generally accomplished by those employed in his workshop.

While many aristocrats commissioned portraits of themselves or members of their family, they did not, for the most part, collect sculpture by Houdon. An exception is the small German court of Saxe-Gotha und Altenburg, where Duke Ernst II, who in the early 1770s engaged Houdon to put together a study collection of sculptures that eventually included not only casts from the antique but also numerous works by Houdon himself. A newly discovered, extensive letter Houdon wrote to the duke is reproduced in its entirety in the exhibition catalogue. It reveals much about the artist's aesthetic philosophy and the methods he used to create his sculptures, as well as a great deal of practical advice on hanging, lighting, framing, and the placement he felt would best suit the objects inside the crates he had shipped to Gotha.

Between 1773 and 1783 Houdon worked on pieces for Catherine the Great of Russia, and in October 1785 he spent two weeks at Mount Vernon taking measurements and making studies of George Washington fro m life. During the French Revolution Houdon was forced to move out of the studio that he had worked in for decades, but under Napoleon he was rehabilitated and received official commissions. The last time he exhibited in the Salon was in 1814, after which he seems to have produced few sculptures, although he continued teaching at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

The catalogue of the exhibition is written by Anne L. Poulet, Christoph Frank, Ulricke D. Mathies, and Guilhelm Scharf. It may be obtained by telephoning 800-697-9350.

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Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826], by Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), 1789. Inscribed "houdon f 1789" on tile right shoulder. White marble on white marble base, height 22 1/4 inches. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, George Nixon Black fund.

Winter (also entitled La Frileuse), by Houdon, 1783. Inscribed "HOUDON 1783 DONNE AU MUSEE-FABRE PAR M: CREUZE DE LESSER, PREFET DE L'HERAULT. 1828" on the front of the plinth. White marble with gray veins, height 57 1/16 inches. Musee Fabre, Montpellier, France, gift of Creuze de Lesser, Prefet de L'Herault.