Memoirs of the life and works of Jean Antoine Houdon : the sculptor of Voltaire and of Washington . tic dream of the Caesar. Beyond a doubt the painter and thestatuary have instinctively invested their subject with a species ofdivine grandeur. But what matters it if the quasi-Olympian ex-pression, well justified by the epic grandeur of the model, does notin any way detract from the truthfulness of the face and features?And Claude Phillips has written: Houdon, . . after havingportrayed, with unapproachable mastery and insight, the most in-teresting personalities of the eighteenth century, ... s
Memoirs of the life and works of Jean Antoine Houdon : the sculptor of Voltaire and of Washington . tic dream of the Caesar. Beyond a doubt the painter and thestatuary have instinctively invested their subject with a species ofdivine grandeur. But what matters it if the quasi-Olympian ex-pression, well justified by the epic grandeur of the model, does notin any way detract from the truthfulness of the face and features?And Claude Phillips has written: Houdon, . . after havingportrayed, with unapproachable mastery and insight, the most in-teresting personalities of the eighteenth century, ... so altered hisstyle with his subject as to produce a sublime bust of Napoleon I—the only portrait in which, without theatrical pose, his constructiveideality is convincingly shown—and to occupy himself with thebronze adornments, in the imperial style, which were destined forthe great column of Boulogne. Houdon had earlier made a bust of Bonaparte as First Consul,which is rated as one of the best likenesses of Napoleon at thatperiod. Unfortunately, the original has been lost, but it is well. WAP(D)]LE(D)^ Jean Antoine Houdon 267 known by having been often reproduced at Sevres, in small sizes,and in our frontispiece the sculptor is represented modeling thisbust on his block. It is one of the few portraits of Napoleon wherehe is represented wearing short, close side-whiskers. Of this bustMichelet, in his History of the Nineteenth Century, says: Iknow of but two faithful portraits of Napoleon. One is the smallbust by Houdon (1800), wild, dark and threatening, suggesting asinister enigma. The other is a painting, and represents him at fulllength in his cabinet (1810). It is a work by David. Here wehave two acute criticisms upon Houdons two busts of Napoleon,as First Consul and as Emperor, by two different minds, by Mi-chelet and by Dayot, at two different epochs, and but one conclu-sion can be deduced from them, which is the very palpable one, thatour sculptors delineations of th
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidmemoirsoflif, bookyear1911
