Volume 50, Number 12 · July 17, 2003
Capturing Character
By Andrew Butterfield
Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment
Catalog of the exhibition by Anne L. Poulet
an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 4–September 7, 2003; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, November 4, 2003–January 25, 2004; and theMusée et Domaine National du Château de Versailles, March 1–May 30, 2004.
National Gallery of Art/University of Chicago Press, 384 pp., $85.00
Ein Versuch über die Gesichter Houdons
by Willibald Sauerländer
Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 72 pp., 12E (paper)
During the last decades of the eighteenth century, Jean-Antoine Houdon was the most famous artist alive. Although based in Paris, he had clients throughout the Western Hemisphere, from Russia to the United States, a claim no other sculptor could make. He was, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, 'the first statuary of the world.' Above all he was celebrated as a maker of portraits, and the list of his subjects seemingly includes every noteworthy figure of his day. Napoleon, Catherine the Great, Gluck, Lafayette, John Paul Jones, Robert Fulton—the list goes on and on. Houdon was especially favored by leaders of the Enlightenment—Diderot, Voltaire, d'Alembert—and by leaders of the American Revolution—Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington.
Review, 4105 words
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