Revising Sculpture

James Draper and Guilhem Scherf. Augustin Pajou: Royal Sculptor, 1730-1809 (New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1998). Pp. 432. $75.00 cloth.

Christopher M. S. Johns. Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Pp. 288. $55.00 cloth.

Alison West. From Pigalle to Préault: Neoclassicism and the Sublime in French Sculpture, 1760-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Pp. $90.00 cloth.

Despite dramatic transformations and great diversity of subjects and styles, sculpture has long been one of the most neglected fields in the study of European art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While many of the developments in sculpture parallel those in painting, sculpture has tended to be viewed from a more limited perspective. Very few sculptors of the period even make name recognition in art history survey books. Houdon and Canova in the eighteenth century and Rude and Préault in the romantic period remain today perhaps the best-known sculptors of these eras.

Recent years, however, have witnessed a growing interest in this important discipline. Notable among these new studies are West's survey, Draper's and Guilhem Scherf's exhibition catalogue, and the superb monograph by Johns. West's book focuses on a survey of sculpture in France from the late eighteenth- through the early nineteenth-century, offering breadth of material and insights into the important aesthetic theories and debates of the time, including those of Lessing, Falconet, Quatremère de Quincy, and Emeric-David. From Pigalle to Préault provides a synthesis of scholarly work on French sculpture of the past twenty years and serves as an introduction to this subject. The book is richly illustrated with 319 black and white photographs and eight color plates that provide a rich compendium of images impressive in breadth and scope. West's study is divided into nine chapters that follow developments in French sculpture chronologically and thematically. She begins with an examination of the moral and didactic mission of public sculpture inherited from the seventeenth century and proceeds to look at the renewed role played by antique sculpture as a result of Winckelmann's aesthetics and the panEuropean neoclassical revival with its emphasis on the ideal nude. She stresses the capital importance of the Goujon revival, a facet of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sculpture that had been hitherto neglected and traces the influence of this sixteenth-century artist on major sculptors of the period, such as Falconet, Houdon, Pajou, Moitte, Chaudet, and Préault. She rightly emphasizes the importance of the French Academy in Rome in the eighteenth century and especially the influence of the international community of sculptors, such as Sergel and Canova, on French artists who were completing their education in the eternal city, including Houdon, Julien, and Clodion. She traces the role of these latter artists in forming a new classical idiom in French sculpture. West discusses at some length the range of D'Angiviller's government commission for the monumental sculpted effigies of the "grands hommes" of France, which she traces to Titon du Tillet's French Parnassus of 1708-18. She demonstrates the continuity of the ideas informing a "Parnassus" throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, giving pride of place in the nineteenth century to the great romantic artist, David d'Angers, who dedicated most of his career to the depiction of the "grands hommes" in monumental public and funerary sculpture, as well as in portraits and portrait medallions. Developments in romantic sculpture are treated in a more cursory manner, although West does devote a chapter to the sublime and the important concept of gigantism. She introduces the influence of Canova and Flaxman on early nineteenth-century French sculpture and gives an overview of the international neoclassical style which was transformed as a result of the tremendous impact of the discovery of the Elgin marbles.

What emerges from West's study is a picture of the complexity of the art of French sculpture of this...