At the Getty: Edme Bouchardon, masterful French sculptor
“Self-Portrait” (red chalk; about 1730), by Edme Bouchardon. The Morgan Library & Museum
Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment
Clearly not a household name, in this country at least, the French draftsman and marble sculptor Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) was a transitional figure between Rococo and Neoclassicism, part of “the generation of 1700” as Pierre Rosenberg coined it in 1973. In the catalogue that accompanies the Getty exhibition of his work, up through April 2, Guilhem Scherf points out that “The ease with which Bouchardon drew was famous in his lifetime and after his death.”
To say that the show is impressive is an understatement. It’s taken me some weeks to put pen to paper because, after meeting the curators, Anne-Lise Desmas and Édouard Kopp, I undertook to read their doorstopper of a catalogue from cover to cover, and it’s no stroll through the Bois de Boulogne, let me tell you. But let’s see if we can boil it down to a few essentials.
“The Sleeping Faun” (marble; 1726-30), by Edme Bouchardon. © Musée du Louvre
Bouchardon dashed out of the starting gate in a hurry. His father, Jean-Baptiste Bouchardon, had achieved a certain artistic fame of his own, and was appointed master sculptor in 1698, the year his son was born, and later the town of Chaumont elevated him to various positions, including master architect in 1713.
Edme Bouchardon left France for Rome in 1723, where he spent the following nine years, seven of them as a pensionnaire of the Académie de France. While there, he made quite a name for himself. His first work of note, and you can see it until the end of the exhibition in the Getty Museum’s entrance hall, is “The Sleeping Faun,” a large marble sculpture after the classical “Barberini Faun” (late third or early second century BC). Soon he was receiving commissions to do portrait busts of prominent individuals, including Pope Clement XII. But not only did he excel with his chisel, he could also do wonders with a piece of red chalk. In the words of the comte de Caylus, “Often, with no need to overdraw or erase, he drew with such assurance that the line of an entire figure went, without interruption, from neck to heel.”
But his skill as an artist was just one aspect of his genius”
“His imagination,” Scherf notes, “fertilized by vast erudition and doggedly repetitive work, was truly outstanding.”
“Baron Philipp von Stosch” (marble; 1727), by Edme Bouchardon. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
So outstanding, in fact, that his people wanted him back home, doing sculptures for France and not for the Italians. But, so as to convey a sense of his boundless enthusiasm and his desire to succeed, while in Rome Bouchardon even submitted drawings or models to competitions for which he had not been invited to participate. As he told his father, “I followed my muse.”
Now returned to Paris, Bouchardon was engaged in a vast array of projects, and we may wonder where he found the time to do so much. Well, apparently he wasn’t a social butterfly, and he did remain a bachelor his entire life. Scherf points out that “Bouchardon the man is practically indistinguishable from his art,” and also, elsewhere, that “He did not go to the theater for fear it might corrupt his sensibility.” In other words, and this is borne out by reading through the entire catalogue, very, very little sense of the man behind the artist emerges. No fun stuff, no romantic flings or escapades. He seems to have been working 24/7. Didn’t he enjoy anything else?
Yes, gardening. “It is my entertainment and the sole pleasure I enjoy when I leave my serious occupations.”
One of those serious occupations, a duty which he performed from 1737 to 1762, that is, until a few months before his death, was as the draftsman of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, and one of his tasks was to design tokens and medals “intended to be perfect little monuments to the glory of the king,” as pointed out by Édouard Kopp.
“Walnut Halves, Large Ones!” from “Études prises dans le bas people ou les Cris de Paris” (red chalk; about 1737), by Edme Bouchardon. © The Trustees of the British Museum
More impressive as a group than individually are the 60 drawings Bouchardon executed between 1737 and 1746, referred to as “Studies Drawn among the Lower Folk or the Cries of Paris.” The series is comprised of five sets of 12 prints each. As Kopp explains it, “each print describes a street trade personified by a single figure, seen in close-up, wearing the garb and holding the tools typically associated with his or her trade. The drawings and the prints derived from them constitute a poignant record of the working class in eighteenth-century Paris.”
And what sort of figures are these? Well, here’s a brief list: hat seller, water carrier, baker boy, fish vendor, knife grinder, oyster seller, scullery maid, rat catcher, chimney sweep, lantern seller, milkmaid, bricklayer, well cleaner, and barrel-organ grinder. I immediately think of August Sander and his “Citizens of the Twentieth Century,” comprising over 500 photographs, and also Irving Penn, whose “Small Trades” series, created in 1950 and 1951, was the subject of a Getty show in late 2009.
One of the highlights of Bouchardon’s career–vastly different in scope from his singular works in marble or even his equestrian sculpture of Louis XV–was the design and execution of the Rue de Grenelle fountain. As Édouard Kopp writes, “Aside from historical drawing, the fountain was a genre that the artist was especially fond of, particularly since it allowed him to combine sculpture, architecture, decoration, and the element of water into a total work of art.”
“First Design for the Trevi Fountain” (red chalk; 1731), by Edme Bouchardon. Private Collection
Completed in 1745, the Rue de Grenelle fountain was one of only two designs for fountains that came to fruition, although in the 1730s Bouchardon created many red chalk drawings that expressed his ideas for them, and in many cases the fountains would have been adorned by such classical figures as satyrs, billy goats, cherubs, swans, bacchantes, and that lovely maiden Venus who emerged from the sea on a half-shell.
The Rue de Grenelle fountain can still be seen in Paris, and perhaps many of us have admired it without knowing the story or the responsible party behind it (likewise, on the grounds of the Versailles palace, there are bronze sculptural groups designed by Bouchardon). What the Getty exhibition shows us are some of the designs and terracotta models, impressive and captivating works in themselves.
Bouchardon also made studies and models for funerary monuments, but unfortunately (if we can judge from the extant drawings) none of them came to pass.
“Young Male Nude, Body Turned toward the Right, Head Seen from Back” (red chalk; about 1745), by Edme Bouchardon. © Musée du Louvre
“Cupid Carving a Bow from Hercules’s Club” (marble; 1745-50), by Edme Bouchardon. © Musée du Louvre
Perhaps the star of the show–even though it was grumbled about at the time by members of the French court–is “Cupid Carving a Bow from Hercules’s Club,” one of the finest achievements in marble that most of us will ever set eyes on. Unlike a painting or a photograph, it needs to be experienced, in needs to be felt, in person.
Bouchardon didn’t just begin his Cupid by chipping away at a block of marble, and the show contains numerous red chalk drawings of a young male model, in the nude, and from different angles. The artist was, if anything, thorough in his preparation.
This thoroughness is particularly evident in the many drawings that tell the story leading up to the equestrian monument to Louis XV, installed at the Place Louis XV on February 23, 1763, seven months after the sculptor’s death.
“Head of a Horse” (red chalk; 1749-52), by Edme Bouchardon. © Musée du Louvre
The imposing bronze statue was perhaps Bouchardon’s greatest achievement, and as with his Cupid and the Rue de Grenelle fountain there are many, many preparatory drawings. What’s ironic, in some ways, is that these drawings have survived whereas the statue has not. It was destroyed during the French Revolution on August 11, 1792, having lasted less than 30 years (a lifespan similar to the World Trade Center in New York, although the similarities seem to end there).
Now, this gets a little interesting. Of that huge equestrian statue only the right hand remains, resting on the top part of the baton of command. It’s fairly impressive to behold (and, believe me, I wanted to run my own hand over it), and it has an compelling history in that it was given to a former prison whose arrest warrant had been signed by the real-life version of that same hand, which is to say, Louis XV himself.
Here also is where the exhibition touches fingertips with a previous Getty show, “Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from the Renaissance to Revolution,” which was on view in 2008-2009. That exhibition contained the left foot of Louis XIV from his equestrian monument in the Place Louis-le-Grand (now Place Vendôme). The work of François Girardon, it was brought down a day later, on August 12, 1792.
“Virgin of Sorrows” (tonnerre stone; 1734-38), by Edme Bouchardon. Paris, église Saint-Sulpice. Image © Jean-Marc Moser
As you can see, I’ve saved the most fascinating tidbits for the end.
At any rate, there’s more we could discuss, such as the role of those who were collectors of Bouchardon’s work (in particular, Pierre Jean Mariette), but I’ll just point out that the show was organized with the Musée du Louvre in Paris and it contains over 30 sculptures plus 100 drawings and prints. The catalogue gives us more, because many works from the French exhibition didn’t travel to the U.S., and vice-versa. I should even point out that there’s a second catalogue, one devoted to the drawings, by co-curator Édouard Kopp, for those with an interest in the subject that outpaces mine.
While I recommend the show wholeheartedly, I cannot see that Bouchardon will become better known in America. Rodin, Houdon, perhaps a couple of other classic French sculptors… but the rest are liable to fall back into near-obscurity where the layman is concerned. For the time being, however, Bouchardon warrants our attention, for he was certainly a master in the first degree.
Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment is on view through April 2 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, located in the Getty Center at 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Hours, Tuesday through Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Free; parking $15 per car, reduced to $10 after 3 p.m. Call (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER