Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Edme Bouchardon - Sculpture Studies / Figure Studies

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for Statue of the Prince of Waldeck
1730
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for Equestrian Statue of Louis XV
ca. 1748-52
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for The Seine
1739
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for The Seine
1739
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for Caryatid
ca. 1748-62
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for Caryatid
ca. 1748-62
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for
Cupid cutting his Bow from the Club of Hercules

ca. 1746-47
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for
Cupid cutting his Bow from the Club of Hercules

ca/ 1746-47
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Figure Study for
Cupid cutting his Bow from the Club of Hercules

ca. 1746-47
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) – French sculptor, internationally famous in his day for reacting against the pictorial and expressive idiom of Baroque and Rococo sculpture.  Trained by his father, the provincial sculptor and architect Jean-Baptiste Bouchardon (1667-1742), he was highly proficient technically, imposing an icy finish on his works.  Always based on intensive study from life, these sometimes imitate closely the sculpture of Classical antiquity, and at other times strive for a calmly dignified naturalism.  Bouchardon's attempt to ally realism with classicism within a single work (Cupid cutting his Bow from the Club of Hercules, c. 1750, Paris, Louvre) not only did not find favour at the French court, where the statue was criticized for 'turning Cupid into a street-porter', but proved an embarrassment in the making: when the eminently respectable Bouchardon sought an adolescent model amongst youths bathing in the Seine, he was reported to the police for soliciting.

– Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000)

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
ca. 1737
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
ca. 1737
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
1748
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
1748
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
1748
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Edme Bouchardon
Académie
1748
drawing
Musée du Louvre