19th Century Sculpture
Sculpture of the 19th centurySculptor, 19th century
He was able to avoid the condemnation of the academicians for the favor of Napoleon II and his familiy, but this did not prevent him from being abused and La Danse became an important figure in society. For Rodin and his former classmates, the freshness of rapprochement was a manifestation, but the critics saw it as an effort to build a memorial of erotic.
Incorporating the liberty of use that was previously associated with the small terracotta of Clodion and Marin into a piece of work, it rejected the bourgeois and bourgeois contents of Rude's Marseillaise. As in the early part of the time, she was open to the accusation of being frivolous, and even Rodin, who had learned a lot from Carpeaux, considered Rude's Marseillaise to be the deeper work.
In his more private research and sketching, he explores the fractured surfaces and outlines. Dr. Flaubert's portraits are reminiscent of Bernini's portraits of Scipione Borghese. Whereas academics of the period still used a shiny finish, Carpeaux freed the surface's expressiveness almost to the point of abstract, but not at the cost of three-dimensional stuctur.
It was this conscious absence of finishing, a revolution in sculpture, that gradually removed the line between the drawing and the work. Carpeaux's sensuousness was adjusted to the requirements of the 1860s by Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824-87), who had the biggest studio for the manufacture of portraiture and ornamentation in brass.
It was described by Edmond Goncourt as the Clodion of his day, and his work certainly owed a great deal of this master's small terracotta, but he worked on a much bigger scale and his manipulation has exemplified some of Carpeaux's liberty, especially in the hairs of the Bacchante.
Also under Carpeaux's direction (he was called'un Carpeaux gras') was Jules Dalou (1838-1902), but his best work is more reflective and serious. As Van Gogh did, he took up his interest in working classes issues from a survey of British Victorian painters, but he could not bring this realisticism into line with his wish for the monuments, and his Triumph of the Republic (1899) on Place de la Nation in Paris is little impressive except in its parts.
We should also not miss (1) the adventurous and inventive Alsatian sculptress Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), whose world-famous sculpture of the State of Liberty survives him and most of his contemporary people. And (2) the beloved US monumentsculptor Daniel Chester France. Romanticism had little influence on British sculpture and nothing like the best quality Franco product ever came out of the Victorian arts until the time of Alfred Stevens and, after him, Frederic Leighton.
There was hardly any substitute for the aseptic, scholarly realisticism of the Albert Memorialists ( "Irish Sculpture" and John Henry Foley), who acquired lethal technical skills at the cost of vital art. The subtle dampening effect of mechanic reproductions and enlargements subverted the expressiveness of the artist's personalities, while the evolution of synthetic stones, which were easy to pour and work, made it possible to treat even large sculptures in the form of large series.
In the second half of the century, John Gibson (1791-1866), who was spotted by Liverpool expert William Roscoe, tried to maintain the neo-classical sculpture he had learnt from his foremen Antonio Canova (1757-1822) and Bertel Thorwaldsen (1868-1944).
His rigour is alleviated by a precise examination of the mortal organism, but the work of the American Hiram Powers (1805-73) shows a quest for the pureness of shape that all too often becomes bland. However, the classics of the 19th century should not only be seen as a retardation in fashion; they kept the idea of the pureness of shape, which was to flourish again in the work of Aristide Maillol (1861-1944) and Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), who at the end of the century was looking for an alternate to Rodin's "beef steak" work.
Neoclassical sculptors. The only sculptress before Sir Alfred Gilbert who possessed the talents that could have taken British sculpture out of its provinceism was Alfred Stevens but his carreer was one of eternal disappointment and only his strong majesties give a real notion of his Michelangelesque virtues and aspirations.
Sculptures by American artists. Now we come to the most important sculptural artists of the 19th century and the greatest sculptress since Mannerism, if not before: Also see sculptures of the twentieth century.