Famous People

Southland Times, Issue 21073, 3 May 1930, Page 22

Famous People

Who: JEAN ANTOINE HOUDON. Where: France. When: Eighteenth to nineteenth century. Why famous: A French sculptor. Since he was born at Versailles, it may be that as a little boy he frolicked at his games in the elaborate grounds of the royal chateau, where Louis XlV.’s clever landscape gardeners had contrived all sorts of grottoes, arcades and shrubberies as background for a multitude of statues. Indeed, it has been suggested that the young Houdon’s later work was more influenced by the impressions gained from contemporary statuary, than ever it was by his studies at the Ecole Royale de Sculpture or in Italy. Having delighted the Pope by a St. Bruno, which he made for an Italian church, Houdon began to exhibit his works at the Paris Salon of 1771. Thereafter, for years on end, Houdon was a conspicuous contributor to the yearly Salons. His subjects were . legion; the statesman Turgot, the composer Gluck, d’Alembert, Prince Henry of Russia, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Moliere at the Theatre Francais. Having made a portrait -bust in Paris of Benjamin Franklin, Houdon left his native country in 1785 in the company of the American envoy from the new Republic. For a little time he was a guest of General Washington at Mount Vernon, modelling there a bust from which he later made the statue destined for the capital of the State of Virginia. His portrait bust has remained one of the most familiar and best liked of the statues of Washington. On his return to France, commissions came slowly, as the Revolution was in full swing. There is a story that Houdon saved his own life by the quick and skilful conversion of a statue of a saint into a statue

of one of the muses. Later, under Napoleon, he achieved some slight return to popular favour, being invited to make busts of the Empress Josephine, of Marshal Ney, even one of Napoleon himself. The Emperor conferred upon Houdon the medal of the Legion of Honour, thus appropriately crowning a career of distinction.