Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles (Jun 2008)
Du portrait malgré lui à la grâce intemporelle du visage
Abstract
Jean-Antoine Houdon was born in Versailles and baptised in the parish of Saint-Louis on the 23 March 1741. His father, Jacques Houdon, was a servant in the house of Monsieur de la Motte and his mother, Anne Rabache, was the daughter of the gardeners of the palace. At the age of eight, the child had the chance, despite his social origins, to be in close proximity to artists from the École royale des élèves protégés (School for gifted artists) when his father became concierge at the Petite École of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In this prestigious place, sculpture imposed itself, little by little, on Houdon, and in his turn, he borrowed from his elders. He showed in his first Salon in 1769 works completed in Rome, following his winning the Prix de Rome. Already he had worked in various styles, from works of Antiquity, to grand classical statues and the baroque. From his debut, he gave free reign to his talent, inscribing himself in the tradition with liberty. Noted for his abilities, he began to receive his first commissions. Diderot introduced him in foreign courts, and Houdon began to assert himself in the art of the portrait: little by little, all the notable figures of the era wished to pose for him. In France, he was distanced from royal commissions, and so he was confined by many as a minor interpreter of human figuration. Houdon became the uncontested master of the genre, the portraitist of the Enlightenment, and he remained an impassive witness to the Ancient Regime until the Consulate, and to the Empire. Princes, aristocrats, senior civil servants of the king, philosophers, encyclopedists, artists and scholars, all lent themselves to the practise of his art. Thus we have a fascinating gallery of the busts of men and women, figures of their time, immortalised in clay, plaster, marble or bronze. Expressions and looks, intense lives, spring from the work of Houdon, beyond the subjects' diverse ages, genders, functions, ranks and styles, certain have become universal masterpieces.
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