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Monument to Léon Gambetta
An international subscription was launched after Gambetta's funeral to erect a public monument to his glory. The sculpture was to highlight both the great...
Nature Unveiling Herself to Science
The statue was commissioned in 1889 to decorate the new medical school in Bordeaux. A young woman, the allegory of nature, is slowly lifting the veils she is...
The Alligator Hunters
Like Jules Coutan's Eagle Hunt on the reverse, this high relief was designed for the façade of the anthropology gallery in the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle,...
The Good Samaritan
Small works of this kind are rare in Bartholdi's work as he preferred colossal sculptures, and was mainly famous for his Statue of Liberty, given to the...
Liberty
A gift from the French people to the American people for the 100th anniversary of American Independence in 1876, the colossal Statue of Liberty, has become...
Weeping Girl
Albert Bartholomé started his career as a painter and turned to sculpture after the death of his wife, when he set about making a monument for her tomb. He...
Tadamasa Hayashi
Tadamasa Hayashi (1853-1906) was one of the first ambassadors of Japanese culture in France. He arrived in Paris in 1878 to interpret for the art dealer and...
Napoleon I as a Roman Emperor
Barye had studied the animals in the Jardin des Plantes and in the comparative anatomy laboratory in the Natural History Museum in the company of Delacroix....
Seated Lion
In 1846, Louis-Philippe commissioned Barye to produce a pendant for a statue in the Tuileries Gardens, Lion with a Snake. The two statues stayed in the...
Straining Towards Nature
Joseph Bernard came from a family of stone hewers; a grant enabled him to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (1881) then at the fine art school in...
Water Carrier
In the early 20th century, Bernard produced several detached statues that seem utterly simple. They are large female nudes made from stone, marble or bronze....
The Sphinx
The Polish sculptor Boleslas Biegas settled in Paris where he exhibited bizarre sculptures which were highly successful in the opening years of the 20th...
The Cradle
Attracted by symbolism with a spiritual tinge, Bistolfi spent much of his career designing funerary monuments expressing the anguish of death and the mystery...
Hercules the Archer
Trained first in Montauban and then in Toulouse, Bourdelle started work as an assistant in Rodin's studio. The two men were bound together by mutual...
Ludwig van Beethoven
As the incarnation of romantic genius, Beethoven inspired numerous artists. Legend has it that Bourdelle as a young man, leafing through a book on the...
Head of Apollo
This Head of Apollo is the result of a study that Bourdelle started in 1900 when he was still employed as an assistant to Rodin. At that time, Bourdelle was...
Walking Panther
Rembrandt Bugatti is the son of the famous Italian furniture designer, Carlo Bugatti, and the brother of the automobile manufacturer Ettore Bugatti. He was a...
Art Criticism
This wax humorously evokes the links between creation and criticism in the second half of the 19th century in the form of an allegory. With her back arched,...
The Crown Prince and his Dog Nero
The only son of the emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie de Montijo, here about eight, is shown with the Emperor's dog.As his drawing tutor, the...
The Four Parts of the World
Baron Haussmann, the prefect of Paris who gave the city the face we know today, commissioned Carpeaux to design a fountain for the Luxembourg Gardens in 1867....
Eugénie Fiocre
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux has done justice to the ravishing beauty and pert snub-nosed face of Eugénie Fiocre, a dancer at the Opera. About the same time, the...
Ugolino
Carpeaux found inspiration in Canto XXXIII of Dante's Divine Comedy which describes the encounter in Hell between the writer, led by Virgil, and Ugolino della...
Dance
In 1863, Charles Garnier, the architect of the new Paris Opera, commissioned four sculpted groups by four artists who had won the Grand Prix de Rome to...
Sappho
Although Carpeaux' liveliness is found in his letters and drawings, it is most vividly expressed in his plaster models. Pensive figures, such as this plaster...
Miner from the Loire
The Miner forcefully incarnates an unexpected aspect of Carriès' sculpture. The figure modelled in wax over a plaster "core" probably represents a coalman,...
Faun
Born into a modest family in Lyon in 1855, Jean-Joseph Carriès was an unusual sculptor, highly admired in the late 19th century, who died in Paris in 1894....
Candelabra
In the 19th century, there were few sculptors who, like Carrier-Belluse, devoted a significant part of their careers to what was then known as "decorative...
Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter
In Greek and Roman mythology, Hebe, the daughter of Jupiter and Juno, was the goddess of youth and cupbearer of the gods, whose role was to serve their...
Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi
This rigidly symmetrical circular group stages heroes from Antiquity : Caïus and Tiberus Gracchus and Cornelia, their mother. The pyramidal construction and...
Joan of Arc at Domrémy
19th-century France was fascinated by the figure of Joan of Arc, an historical, mythified heroine who figured in the readily anti-British nationalist movement...
Louis Welden Hawkins
During the symbolist period masks were extremely popular, especially in sculpture. Charpentier produced at least three between 1893 and 1894. These were...
Young Mother nursing
This relief made Charpentier famous. In 1883, he exhibited it in plaster at the Salon for French artists, captivating the critics and official authorities....
Stone cutters - Masons
These later reliefs echo comments by Charpentier himself to Edmond de Goncourt in 1894: "He wanted to become a sculptor, and, at the time, had an image of a...
Maturity
After the break between Camille Claudel and Rodin, the latter tried to help Camille indirectly and obtained a state commission for her from the Director...
Woman Bitten by a Snake
This statue, along with Thomas Couture's painting The Romans of the Decadence, was the cynosure of the 1847 Salon, scandalising the public and the critics...
Negro from the Sudan
In 1847, Charles Cordier was struck by the beauty of an African model, a former slave, and made his portrait. He then decided to devote his career as a...
Tournament Prize
In the early part of his career, Henri Cros made highly refined wax sculptures. The wax was bulk dyed then painted and decorated with beads. Cros's...
Jeannine Dumas
In the work of Henri Cros, brother of the poet Charles Cros, portraits of his contemporaries are far less common than fantasy portraits or retrospective...
Nude Woman Reading
Dalou's statuettes of women are less well-known than his workers. Yet he inaugurated this genre with Woman Embroidering at the Salon in 1870 and continued...
Large Peasant
From 1889 onwards, Jules Dalou began to conceive a 'Monument to Workers'. Through visiting farms, mines and factories his artistic studies multiplied, both...
Ratapoil
Between March 1850 and December 1851, in Le Charivari, Daumier published about thirty lithographs illustrating a character representing "the shady agent, the...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
With Rude and Préault, David was part of a triad which dominated Romantic sculpture throughout the first half of the 19th century. He was above all the great...
Small Dancer Aged 14
When Degas died in 1917, 150 wax or clay sculptures were found in his studio. These statues had remained more or less unknown to the public while the...
The Tub
Nearly a quarter of the subjects sculpted by Degas show women at their toilet. Here, the painter of modern life has taken a fresh look at a bathing scene,...
Standing Horse
Degas was such a perfectionist that the poet Mallarmé nicknamed him "the rigorous one"; he lived for drawing, was passionately interested in photography and...
Schoolgirl
When Degas died on 27 September 1917, his heirs entrusted the inventory of his works to the renowned art dealers Durand-Ruel and Vollard. According to...
Virgin with a Lily
Gentleness is the prevailing feature in Delaplanche's Virgin with a Lily: the slight sway of the body lightly resting on the left leg, the ample mantle...
Male Torso
Desbois worked with Rodin from 1884 to 1914. Following the path marked out for him by Rodin with She who was La Belle Heaulmière (1887) and by Camille...
Destitution
Destitution, is an exceptional piece, whose naturalistic realisation of an emaciated old woman clothed in rags, in conforming to the traditional iconography...
Spirit of the Night
The late 19th century was a golden age for English sculpture, with a movement known as "The New Sculpture".The French sculptor Jules Dalou, who had taken...
A Florentine Singer
Strongly influenced by his stay in Italy, Paul Dubois enjoyed great success from the outset with refined works inspired by the Italian Renaissance. In this...
Sorrow
Jean Escoula worked as an assistant carver for two of the greatest sculptors of the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Auguste Rodin, while following...
Tarcisius, Christian Martyr
Falguière became famous in 1864, when he presented his Winner of the Cock Fight (Musée d'Orsay) at the Salon. Four years later, the warm reception given to...
Secret
Fix-Masseau, the director of the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Limoges until 1935, was part of the modern decorative art movement in the late 19th century. He...
St Michael Slaying the Dragon
In 1894, Fremiet was chosen to design the statue to crown the spire of the abbey of Mont Saint Michel. He had been famous as a sculptor since his Joan of Arc...
Ravachol
As a general rule Fremiet's sculptures are straightforward and descriptive following an aesthetic based on scientific exactitude. Nevertheless the sculptor...
Be mysterious
This back, one of the most beautiful backs in sculpture, carved by Gauguin from a piece of lime wood, conjures up the body of a Tahitian women, the colour of...
Idol with a Shell
Gauguin took his chisels with him to Oceania. Disappointed that authentic art objects were no longer to be found, he practised on utensils made from guava...
The Maison du Jouir
Gauguin lived out his last months at Atuona, on the Marquesas Islands, in a hut mounted on stilts, made of wood, palm leaves and bamboo. He decorated the door...
Oviri
Gauguin discovered clay with the ceramist Ernest Chaplet. He hoped to earn money with the pots he made in 1887. His potting came to an end during his last...
Monument to Gérôme
The taste for reality and historical truth taken to the extreme is manifest in the astonishing sculptural group, The Gladiators. This first sculpture by the...
The Water Carrier
The Italian Gemito exhibited a sculpture of a young fisherboy at the Salon in Paris in 1877 (Il Pescatore, bronze in Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello)....
Human Machine
Human Machine may be considered as Hoetger's first modern torso. Rodin's influence is here combined with realism as the torso is emerging from a frame made of...
Oedipus at Colonos
A sculptor using the academic repertoire, Hugues, like all the traditional artists of his generation, gleefully explored the human body. Oedipus belongs to...
Future
In 1898, Fernand Khnopff, a Belgium symbolist, was one of the guests of honour at the first Viennese Secession. He submitted sixteen paintings and four...
Cassandra
In ancient mythology Cassandra was a Trojan princess who had received a gift of prophecy from Apollo. But the god, offended that she had rejected his...
Existence
Within the Nabi group, Lacombe was known as the "sculptor Nabi". He liked to carve directly in the wood and his work was strongly influenced by Gauguin....
The Mediterranean
In 1905, when this statue was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne under the title Woman, it caused a stir. The writer André Gide wrote: "She is beautiful and...
Dancing Woman
Maillol started his career as a painter, then designed tapestries and made decorative wooden objects in the Art Nouveau style. His first sculptures date from...
The Cyclist
This statue represents the racing cyclist Gaston Colin. Like Mediterranean and Desire, it was commissioned by the German count Harry Kessler, who was...
Eve with the Apple
About 1895, Maillol, who had first worked with painting, tapestry and ceramics, turned to sculpture. He started by carving wood and modelling clay. His first...
Woman sat on her heels
Maillol, who had initially devoted himself to painting, tapestry and ceramics, turned to sculpture in 1895. Femme assise sur ses talons was one of his first...
The Traveller
Hunched over his horse's neck, struggling against the wind and lashed by the rain, The Traveller is probably the most remarkable of all the statuettes made...
David
The 1870 war and France's defeat left French society feeling humiliated and longing for revenge. This state of mind made David appear to be the promise of a...
The Weight of Grief
Metzner's style is derived both from Symbolism and the Viennese decorative arts. Der Leidtragende [The Weight of Grief] is a good example of the stylisation...
Industry
The Belgian Constantin Meunier was the first foreign sculptor whose work was bought by the French state for the Musée du Luxembourg. The works in question...
Antwerp Harbour Docks
Débardeurs were men who loaded and unloaded the ships, more commonly known as dockers today. While avoiding sordid realism, Débardeur du port d'Anvers,...
Beggar Girl
The Swedish sculptor Carl Milles (pronounced "meeless") lived in Paris between 1897 and 1904. Although he had a great admiration for the city, he was struck...
Boy Kneeling at the Spring
The concise, simplified style of his earliest creations earned the Belgian symbolist sculptor Georges Minne sharp criticism for his primitivism, gaucheness...
Woman with Lilies
Born in Toulouse in 1862, Auguste Seysses trained with Falguière, then led a praiseworthy career marked by various awards in the Salons.Mucha called on...
Polar Bear
For many years, Pompon was one of the most sought-after assistants in Paris, hewing blocks of marble for Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel. But after 1905, in...
Owl
Pompon worked on the subject of owls between 1918 and 1923. There are two versions, either with the eyes protruding or with the eyes set back as here.Pompon...
Sappho
Well-known and appreciated from 1820, Pradier received commissions from all the regimes: the Restoration and the July Monarchy asked him to produce major...
Ophelia
Auguste Préault belonged to the Romantic generation. He rejected all reference to Antiquity and was not interested in illustrating the actions of famous men...
Mrs Renoir
Renoir came to sculpture very late in his career. He seems to have made several attempts in this field about 1875 and sculpted portraits of his family, such...
Salammbo and Matho
Polychrome sculpture was very much in vogue in the 19th century, as can be seen in this Salammbo made of ivory, gold, bronze and turquoise. In this case, when...
Thought
Camille Claudel, Rodin's pupil and lover, often posed for him and the sculptor made several portraits of her. Léonce Bénédite tells that, as was often the...
Balzac
In 1891, Zola, the newly elected president of the Société des Gens de Lettres, chose Rodin to create the monument to Balzac, almost half a century after the...
The Gates of Hell
In the nineteenth century, the old audit office stood on the site of the Orsay railway station. After its destruction by fire in 1871, during the Commune,...
The Bronze Age
After his demobilisation in January 1871, Rodin returned to Brussels. He lived there for six years since the burgomasters offered work. In 1876 he made a...
Ugolino
Rodin said that The Divine Comedy never left him: he always had a copy of his pocket. It is one of the darkest episodes in Dante's immense poem that he has...
Winter
On the left pilaster of The Gates of Hell, commissioned from Rodin in 1880, there is already a figure of a gaunt old woman in bas-relief. But who had the idea...
Fugitive Love
This small group which originally featured in La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell) commissioned in 1880, was the biggest project of Rodin's life. The...
The Sower
This Sower is a very familiar figure to the French: she was featured on the fifty centimes coin and on the one, two and five franc pieces until 2001, before...
Amor Caritas
This large funerary figure of a winged angel is the culmination of a recurring theme in the oeuvre of Saint-Gaudens, one of the most famous American sculptors...
Spirit Guarding the Secret of the Tomb
Proof of Saint-Marceaux's taste for Italy, Spirit Guarding the Secret of the Tomb was executed after his second stay in Italy in the early 1870s. The artist...
Sacred Dance
In Victor Ségoffin's Sacred Dance, violent movement is combined with an almost excessively simple construction. The figure is stiffly aligned along a...
The Sleeping Monsters
It was at the Autumn Salon in 1906 that Soudbinine, a Russian sculptor who had moved to Paris in 1902, exhibited his Sleeping Monsters in public. This work...
The Angel's Whisper
The Angel's Whisper was sculpted after a poem by Samuel Lover, which recounts an Irish belief that when a baby smiles in his sleep he is talking to an...
Ludwig van Beethoven
Stuck's mask of Beethoven is a real curiosity. It has a double status, being a high relief, and therefore a sculpture, but also a painting because it is...
Leo Tolstoy Riding 'Delire'
Prince Trubetskoy, a descendant of an illustrious Russian family, is a perfect representative of the cosmopolitan worldly society in Europe before the First...
Madame Aurnheimer
Born in Dresden in 1873, Adelaide Ratsch married the German dealer Carlo Federico Aurnheimer. The couple moved to Milan in the 1880s and became one of the...
Grief
Like many Nordic artists, the Finn Ville Vallgren took inspiration from the Kalevala legend. These popular poems, recounting the epic of the Finnish people,...
Christ
Between 1889 and 1901, the Finnish artist Vallgren showed his Christ in several European exhibitions for the avant-garde, in various materials and with...