Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828): Sculptor of the Enlightenment

HOUDON'S WORKING METHODS

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Houdon in His Studio, after 1803
Collection Musée d’Art Thomas Henry, Cherbourg-Octeville
Gift of Thomas Henry, 1835

The exhibition Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828): Sculptor of the Enlightenment provides insight into Houdon’s working methods. For portraits he made meticulous measurements with calipers, and often used life or death masks to record the features of his sitters. His practice was to model a sculpture in clay, which was fired to make a terracotta. A mold would then be made from the terracotta; the original terracotta was often destroyed in the mold-making process.

Houdon kept the original molds in his studio, and from them would make plaster or terracotta casts as requested. These plasters served as models for sculptures executed in the more expensive materials of marble or bronze. Potential buyers would come to his studio and order a bust or statue on the basis of the models displayed there.

Houdon was proud of the fact that he had his own foundry and was the only French sculptor of his generation able to cast his own bronzes. Several of his life-size bronzes are included in the exhibition, among them Diana the Huntress, Apollo, and L’Ecorché.

From the beginning of his career, Houdon was concerned about unauthorized copies being made of his works. As early as 1776, he used a red wax seal to authenticate his sculptures in plaster and terracotta. He was the only French sculptor of the eighteenth century to use such a seal.

--Anne Poulet, exhibition curator
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828)
Sculptor of the Enlightenment

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HOUDON'S WORKING METHODS

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Houdon in His Studio, after 1803 Collection Musée d’Art Thomas Henry, Cherbourg-Octeville Gift of Thomas Henry, 1835

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Houdon in His Studio, after 1803
Collection Musée d’Art Thomas Henry, Cherbourg-Octeville
Gift of Thomas Henry, 1835