Of all the arts, sculpture
is the most accessible but the least prized. Most people go right on by: oh,
just another general on horseback or long-dead poet. But surely it's nothing
short of miraculous to elicit from solid rock (or molten bronze) the myriad
subtleties of human expression or the precise fall of a garment. I was reminded
of this the other day when reading an article on Jean-Antoine Houdon
(1741-1828), the great French sculptor whose life straddled France's greatest
upheavals: the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire. Houdon survived them both because
he was detached from politics, as an artist should be, and because his
abilities as a sculptor were astonishing and virtually limitless. Whether you
look at his affectionate and revealing statue of Voltaire seated in an armchair
(above), or his ineffably delicate and sensual Cold Girl, or his authoritative bust of Thomas Jefferson (Houdon was renowned for his
busts of famous Americans: see also Washington and Robert Fulton),
you look at the best of the Age of Reason: restraint; classicism; realism; and
a generosity of spirit that never becomes indulgence. Napoleon, who represented
a new, more irrational age from whose effects we have yet to fully recover,
detected this restraint in Houdon's bust of him, done soon after his coronation
as Emperor, and found
it insufficient. His Majesty wanted to be worshipped.Of course: he was the Emperor, the embodiment of France. But Houdon was a working artist; he just wanted to
get on with the job. The Emperor found other, more compliant sculptors. But Houdon's take survives; this, we say, is Napoleon as he truly was.
