David d'Angers
The museum owns a lovely collection of work by David d'Angers, a very prolific artist whose personality is very difficult to classify within the history of 19th Century sculpture: despite an admiration for antique sculpture which came down to him via the Academy - he won the Grand Prix of Rome in 1811 - his career is not stereotypical of the style. A master in the field of large sculpture, he produced numerous monuments, commemorative (Le Roi René in Aix-en-Provence and Bonchamps in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil), funerary (Suchet) and public (the pediment of the Pantheon). The Musée des Augustins owns an exceptional collection of original works associated with one of the latter, the Monument à Larrey in Val-de-Grâce. It includes the portrait of Baron Larrey, a monumental patinated plaster head, as well as original terracottas from the monument.
These are examples of the way in which this artist worked: the search for an effect, for an immediately understandable language, came before any thought of formalism. Running parallel to his official career was his production of more than five hundred and fifty medallions of famous men of his day, one copy of each always being sent to the Galerie in Angers, his birthplace. This series, unique of its kind, provides us with priceless information both about the artist and his friendships, and about his contemporaries such as Benjamin Constant.
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