Paul Dubois
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Paul Dubois (July 18, 1829 - 1905) was a significant French sculptor and painter.
He was born at Nogent-sur-Seine. He studied law to please his family, and art to please himself, and finally adopted the latter, and placed himself in the atelier of Armand Toussaint (1806-1862), a former pupil of David d'Angers. After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, Dubois went to Rome. His first contributions to the Paris Salon (1860) were busts of The Countess de B and A Child. For his first exhibited statues, The Infant St John the Baptist and Narcissus at the Bath (1863), he was awarded a medal of the second class. The statue of the Infant St John, which had been modelled in Florence in 1860, was exhibited in Paris in bronze, and was acquired by the French State for the Musée du Luxembourg. A Florentine Singer of the Fifteenth Century (depicted in doublet and hose playing a lute), for a time one of the most reproduced statuettes in Europe, was shown in 1865. A Virgin and Child appeared in the Exposition Universelle (1867); The Birth of Eve was produced in 1873, and was followed by striking busts of Jean-Jacques Henner, Dr Parrot, Paul Baudry, Louis Pasteur, Charles Gounod and Léon Bonnat,[1] remarkable alike for life, vivacity, likeness, refinement and subtle handling.
The chief work of Paul Dubois was The Tomb of General Lamoricière in the Cathedral of Nantes, conceived in the Renaissance spirit, with allegorical figures and groups representing Warlike Courage, Charity, Faith and Meditation, as well as bas-reliefs and enrichments; the two first-named works were separately exhibited in the Salon of 1877. The medallions represent Wisdom, Hope, Justice, Force, Rhetoric, Prudence and Religion. The statue of the Constable Anne de Montmorency was executed for Chantilly, and that of Joan of Arc (1889) for the town of Rheims. The Italian influence which characterized the earlier work of Dubois disappeared as his own individuality became clearly asserted.
As a painter he restricted himself mainly to portraiture. My Children (1876) being probably his most noteworthy achievement.
His drawings and copies after the Old Masters are of peculiar excellence: they include The Dead Christ (after Sebastian del Piombo) and Adam and Eve (after Raphael). In 1873 Dubois was appointed keeper of the Musée du Luxembourg, at the time the repository of the national collection of modern art. He succeeded Jean-Baptiste Claude Eugène Guillaume as director of the École des Beaux-Arts, 1878, and Jean-Joseph Perraud as member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Twice at the Paris Salon he obtained the medal of honour (1865 and 1876), and also at the Exposition Universelle (1878). He also won numerous other distinctions, and was appointed grand cross of the Legion of Honour. He was made a member of several European orders, and in 1895 was elected an honorary foreign academician of the Royal Academy, London. He died in Paris in 1905.
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- ^ The bust of Bonnat was illustrated in Harper's Weekly 1890:34:341. (American Library Association, A.L.A. Portrait Index: Index to Portraits Contained in Printed Books...)
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This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain. Please update as needed.
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