François Rude

François Rude: 1888 engraving

Jeanne d' Arc Listening to Her Voices, by François Rude (1845). Louvre museum

Bust of Francois Rude by Paul Cabet

François Rude (4 January 1784 – 3 November 1855) was a French sculptor. He was the stepfather and teacher of sculptor Paul Cabet.

Early life

Born in Dijon, he worked at his father's trade as a locksmith till the age of 16, but received training in drawing from François Devosges,^[1] where he learned that a strong, simple contour was an invaluable ingredient in the plastic arts.^[2]

Career

In 1809 he went to Paris from the Dijon school of art, and became a pupil of Pierre Cartellier, obtaining the Grand Prix de Rome in 1812. After the second restoration of the Bourbons he retired to Brussels, where, probably owing to the intervention of the exiled Jacques-Louis David^[3] he got some work under the architect Charles Vander Straeten, who employed him to execute nine bas-reliefs in the palace of Tervuren, now destroyed.

At Brussels Rude married the painter Sophie Fremiet, daughter of a Bonapartist compatriot to whom he had many obligations, but gladly availed himself of an opportunity to return to Paris, where in 1827 a statue of the Virgin for St Gervais and a Mercury Fastening His Sandals After Killing Argos (now in the Musée du Louvre) obtained much attention.

His great success dates from 1833, when he received the cross of the Legion of Honour for his statue of a Neapolitan Fisher Boy Playing with a Tortoise (now in the Louvre), which also procured for him the important commission for all the sculptural frieze ornament and one group on the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris. This group, Départ des volontaires de 1792 (Departure of the Volunteers of 1792), also known as La Marseillaise (1836), a work full of energy and fire, immortalizes the name of Rude.

Among other productions are Napoleon Awakening to Immortality (1845) (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), the statue of the mathematician Gaspard Monge (1847), Jeanne d'Arc Listening to Her Voices (1845), in the gardens of the Luxembourg, a Calvary in bronze for the high altar of St Vincent de Paul (1852), as well as Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter (1852) (Musée des Beaux Arts, Dijon), Love Triumphant, and Head of Christ (1852), all of which appeared at the Paris Salon of 1857 after his death.

Pupils

Rude's pupil Charles-Auguste Lebourg became famous for the Wallace fountains in Paris. Another important pupil of Rude was Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who subsequently executed his own interpretation of a Neapolitan Fisher Boy, a popular subject at the time.

Tributes

The Musée Rude, Dijon, inaugurated in 1947, is devoted to plaster casts of his works that were acquired by the city of Dijon, between 1887 and 1910; it is housed in the transept of the 11th-century church of Saint-Etienne in rue Vaillant.^[4]

Gallery

Main Section: List of works by François Rude

• 
  Mercury Fastening his Sandals After Killing Argos, 1827, Louvre
• 
  Bust of La Pérouse, 1828
• 
  Neapolitan Fisher Boy Playing with a Tortoise, 1831-33, Louvre
• 
  La Marseillaise, 1836; Arc de Triomphe, Paris
• 
  Cato of Utica, 1840 (begun in 1832 by Jean-Baptiste Roman)
• 
  Head of Christ, 1852

Notes

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "^{article name needed}". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to François Rude.

• Louvre Database (French language) - Works by Rude (and some others)
• More views of the Neapolitan Fisherboy
• Views of the Arc de Triomphe
• Art on-line: François Rude
• French language site listing works by Rude, with access to large images (it may be necessary to close an advertising banner to view this page)
• François Rude in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website