Alexandre Falguière

Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière (also given as Jean-Joseph-Alexandre Falguière, or in short Alexandre Falguière) (Toulouse Haute-Garonne 7 September 1831 – Paris 20 April 1900) was a French sculptor and painter.

A pupil of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse and François Jouffroy, Falguière is the winner, with Leon Cugnot, of the first grand prix of Rome of sculpture in 1859 with his bas-relief Mézence wounded, preserved by the intrepidity of his son Lausus.

Falguière was born in Toulouse. A pupil of the École des Beaux-Arts, he won the Prix de Rome in 1859; he was awarded the medal of honor at the Paris Salon in 1868 and was appointed Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1878.

Falguière’s first bronze statue of importance was Le Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs (Victor of the Cockfight) (1864), and Tarcisius the Christian Boy-Martyr followed in 1867; both were exhibited in the Luxembourg Museumand are now in the Musée d’Orsay. His more important monuments are those to Admiral Courbet (1890) at Abbeville and the famous Joan of Arc. Other works include Eve (1880), Diana (1882 and 1891), Woman and Peacock (a. k. a. Juno and The Peacock), and The Poet, astride his Pegasus spreading wings for flight. He sculpted The Dancer, based on Cléo de Mérode which today is also in the Musée d’Orsay. In 1870 he helped create the snow sculpture, La statue de la Résistance.

To these works should be added his monuments to Cardinal Lavigerie and to General de La Fayette (in Washington, DC), and his statues of Alphonse de Lamartine (1876) and St Vincent de Paul (1879), as well as the Honoré de Balzac, which he executed for the Société des gens de lettres on their rejection of that by Auguste Rodin; and the busts of Carolus-Duran and Ernest Alexandre Honoré Coquelin (1896).

Falguière was a painter as well as a sculptor, but somewhat inferior in merit. He displays a fine sense of colour and tone, added to the qualities of life and vigour that he instils into his plastic work. His Wrestlers (1875) and Fan and Dagger (1882; a defiant Spanish woman) were in the Luxembourg, and other pictures of importance are The Beheading of St John the Baptist (1877), The Sphinx (1883), Acis and Galatea (1885), Old Woman and Child (1886) and In the Bull Slaughter-House.

In 1882 he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts and elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. Among the students of Falguière are Antonin Mercié, Laurent Marqueste, Gaston Schnegg, Camille Crenier, Achille Jacopin, Maurice Bouval and Jean-Marie Mengue, the most famous among them being Antoine Bourdelle.

In 1898, Falguiere received the commission of a statue of Honore de Balzac after the refusal of the Monument to Balzac of Auguste Rodin by the Society of the People of letters, its sponsors. The case provokes a scandal that the press calls “the second Dreyfus affair” because Emile Zola supports Rodin. In order to prove that this episode had nothing to do with their friendship, Falguière realized the bust of Rodin for the exhibition of 1897 and for his part Rodin carved a bust of Falguière.

Falguière also taught; among his students were Francis Edwin Elwell, Ernest Henri Dubois, Julien Caussé, Laurent Marqueste, Henri Crenier and Théophile Barrau.

Falguière became a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Beaux-Arts) in 1882.

Among the public commissions are the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie for Bayonne, whose plaster is exhibited in Toulouse at the Musée des Augustins, the poet Goudouli for Toulouse, Gambetta for Cahors and La Fayette for Washington.

Weakened by illness, he went to Nimes to set up his monument to Alphonse Daudet and died a few hours after his return to Paris.

Falguière died in Paris in 1900 and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where his monument is by his pupil Marqueste.

Works:
1859 – Mézence wounded, preserved by the intrepidity of his son Lausus, plaster.
1864 – Winner of the cockfighting9 (1864), bronze statue, Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Toulouse, Musée des Augustins
1868 – Tarcisius, Christian martyr, statue, marble, Paris, Musée d’Orsay. The American painter Kehinde Wiley is inspired by the work of Falguière in his painting Christian Martyr Tarcisius (2008).
1870 – Resistance, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
1870-1900, Masks for children and women, Musée Magnin, Dijon.
1874 – Switzerland welcomes French army, terracotta, museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1875 – Monument to Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, bronze group, Rouen, Place Saint-Clément
1877 – Germaine de Pibrac, marble, Church of Saint Germaine in Toulouse
1878 – Asia, statue, cast iron, Paris, parvis of the Musée d’Orsay: World Exhibition of 1878 in Paris, one of the six sculptures created for the series Six Six
1879 – The breeding, the City of Rouen and the Agriculture, allegorical groups of the fountain-reservoir Sainte-Marie, stone, Rouen
1879? – Mask of Louise Abbema, Musée Magnin, Dijon.
1882 – Mask of death of Léon Gambetta, Cahors, museum of Cahors Henri-Martin
1882 – Diane Plaster Museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1882 – Triumph of the Revolution, a monumental group representing a chariot drawn by horses preparing to “crush Anarchy and Despotism”, is installed at the top of the triumphal arch of the Etoile from 1882 to 1886
1884 – Monument to Léon Gambetta, Cahors
1887 – Bust of Léon Gambetta, Cahors, museum of Cahors Henri-Martin
1889 – The Music, Museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1889 – At the door of the School, Museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1890 – Woman with the Peacock, Museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1892 – Monument to Léon Gambetta, Saigon
1892 – La Sasson, monument to the Savoy, Chambéry.
1892 – L’Épargne et le Travail, allegories for Department Stores Dufayel, Paris
1892 – Monument to the Abbe Dassy, ​​a group in marble located in the garden Puget, near the Institute of the blind young people in Marseilles.
1895 – Henri de La Rochejaquelein, plaster, museum of the Augustins of Toulouse
1896 – La Danseuse, marble cut from a plaster molded on nature on the body of Cleo de Mérode, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.
1898 – Monument to Goudouli, designed with his pupil Mercié and the architect Paul Pujol. Finally installed in 1908 in the basin of Place Wilson (then Place Lafayette) in Toulouse.
1900 – Monument to Pasteur, monumental group in marble. Falguiere could not finish the monument until his death. It was his collaborators Victor Peter and Louis Dubois who finished it. Built in 1908 in the center of Place de Breteuil in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.
1902 – Monument to Balzac, stone, located at the intersection of Rue Balzac and Avenue de Friedland, Georges-Guillaumin square, Paris.
1902 – Ambroise Thomas, Parc Monceau, Paris.
Statue of Abbot Louis-Toussaint Dassy accompanied by a young boy and a blind girl in the Pierre-Puget garden in Marseille.
Nymph running, marble, museum of the Augustins of Toulouse.