Monument to General Gobert (Père Lachaise)
Pierre-Jean David (March 12, 1788 -January 4, 1856), usually called David d'Angers, was a French
sculptor.
He was born at Angers. His father was a sculptor or a
mason, but had gone into the army as a musketeer, fighting against the Chouans of La Vendée. He returned to his trade at the end of the civil war to
find his customers gone, so that young David was born into poverty. His father wished for him to
have a better career, and in his eighteenth year left for Paris to study art, with
only eleven francs. After struggling for survival for a year and a half, he succeeded in taking
the prize at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. An annuity of 600 francs was granted to him
by the municipality of his native town in 1809, and in 1811 David's Epaminondas gained the prix de Rome. He spent five years in Rome, during which his
enthusiasm for the works of Antonio Canova were often excessive.
Reviving Greece: Monument to the Greek liberator
Markos Botsaris Victor Hugo once
said of the sculpture, "It is difficult to see anything more beautiful in the world; this statue joins the grandeur of
Pheidias to the expressive manner of Puget."
Returning from Rome around the time of the restoration of the Bourbons and their accompanying foreign conquerors and returned royalists, David d'Angers would not
remain in the neighborhood of the Tuileries, opting instead to travel to
London. Here Flaxman and others visited upon him the sins of David the painter, to
whom he was erroneously supposed to be related. With great difficulty he made his way to Paris again, where a comparatively
prosperous career opened before him. His medallions and busts were in much request, as well as orders for monumental works. One
of the most famous of these was that of Gutenberg at Strassburg; but those he himself valued most were the statue of
Barra, a drummer boy who continued to beat his drum until the moment of death in the war in La Vendée, and the monument to
the Greek liberator Markos Botsaris. David's busts and
medallions were very numerous, and among his sitters may be found not only the illustrious men and women of France, but many others both of England and Germany countries which he visited professionally in 1827 and 1829. His medallions number over 500.
Musée David d'Angers, ancient Abbey Toussaint of Angers
David's fame rests firmly on his pediment of the Pantheon, his marble
Wounded Philopoemen in the
Louvre and his monument to General Gobert in Père Lachaise Cemetery. In addition to that of Gobert, he did sculptures for seven other tombs at
Père Lachaise, including the bronze busts of the writer, Honoré de Balzac and physician
Samuel Hahnemann. In the Musée David in Angers is an almost complete collection
of his works either in the form of copies or in the original moulds. As an example of his benevolence of character may be
mentioned his rushing off to the sickbed of Rouget de Lisle, the author of
the Marseillaise Hymn, modelling and carving him in marble without delay, making a lottery of the work, and sending to the
poet in the extremity of need the seventy-two pounds which resulted from the sale.
References
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