HOUDON, JEAN ANTOINE (174o-1828), French sculp tor, was born at Versailles on March 18, 1740. At the age of twelve he entered the Ecole Royale de Sculpture, and at twenty, having learnt all that he could from Michel Ange Slodtz and Pigalle, he carried off the Prix de Rome and left France for Italy, where he spent the next ten years of his life. His brilliant talent, which seems to have been formed by the influence of that world of statues with which Louis XIV. peopled the gardens of Ver sailles rather than by the lessons of his masters, delighted Pope Clement XIV., who, on seeing the "St. Bruno" executed by Hou don for the church of S. Maria degli Angeli, said "he would speak, were it not that the rules of his order impose silence." In Italy Houdon had lived in the presence of that second Renais sance with which the name of Winckelmann is associated, and the direct and simple treatment of the "Morpheus" which he sent to the Salon of 1771 bore witness to its influence.
Houdon executed busts of Catherine II., Diderot and of Prince Galitzin which were remarked at the Salon of 1773; and at that of 1775 he produced, not only his "Morpheus" in marble, but busts of Turgot, Gluck (in which the marks of smallpox in the face were reproduced with striking effect) and Sophie Arnould as Iphigeneia (now in the Wallace Collection, London), together with his well-known marble relief, "Grive suspendue par les pattes." He took also an active part in the teaching of the acad-` emy, and executed for the instruction of his pupils the celebrated Ecorche still in use. To every Salon Houdon was a chief con tributor ; most of the leading men of the day were his sitters ; his busts of d'Alembert, Prince Henry of Prussia, Gerbier, Buffon (for Catherine of Russia) and Mirabeau are remarkable portraits; and in 1778, when the news of Rousseau's death reached him, Houdon started at once for Ermenonville, and there took a cast of the dead man's face, from which he produced the grand and life-like head now in the Louvre. In 1779 his bust of Moliere, at the Theatre Francais, won universal praise. The draped statue of Voltaire, in the vestibule of the same theatre, was exhibited at the Salon of 1781, to which Houdon also sent a statue of Marshal de Tourville, commissioned by the king, and the "Diana" executed for Catherine II. This work was refused ; the jury alleged that a statue of Diana demanded drapery; without drapery, they said, the goddess became a suivante de Venus, and not even the proud and frank chastity of the attitude and expression could save the "Diana" of Houdon (a bronze reproduction of which is in the Louvre) from insult.
Three years later Houdon made an important visit to America, there to carry out a statue of Washington. With Franklin, whose bust he had recently executed, Houdon left France in 1785, and, staying some time with Washington at Mount Vernon, he modelled the bust, with which he decided to go back to Paris, there to complete the statue destined for the capitol of the State of Vir ginia. After his return to his native country Houdon executed for the king of Prussia, as a companion to a statue of "Summer," "La Frileuse," a naive embodiment of shivering cold, which is one of his best as well as one of his best-known works. The Revolu tion interrupted the busy flow of commissions, and Houdon took up a half-forgotten project for a statue of S. Scholastica. He was immediately denounced to the Convention, and his life was saved only by his instant and ingenious adaptation of S. Scholastica into an embodiment of Philosophy. Under Napoleon, of whom in 1806 he made a nude statue now at Dijon, Houdon received little em ployment ; he was, however, commissioned to execute the colossal reliefs intended for the decoration of the column of the "Grand Army" at Boulogne (which ultimately found a different destina tion) ; he also produced a statue of Cicero for the senate and various busts, amongst which may be cited those of Marshal Ney, of Josephine and of Napoleon himself, by whom Houdon was rewarded with the Legion of Honour. He died in Paris on July 16, 1828.
See Hermann Dierks, Houdons Leben and Werke (Gotha, 1887) ; H. Giacometti, Le statuaire J. A. Houdon et son epoque (1918-19) .