HOUDON, Uii'doN', JEAN ANTOINE (1741 1828). One of the foremost French sculptors of the eighteenth century. He was horn at Ver sailles, France, March 20, 1741, the son of a domestic attached to the house of De la Motte, a courtier. His first impulse toward art came from the splendid decorative sculpture of the park at Versailles, and as a boy of ten or twelve he haunted the ateliers of the Royal School of Sculpture. In the catalogue of the Salon of 1795 he calls himself a pupil of Slodtz. but he was really much more influenced by Pigalle and the younger Lemoyne. In 1761 Houdon won the Prix de Rome, but was not influenced greatly by the treasures of art in Rome. His personality was too healthy and powerful to follow the lead of any other master, and could only be satisfied by its own direct and intelligent interpretation of nature. His stay in Rome is marked by two characteristic and important productions: the superb "Ecorehe," an anatomical model, which has served as a guide to all artists since his day. and the statue of Saint Bruno in the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Rome—a work of very powerful characterization.
After ten years' stay in Rome Houdon returned to Paris, and soon became one of the foremost French sculptors: he was admitted to the Acad emy April 23, 1769. In 1785 he visited America in company with Benjamin Franklin, in order to make the statue of Washington which had been ordered by the Legislature of Virginia. He vis
ited Washington at Mount Vernon, and the marble statue which followed now adorns the capitol at Richmond. During the French Revo lution Houdon was in danger before the Tribunal for executing a statue of Saint Scholastica, but succeeded in convincing the judges that his saint was in reality a statue of Philosophy. Houdon died July 16, 1828, in Paris.
Houdon was a perfectly trained and competent technician, producing easily and abundantly, with equal success both in marble and bronze. His knowledge of anatomy was marvelous, and he was a thorough naturalist who succeeded best in portraiture. His name is principally con nected with a fine series of more than two hun dred portrait busts. which form one of the chief monuments of French sculpture. Amon, these were those of Diderot (about 1769), Benjamin Franklin (1778), and of Gluck (1777) ; on the death of Rousseau in 1778 he made two busts in bronze and terra-cotta from a east of his face. One of the most characteristic of his busts is that of Moliere in the Theatre Francais. Paris. Among his statues are those of "Morpheus," in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; "Diana the Huntress." the best of his nude female figures; and especially the portrait statue of Voltaire (1781), in the Theatre Francais, one of the finest in modern art.