The Sculptures of Houdon by H. H. ArnasonReview by: F. J. B. WATSONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 124, No. 5235 (FEBRUARY 1976), pp. 150-151Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41372284 .

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY I976

available due partly to insufficient patronage. Would it not be more rational to try to achieve a more realistic balance of art education and art patronage ?

To-day patronage of the arts is not lavish. Up to the end of the nineteenth century there was a large measure of private patronage, but taxation now makes such patronage on a generous scale rather difficult. The Church has been in the past one of the biggest of art patrons, but with its declining influence and the reduced scope of its activities this can hardly be main- tained to the extent that once was possible. In place, then, of diminishing private and Church patronage occasioned by the changing world there should be patrons to take their place ; and these logically are the State and Industry. It is true that this is partly realized and that there is already a measure of patronage by the central Government and by Local Authorities, and a little by industry, but it is on a very small and inadequate scale.

What kind of patronage should it be ? I am thinking chiefly of the creative visual arts of painting, sculpture and architecture and their kindred, and less of the performing arts that generally fare better. There is scope, I think, for much more painting and sculpture to give interest to new buildings, and one form of art patronage could be to encourage the allocations

of a more generous percentage of the total cost of buildings to murals and decorative sculpture. Local Authorities, especially in new urban areas, could be more vigorously encouraged with financial assistance to introduce decorative ele- ments in their towns, like fountains and sculpture in appropriate landscape (or townscape) settings such as we find in Scandinavian towns. Also, local authorities could be encouraged and assisted to form local art collections of the work of contemporary artists, particularly those ex- pressive of the region. This should be done with the utmost co-operation with the people them- selves as was emphasized at a recent conference on 'The Arts and Entertainment in New Towns'.

Lastly, what part can the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce play ? (I give its full title because it has obvious significance in this context.) The Society has done so much for the arts in the past, and I think it could perhaps, more than any other society, help in the matter under discussion because of the scope of its activities. I should like to propose that it holds a one day conference on ť Art Education and Art Patronage* at which many views could be expressed by knowledgeable and responsible persons, and the conclusions reached sent to the Minister responsible for the Arts.

NOTES ON BOOKS

The Sculptures of Houdon By H. H. Arnason London Phaidon , 1975. £20 Jean- Antoine Houdon started life with no advantages beyond his natural genius. His father was merely the portçr at the Ecole des élèves protégés ; the son rose to become one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, sculptor of his age. But in 1769 when he became agréé at the Académie , he found that there were seven sculptors senior to him in the hierarchy. Although none of them were to prove as brilliant as he, this meant that he was unlikely to obtain the coveted Royal commissions. Houdon had his way to make in life. He therefore determined to concentrate principally on portrait sculpture.

By 1784 Jefferson, consulted about the pro- posed statue of Washington, was voicing general opinion in writing: 'Monsieur Houdon of this place, possesses the reputation of being the finest statuary in the world', adding that as a portrait sculptor he was considered 'unrivalled in Europe'. This view has been confirmed by posterity. As a consequence, the sculptor has been the subject of more monographs and articles than any of his great contemporaries, distinguished as a number of them were. Only a decade ago the late Louis Réau produced a

most comprehensive study in four well-illus- trated volumes which printed almost every known document on the sculptor's life and included a lengthy catalogue of his works.

Why then should a fresh book be needed so soon, especially when so many of Houdon's most important rivals lack any extended treat- ment at all ? The answer is that although Réau was a first-rate archivist, he was less perceptive as a connoisseur. Some of the works he includes in his catalogue are of questionable authenticity. The problems that Houdon poses for the student to-day are those of genuineness rather than of documentation. Or more precisely of degrees of authenticity. Houdon's portraits were intended, from the beginning, for dupli- cation. Their very forms were dictated by this fact. When he undertook the bust of the opera singer Sophie Arnould, one of his very greatest masterpieces, he contracted to supply, in addi- tion to the marble and the terracotta sketch on which the likeness was based, no less than thirty replicas in plaster finished by his own hand. In addition he agreed to furnish up to twenty more plasters on demand.

Mr. Arnason tells us that more than a hundred authentic portraits of Houdon's most famous sitter, Voltaire, are in existence to-day. They range from the seated figure in the Comédie

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FEBRUARY I976 NOTES ON BOOKS

Français ('the most famous portrait in history') through full-lengths and busts, some with wigs, some without, draped and undraped, etc., pro- duced over a long period of time. All of them were based on a single model from the life, for there is evidence that the sculptor had only the briefest of sittings.

Naturally such practices encouraged copyists, imitators and forgers. In a letter written in 1794 Houdon complains: ť sous Г Ancien Régime , on a surmoulé constamment mes ouvrages , on les a défigurés en y mettant mon nom , qu'autres encore moins honnêtes les copiaient tout simplement en mettant leur' The problem that this raises has been further complicated by the fact that the practice has continued down to to-day. A variation on the Frileuse with a Houdon signature appeared in a German museum in 1957 and was mistakenly catalogued as genuine. By 1967 versions in a wide variety of different materials had made their appearance on the New York art market and elsewhere.

It is to the task of unravelling the compli- cations that these practices raise that Mr. Arnason chiefly addresses himself in this book. The problem is not one which permits easy answers. So many of Houdon' s works were dispersed and destroyed at the Revolution that tradition and provenance rarely provide much help. In the last analysis the determination of what is from Houdon' s hand from what is not, must depend on a great sensitivity to his style, a complete understanding of his technical methods and a refined feeling for quality. All these Mr. Arnason possesses in a high degree as his extremely perceptive analyses of the various portrait busts reveal, especially when they are read in conjunction with the large-scale details of the sculpture, mostly reproduced from his own excellent photographs. But a sense of style is not always enough. The bust of the Comtesse de Jaucourt, for example, in the Louvre, des- cended in the sitter's family till 19 12. It bears an apparently impeccably authentic signature and date. Why then does the hair have the quite uncharacteristic and blurred character of certain much later pastiches of Houdon's work? Was it completed by an assistant ? And why should the sculptor have left it unfinished as the author suggests ? Again, Mr. Arnason writes of the celebrated busts of Louise and Alexandre Brogniart : 'the two terracottas in the Louvre are the key versions'. Like the Jaucourt bust they came direct from the sitter's family to the museum. Yet on a recent visit I seemed to notice a faint trace of marks, carefully effaced, suggesting that they had been cast from a mould as Houdon himself did with his own repetitions and, as the author himself records, is still being done with terracottas of these very busts.

A final resolution of all such problems is per- haps not always possible. They depend too much on subjective judgements. It is a tribute to Mr. Arnason's prolonged and thoughtful study of

the works he writes about (he has been engaged on this book for more than twenty years) that such problems so seldom arise. His Houdon , while not aiming at the comprehensiveness of either Réau's or Giacometti's monographs, certainly provides a much more sensitive and understanding study of the sculptor's style than either. And it is infinitely better illustrated.

F. J. B. WATSON

The Artist and the Writer in France Essays in Honour of Jean Seznec London , Oxford University Press , 1975. £7.5° Baudelaire: Salon de 1846 Edited by David Kelley London^ Oxford University Press , 1975. £20.00 One of the publishing triumphs of the Oxford University Press in the last twenty years has been the four volume edition of Diderot's Salons. Their appearance from 1957 onwards has also marked a scholarly triumph for Professor Jean Seznec and M. Jean Adhémar. Texts were scrupulously established, exhibited works identi- fied (and as far as possible reproduced), com- parisons made with contemporary Salon critics, and the nature of Diderot's contribution shar- pened and defined. The play between work of art and art criticism, between literature and painting, was finely judged. Professor Seznec has exploited this area of interactivity subtly and sensitively, never dully, or over-didactically. An unmistak- able Seznec touch exists, even when opening up new areas of knowledge and establishing points of contact between the arts, his identifications of picture and text are always specific and 'real', never sociologically soggy nor metaphysically stretched. He has evolved a method that is clear and rational, he deploys arguments that are simple yet cogent, his conclusions are never dogmatic or arbitrary, his style is always sharp, light, witty ; he cannot possibly know the meaning of turgidity or pomposity or special pleading. And, of course, his range is enviable : he made his scholarly reputation with the Survival of the Pagan Gods i he more than sustained it with Diderot's Salons; he has extended it - speaking only of the nineteenth century - to Stendhal, Flaubert, Van Gogh and Redon.

On his 70th birthday it is wholly appropriate that the Oxford University Press should publish what would elsewhere be called a festschrift , a collection of fourteen essays by colleagues, friends and admirers. The theme is clearly stated in the title, The Artist and the Writer in France: the interdisciplinary context is followed by each contributor. What is not stated in the title is the chronological extent: in effect it covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, Professor Blunt does go back a little further in what is a prologue essay: Naples as seen by French travellers from 1630 to 1780, a fascinating piece of reportage on the Neapolitan

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