Coysevox is chiefly Puget
exaggerated, and his pupil, Coustou, who comes down to nearly the middle
of the eighteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculptural
tradition.
But Clodion is a distinct break. He is as different from Coysevox and
Coustou as Watteau is from Lebrun. He is the essence of what we mean by
Louis Quinze. His work is clever beyond characterization. It has in
perfection what sculptors mean by color--that is to say a certain warmth
of feeling, a certain _insouciance_, a brave carelessness for
sculpturesque traditions, a free play of fancy, both in the conception
and execution of his subjects. Like the Louis Quinze painters, he has
his thoughtless, irresponsible, involuntary side, and like them--like
the best of them, that is to say, like Watteau--he is never quite as
good as he could be. He seems not so much concerned at expressing his
ideal as at pleasing, and pleasing people of too frivolous an
appreciation to call forth what is best in him. He devoted himself
almost altogether to terra-cotta, which is equivalent to saying that the
exquisite and not the impressive was his aim.
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