Thoroughly classic, so far
as the avoidance of everything naturalistic is concerned, he is yet as
little severe and correct as the painters of his day. He spent nine
years in Rome, but though enamoured in the most sympathetic degree of
the antique, it was the statuettes and figurines, the gay and social,
the elegant and decorative side of antique sculpture that exclusively he
delighted in. His work is Tanagra Gallicized. It is not the group of
"The Deluge," or the "Entry of the French into Munich," or "Hercules in
Repose," for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized by
posterity. He is admirable where he is inimitable--that is to say, in
the delightful decoration of which he was so prodigal. It is not in his
compositions essaying what is usually meant by sculptural effect, but in
his vases, clocks, pendants, volutes, little reliefs of nymphs riding
dolphins over favoring breakers and amid hospitable foam, his toilettes
of Venus, his facade ornamentations, his applied sculpture, in a word,
that his true talent lies. After him it is natural that we should have a
reversion to quasi-severity and imitation of the antique--just as David
succeeded to the Louis Quinze pictorial riot--and that the French
contemporaries of Canova and Thorwaldsen, those literal, though
enthusiastic illustrators of Winckelmann's theories, should be Pradier
and Etex and the so-called Greek school.
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