To see the work of David d'Angers, one must go to Angers itself and to
Pere-Lachaise. The Louvre is lamentably lacking in anything truly
representative of this most eminent of all portraitists in sculpture, I
think, not excepting even Houdon, if one may reckon the mass as well as
the excellence of his remarkable production and the way in which it
witnesses that portraiture is just what he was born to do. The
"Philopoemen" of the Louvre is a fine work, even impressively large and
simple. But it is the competent work of a member of a school and leaves
one a little cold. Its academic quality quite overshadows whatever
personal feeling one may by searching find in the severity of its
treatment and the way in which a classic motive has been followed out
naturally and genuinely instead of perfunctorily. It gives no intimation
of the faculty that produced the splendid gallery of medallions
accentuated by an occasional bust and statue, of David's celebrated
contemporaries and quasi-contemporaries in every field of distinction.
It is impossible to overestimate the interest and value, the truth and
the art of these.
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