was a Genevan--though his
figures were simple and largely treated. He had a keen sense for the
feminine element--the _ewig Weibliche_--and expressed it plastically
with a zest approaching gusto. Yet his statues are women rather than
statues, and, more than that, are handsome rather than beautiful. Etex,
it is to be feared, will be chiefly remembered as the unfortunately
successful rival of Rude in the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile decoration.

V

Having in each case more or less relation with, but really wholly
outside of and superior to all "schools" whatever--except the school of
nature, which permits as much freedom as it exacts fidelity--is the
succession of the greatest of French sculptors since the Renaissance and
down to the present day: Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, and
Barye. Houdon is one of the finest examples of the union of vigor with
grace. He will be known chiefly as a portraitist, but such a masterpiece
as his "Diana" shows how admirable he was in the sphere of purely
imaginative theme and treatment. Classic, and even conventionally
classic as it is, both in subject and in the way the subject is
handled--compared for example with M. Falguiere's "Nymph Hunting," which
is simply a realistic Diana--it is designed and modelled with as much
personal freedom and feeling as if Houdon had been stimulated by the
ambition of novel accomplishment, instead of that of rendering with
truth and grace a time-honored and traditional sculptural motive. Its
treatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined, chaste, and
elevated in an extraordinary degree. No master ever steered so near the
reef of "clock-tops," one may say, and avoided it so surely and
triumphantly. The figure is light as air and wholly effortless at the
same time. There has rarely been such a distinguished success in
circumventing the great difficulty of sculpture--which is to rob marble
or metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant,
just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance to
his fictions. But Houdon's admirable busts of Moliere, Diderot,
Washington, Franklin, and Mirabeau, his unequalled statue of Voltaire in
the _foyer_ of the Francais and his San Bruno in Santa Maria degli
Angeli at Rome are the works on which his fame will chiefly rest, and,
owing to their masterly combination of strength with style, rest
securely.

To see the work of David d'Angers, one must go to Angers itself