Sculpture

The museum collection was initially formed around the painting collection and therefore contains few sculptures prior to the 18^th Century. However, Italian baroque sculpture is illustrated by a recently-acquired small bronze depicting Andromeda chained to the rock, a reduction of a marble sculpture by Domenico Guidi on show at the New York Metropolitan Museum. The museum has several examples of the graceful art of the sculptor Clodion and his brother, Pierre Michel : The Offering to Love (terra cotta) and La Marchande d’amour (marble) are typical examples of their production of small-scale works, highly popular with art-lovers at a time when Antiquity was back in vogue. Through the generosity of Baroness de Jankowitz, who bequeathed her entire collection to the musée des Beaux-Arts in 1866, the museum offers an outstanding collection of works by Marie-Anne Collot-Falconet, daughter-in-law of one of the great sculptors of the French 18th Century, Étienne-Maurice Falconet.

The museum also has a rich collection of 19^th Century French sculptures, with works by Émile Chatrousse (War Crimes), Auguste Rodin (Psyche carried off by the chimera), Aristide Maillol (Youth) and a monumental fine porcelain Autumn melancholy by Ernest Bussière. The terrifying wooden Misery by Jules Desbois, a modern tribute to the mediaeval “transis”, is a forceful example of the work of a sculptor who was for too long reduced to his role as a follower of Rodin.

The 20th Century works are dispersed along the ground floor itinerary. Cubist sculpture, or sculpture based on cubism, is represented by a number of works of prime importance: Raymond Duchamp-Villon and his famous steel Large horse, Ossip Zadkine, Henri Laurens and Jacques Lipchitz with twenty original plaster casts of his greatest projects and portraits. Finally, the 20th Century sculpture collections are completed by Étienne Martin and César.