Bourdelle, Émile-Antoine

Bourdelle, Émile-Antoine (1861–1929). French sculptor, born in Montauban, the son of a cabinet-maker. His family was very poor, but in 1876 he was given a grant by the town of Montauban to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse. From there he went on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, 1884–6, and he worked as an assistant to Rodin, 1893–1908. His first major independent commission (1897–1902) was a monument commemorating the Franco-Prussian War for Montauban (now in the Place Bourdelle). It conveyed the brutality of war without the conventional heroic trappings expected of such monuments and attracted more abuse than praise; Rodin, however, described it as ‘an epic work, one of the great achievements of sculpture today'. Bourdelle's first unqualified public success was the bronze Heracles the Archer (1909, various casts exist; the Bourdelle Museum in Paris has an example, as it does of virtually all his work). After it was exhibited to great acclaim in 1910, he was generally regarded as the outstanding sculptor in France apart from Rodin himself.

Bourdelle's work has been somewhat overshadowed by his association with Rodin, but he was already an accomplished artist when he began working for him and he developed an independent style; he revered his master, but said ‘all my tendencies and my experiences as well run counter to the laws that rule his art'. His energetic, rippling surfaces owe much to Rodin, but his flat rhythmic simplifications of form, recalling Romanesque art, are highly personal. He was particularly interested in the relationship of sculpture to architecture, and his reliefs for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–13), inspired by the dancing of Isadora Duncan, are among his finest works. Bourdelle had many other prestigious public commissions and he made numerous portraits of distinguished contemporaries. He also achieved great distinction as a teacher at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière from 1909 until his death. One of his students there, Vera Mukhina, described him as ‘A little Nibelung, shorter than myself, with an enormous shining high forehead, thick, bushy brows and a black wedge-shaped beard'. He was a talented painter and draughtsman as well as a sculptor. His house and studio in Paris have been converted into a museum of his work; the first part opened in 1961 to mark the centenary of his birth.