Masterpieces of the J. Paul Getty Museum: European Sculpture

39 JOSEPH CHINARD

French (Lyons), 1756-1813

The Family of General Philippe-

Guillaume Duhesme, circa 1808

Terracotta

56 cm (22^16 in.)

Inscribed on the front:

chinard statnaire a Lyon

85.SC.82

Chinard was the leading French Empire sculptor and, after Canova, the favored

sculptor of Napoleon and the Bonaparte family. Like the painter Jean-Auguste-

Dominique Ingres, Chinard executed many large historical and mythological works,

but he was especially prized as a brilliant portraitist. Particularly innovative in dealing

with the formal problems of truncation in busts, Chinard mitigated the effect of

the cuts and unified the bust with its socle or pedestal through his clever use of

contemporary high-fashion accessories. By the inclusion of low-relief scenes and

meaning-laden accessories, he introduced into portrait sculpture narrative elements

that had traditionally been reserved almost exclusively for painted portraits.

It was probably Chinard more than anyone who established the lasting currency

of the portrait medallion in nineteenth-century France. His small circular relief profiles

of distinguished sitters—like the one held by the woman in the Museum's work—

were produced in large editions, in plaster or biscuit, and became the prototype for

thousands of similar objects executed during the rest of the century.

The Museum's work is characteristic of Chinard's sculpture in its use of classical

composition and forms that provide the framework or support for detailed rendering of

contemporary fashion. It depicts a family group, with the medallic portrait of General

Duhesme being held and looked at by his wife and son. The figures are shown bound

together by love in the form of the cupids who hold the rope encircling the daybed

upon which mother and son are seated. This is a rare type of sculpture, combining as

it does detailed portraits of three family members (in accurately depicted contemporary

clothes and hair styles) into an imaginary and touching genre-like scene. It is a work

that well represents Chinard's contributions to the history of sculpture—the infusion

of storytelling elements into portraiture and the conflation of fact and fashion into

purely aesthetic configurations.

Philippe-Guillaume Duhesme was born in Bourgneuf (Saone-et-Loire) in 1766

and died at Gennapes, Belgium, in 1815. In 1808 he was made Governor of Catalonia,

Spain. Since Chinard died in 1813, two years prior to the death of General Duhesme,

the present work cannot be a model for Duhesme's tomb. It seems most likely that

the terracotta was executed in or shortly after 1808, when Duhesme went to Spain,

leaving his family behind in France. Thus, the group probably served as a family

keepsake portrait. PF

106 EUROPEAN SCULPTURE