François Rude
In 1799, at the age of fifteen, despite his father's resistance, he began taking courses at the School of Fine Arts in Dijon, located within the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy, while continuing to work in the family business.[3] Rude began his studies at the Imperial Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in August 1808 under Pierre Cartellier, a devotee of classical sculpture.While studying, he gained practical experience as an assistant to Edme Gaulle, who was making part of the sculptural frieze of the column being made for Place Vendôme to celebrate the victories of Napoleon.He found a client in the French state, which commissioned him, along with several others sculptors, to work on a frieze for the Arc de Triomphe; he refined his technique and style.During the Bourbon Restoration, Charles X of France had begun to work on it again, to make it a monument to celebrate the defeat of Spanish revolutionaries by a French royal expeditionary force.Sophie Fremiet, Rude's wife, posed for the principal figure, the Génie de la Guerre (Genius of the War), a woman with a sword shouting to urge others on to battle.In 1837, Louis-Philppe opened a museum within the largely-abandoned Palace of Versailles to honor the heroes of French history, and, as he declared, "all the glories of France."Rude was commissioned in 1836, before the opening of the museum, to make a statue of a German-born French military hero from the 18th century, the Maurice de Saxe.In 1845, Rude completed another statue devoted to French history; Joan of Arc, portrayed with her hand up, listing to the mystical voice calling her to fight for the liberty of France against the English invaders.The earliest wax model made by Rude depicted Ney at his execution, as he opened his coat and urged the firing squad to "aim for the heart."This pose was judged as too politically provocative, so Rude made a different version, depicting Ney, sword upraised, ordering his soldiers forward.This work, like his earlier Departure of the Volunteers, broke with academic tradition by showing Ney with his mouth open, shouting at his soldiers to follow.[9] An unusual work in his period of patriotic sculptures was his tomb of Éléonore-Louis Godefroi Cavaignac, one of the leaders of the republican opposition to the monarchy, who had died in 1845.He was unable to pursue a military career after Napoleon's downfall, but with the help of a wealthy wife purchased vineyards and an estate at Fixin in Burgundy.Another important pupil of Rude was Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who subsequently executed his own interpretation of a Neapolitan Fisher Boy, a popular subject at the time.