DANTAN, Jean-Pierre - b. 1800 Paris, d. 1869 Baden-Baden - WGA

DANTAN, Jean-Pierre

(b. 1800 Paris, d. 1869 Baden-Baden)

Jean-Pierre Dantan, known as Dantan the Younger, was part of a French family of sculptors. Together with his brother, Antoine-Laurent Dantan (1798-1878), known as Dantan the Elder, they both served an apprenticeship with their father, an ornamental wood-carver.

Antoine-Laurent entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1816, and Jean-Pierre in 1823. Both were the pupils of François-Joseph Bosio, who passed on to them his skill in elegant, conventional portraiture. While the elder brother was preparing his entry for the Prix de Rome, the younger worked on a variety of decorative commissions. By 1826 he had executed a statuette (Paris, Carnavalet) portraying César Ducornet (1805-56), an armless painter. Because of the subject’s disability, this work cannot rank as the first of his caricatures or portraits chargés, as Jean-Pierre termed his subsequent humorous sculptures; but the interest in physical peculiarities that it displays was in accordance with the Romantics’ desire to accommodate the full range of natural phenomena, even the disturbing.

Liszt Playing the Piano

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. He became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer; to this day, many consider him to have been the greatest pianist in history. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 16 minutes):

Franz Liszt: Dante-sonata

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Paganini

All the Romantic sculptors executed medallions, a form of portrait that was quicker, less burdensome and cheaper than the bust. Many of them embarked on the portrait statuette connected with the contemporary world of politics and the theatre, unless it concerned the intimate effigy of the artist’s wife and children. With Dantan, the statuette shifts towards the burden, born of the excessive use of phrenology and physiognomy, of the accumulation of accessories. Forming the Mus�e Dantan, or Dantanorama, this collection of caricatures which includes literary, political, artistic and scientific figures constitutes the satirical counterparts to David’s medallions.

Paganini was one of the greatest violin virtusosos of all time, he wrote numerous difficult studies for the instrument, many of which including ground-breaking new techniques of playing. In addition, he composed many pieces for guitar.

Listen to an example of Paganini’s guitar music.

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Portrait of Tamburini

This is a book illustration made after Dantan’s caricature sculpture.

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Victor Hugo

Jean-Pierre Dantan was one of the sculptors who profited from the emergence of the new genre of Romantic sculptural portraiture. His fame started in 1827 when he made his debut at the Salon with a portrait bust. Like David d’Angers, he specialized in celebrities - particularly among the artistic community - and produced busts of (among others) Horace Vernet, Gros, Cherubini, Rossini, and Victor Hugo. He favoured working in metal, which led him to innovate in unusual materials such as zinc.

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France.

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