ETEX, Antoine

During the reigns of Louis XVIII Louis Philippe, many commissions were given to various artists to execute statues of great men and women who played an important role in the history of France. These statues were placed in the Château de Versailles and in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

This statue was placed on the first floor of the north wing of the Château.

Although Romanticism made its appearance in painting from 1820 onwards, there was a gap of ten years before it was expressed in sculpture at the Salon of 1831 by Duseigneur’s Orlando Furioso, with its bulging muscles and twisted limbs, and the Tiger and Crocodile by Barye. These works were soon followed by Etex’s Cain, executed in Rome, as a bravado gesture because he did not win the Grand Prix, and by the creations of Pr�ault.

Under the Second Empire there were a large number of commissions for the interior decoration of churches Frescoes, paintings, and sculptures). Artists generally enjoyed greatest freedom in the interior decoration than in decorating the outer fa�ades. �tex’s Ecco Homo is an example in which the artist gave free rein to a lyricism that was particularly expressive in the drapery of the angels.

The Milhomme figure of Grief in the P�re-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris begot many more of the same kind, but the scenes of affliction came to an end with the years 1820-25. They were replaced either by recumbent effigies, after 1840, or by reliefs modifying the theme so as to bring out the idea of separation. In most of these, the survivor communes at the grave of the departed. In the P�re-Lachaise Cemetery a fine example of this style, inspired by antique models and made fashionable by Houdon and Canova, is the tomb of the Comte de Bourcke, affirms Christian faith in resurrection, ‘Expectantes beatem spem’, but in a widely disseminated engraving this was amended to read ‘Expecta me’, stressing the relations of the spouses.

The contrary scene, the departure of the deceased, is more rare. It required the fertile imagination of Etex to conceive for the tomb of Madame Raspail, who died while her husband was a political prisoner at Doullens, a monumental figure wholly covered by a shroud, with arm outstretched towards a barred window and the legend: ‘Farewell, 8 March 1853, 12.30 p.m. Doullens.’