Achille Valois

Achille-Joseph-Étienne Valois (13 January 1785 — 17 December 1862) was a French designer and sculptor who studied for a time in the atelier of Jacques-Louis David and whose sculptural works may be seen in Paris.^[1] He also studied with Antoine-Denis Chaudet.^[2]

Career

Among his early works is the Fontaine de Léda (1806–08) in Fontainebleau style re-sited in the Jardin du Luxembourg. At the restoration of the Bourbons he hastened to execute a bust of Louis XVIII.^[3] In 1816 he sculpted a portrait of Madame Royale the duchesse d'Angoulême, eldest daughter of the late Louis XVI.^[4] His bust of the sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet, with whom he had also studied, exhibited at the Salon of 1817, was bought in 1820 for the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers.^[5] He contributed a marble bas-relief of children representing Medicine intended for a fountain in Place de la Bastille (1817)^[6] colossal statues of Louis XVI for Montpellier^[7] and the cast-iron Pêche des coquillages (1838–40) to the central Fontaines de la Concorde, designed by Jacques Ignace Hittorff for Place de la Concorde. Between 1816 and 1827 he produced a statue of Louis XVI, which originally stood in Montpellier before being given as a gift to the city of Louisville, Kentucky in 1966.^[8]

As a draughtsman, Valois produced a drawing of the triumphal arrival of celebrated works of art from the Vatican in Paris, 1798,^[9] that was copied on a Sèvres porcelain "Etruscan" vase (Vase Étrusque à rouleaux) in 1813.^[10]

Valois was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1825.^[11]

Notes

^ Émile Bellier de La Chavignerie (ed.), Dictionnaire général des artistes de l'école française, s.v. "Valois, Achille-Joseph-Étienne", includes a longer list of executed commissions.
^ MacKay, James, The Dictionary of Sculptors in Bronze, Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1977, p. 380
^ A bronze cast dated 1814, was sold from the collection of Thierry de Maigret, 10 December 2003, lot 166 (ArtNet).
^ Dictionnaire.
^ Angers 1994, no.28, illustrated.
^ Dictionnaire général .
^ Models shown in the Salons of 1822 and 1827 (Dictionnaire).
^ "Louis XVI". LouisvilleKY.gov. Archived from the original on September 23, 2023. Retrieved January 26, 2024.
^ Martin Rosenberg, "Raphael's Transfiguration and Napoleon's Cultural Politics", Eighteenth-Century Studies 19.2 (Winter 1985-1986):180-205) p.193, illus. p. 194.
^ The vase, conserved in the Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, is illustrated in Lynn Springer Roberts, "The Londonderry Vase: A Royal Gift to Curry Favor", Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 15.1 (1989:68-81+88) p. 81 fig 14.
^ Dictionnaire général .

External links

Achille Valois in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website

[1] Émile Bellier de La Chavignerie (ed.), Dictionnaire général des artistes de l'école française, s.v. "Valois, Achille-Joseph-Étienne", includes a longer list of executed commissions.

[2] MacKay, James, The Dictionary of Sculptors in Bronze, Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1977, p. 380

[3] A bronze cast dated 1814, was sold from the collection of Thierry de Maigret, 10 December 2003, lot 166 (ArtNet).

[4] Dictionnaire.

[5] Angers 1994, no.28, illustrated.

[6] Dictionnaire général .

[7] Models shown in the Salons of 1822 and 1827 (Dictionnaire).

[8] "Louis XVI". LouisvilleKY.gov. Archived from the original on September 23, 2023. Retrieved January 26, 2024.

[9] Martin Rosenberg, "Raphael's Transfiguration and Napoleon's Cultural Politics", Eighteenth-Century Studies 19.2 (Winter 1985-1986):180-205) p.193, illus. p. 194.

[10] The vase, conserved in the Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, is illustrated in Lynn Springer Roberts, "The Londonderry Vase: A Royal Gift to Curry Favor", Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 15.1 (1989:68-81+88) p. 81 fig 14.

[11] Dictionnaire général .

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