Artist

(b. 1829, Paris, d. 1896, Paris)

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Details

French sculptor and writer. Born in humble circumstances, he was apprenticed to a jeweler at the age of 11. He subsequently trained with the painter Abel de Pujol (1785-1861) but seems to have taught himself the techniques of sculpture, and at the 1848 Salon he exhibited a plaster sketch of Khair-ed-Din, called Barbarossa (untraced). In 1851, on the advice of his patron, the Comte de Nieuwekerke, he became François Rude's last pupil. In 1853 he exhibited a plaster group of Queen Hortense and her Son Louis Napoleon (untraced), which brought him a commission from Louis Napoleon, by then Napoleon III, for a marble of the same group (Compiegne, Château); this was exhibited in 1855 at the Exposition Universelle, Paris. During the remaining years of the Second Empire, Chatrousse executed a number of sculptures to decorate public buildings in Paris, such as the Louvre, the Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville and numerous churches. He exhibited works with religious and historical subjects: some of these, such as Resignation (marble, 1855-59; Paris, St Eustache), are characterized by a non-academic, morbid expressivity. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Chatrousse used this expressivity in the service of an elegiac patriotism, most notably in the Crimes of War (marble, 1871-76; Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts). In the same decade he became, along with his contemporary Jules Dalou, one of the pioneers of sculptural 'modernity', exhibiting at the 1876 Salon a Young Parisienne (plaster dated 1876; Paris, Petit Palais), and in 1883 a Young Woman of Today (marble; Condom, Musée de l'Armagnac). //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	C
Artist nationality	French