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Auguste Clésinger
Auguste Clésinger
Born	1814; Besançon
Died	1883; Paris
Nationality	French
Field	Painting and sculpture
Awards	Officier de la Légion d'honneur

Auguste Clésinger (Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clésinger) (1814, Besançon - 1883, Paris) was a French sculptor and painter of the 19th century. He is buried in the cimetière du Père-Lachaise (division 10) and his heir was his model and mistress Berthe Courrière.

[edit] Life

Leda and the swan, musée de Picardie , Amiens

Woman bitten by a serpent, 1847, marble, Musée d'Orsay

Euterpe, muse of Music, for Frédéric Chopin, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise

His father, Georges-Philippe, was a sculptor and trained Auguste in art. Auguste first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1843 with a bust of vicomte Jules de Valdahon and last exhibited there in 1864. At the 1847 Salon he created a sensation with his Woman bitten by a serpent, produced from life-casts from his model Apollonie Sabatier (the pose being particularly suitable for such a method), thus reinforcing the scandal with an erotic dimension. Sabatier was a salonnier and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire and others. The sculpture's beauty was praised by Théophile Gautier:

“

Clésinger has resolved this problem of making beauty without cuteness, without affectation, without mannerism, with a head and a body of our own time, in which can be recognised his mistress if she is beautiful

”

Clésinger also portrayed Sabatier as herself, in an 1847 marble sculpture now in the Musée d'Orsay.

He produced busts of the actor Rachel Félix and of Théophile Gautier, among others, along with a statue of Louise of Savoy (now in the Jardin du Luxembourg). He received the knight's cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1849 and rose to an officer of the order in 1864. George Sand was very attached to him and he married her daughter in 1847. They had a daughter, Jeanne or 'Nini', in 1849, but she died in 1855 shortly after her parents' separation.

[edit] Selected works

1847 : Woman bitten by a serpent, marble, Musée d'Orsay
1848 : Bacchante, a variation after the Woman bitten by a serpent, marble, Musée du Petit-Palais
1847 : Louise of Savoy, stone statue, jardin du Luxembourg
1857 : Battle of the Roman bulls, painted plaster, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon.
1857 : The infant Hercules strangling the serpents of Envy, bronze Musée d'Orsay
1869 : Nereid groupe en marbre, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon.
1854 : Sappho, plaster, Musée municipal de Châlons-en-Champagne
1865 : Femme à la rose, bronze Musée d'Orsay

[edit] Biblical art

He produced life-size statues for the side chapels of the Église de la Madeleine in Besançon, of the Via Dolorosa, the Pieta, the Entombment, the Resurrection and ascension.