Alexandre FALGUIERE
Falguière, an apostle of realism pushed to the extreme, was immensely popular under the Third Republic for which he became, along with Dalou, an official state sculptor. A drawing student of Carrier-Belleuse and of Jouffroy at the École des Beaux-Arts, Falguière was known as a neo-Florentine sculptor. He won the Prix de Rome in 1859 and was instantly an immense success with his submission for the third year of the competition in 1862, the Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs (winner of the cock fight). The Vainqueur, inspired by Jean de Bologne’s Mercure, would be issued in several different dimensions. Never hesitating to use the most modern techniques like photography and molding directly from live subjects or objects, Falguière arrived, by means of a technique where many small balls of clay are stacked together to build a sculpture from the ground up, at a perfect realism that assured him great success in sculpture for edition, particularly in the representation of female subjects. Falguière was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1882.
