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Feuchère, Jean-Jacques
(b Paris, 26 Aug 1807; d Paris, 25 July 1852). French sculptor, painter, decorative artist and collector. Son of the chaser Jacques-François Feuchère (d 1828) and a pupil of Jean-Pierre Cortot and Claude Ramey, he first exhibited at the Salon of 1831. Over the ensuing decade he won the reputation, later shared with his pupil Jean-Baptiste Klagmann (1810–67), of leader in the small-scale, domestic sculpture industry. He modelled statuettes in a variety of historical styles, though he preferred a Renaissance idiom, working for bronze-casters such as M. Vittoz ( fl c. 1840) and Victor Paillard ( fl 1840–51), and producing models for the goldsmith François-Désiré Froment-Meurice (1802–55). One of his early Romantic subjects, a seated figure of Satan brooding after his expulsion from paradise, went through numerous editions from c. 1833 (bronze cast, 1850; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.), its Michelangelo-inspired posture prefiguring Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Ugolino (bronze version; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) and Auguste Rodin’s Thinker (bronze version; Paris, Mus. Rodin). Feuchère contributed to many of the sculptural projects of the July Monarchy: a marble relief of the Crossing of the Bridge at Arcola (1834) for the Arc de Triomphe; a statue of St Theresa (1837–9) for La Madeleine; three allegorical figures in bronze (1838) for the fountains in the Place de la Concorde; and designs for 12 Victories for Napoleon’s funeral car (1840). He was a member of the hashish-smoking circle of the Hôtel Pimodan; Charles Baudelaire, a fellow member, regretted Feuchère’s sacrifice of his talent to commercialism. However, at his early death, the sculptor was found to have sunk his considerable earnings in a remarkable private art collection, including paintings by Leonardo, Raphael and other Italian masters, as well as paintings by various Dutch masters and contemporary French artists.
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