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Gechter, (Jean-François-)Théodore
(b Paris, 1796; d Paris, 11 Dec 1844). French sculptor. Like Antoine-Louis Barye, Gechter was a pupil of François-Joseph Bosio and Baron Gros. His first Salon exhibits in 1824 had heroic Classical and mythological subjects. After 1830 he followed the example of Barye in turning to small-scale sculpture, usually including animals, but without Barye’s zoological bias. After being shown at the Salon in 1833, his Combat of Charles Martel and Abderame, King of the Saracens (Meaux, Mus. Bossuet) was commissioned in bronze by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Although occasionally—as in The Engagement (Egyptian Expedition, 1798) (exh. Salon, 1834; untraced)—Gechter treated recent history, his predilection was for elaborately costumed battle or hunting scenes from the medieval or Renaissance period. Usually such pieces, with their frozen groupings, their emphasis on costume and their intricacy, belong to the genre known as Troubadour. Exceptionally Gechter could strike a more emotive note in his statuettes, as in Death of Tancred (bronze, exh. Salon 1827; silvered bronze, e.g., Paris, Louvre) or Wounded Amazon (bronze, exh. Salon 1840; untraced). Gechter received several important public commissions: a marble relief of the Battle of Austerlitz (1833–6) for the Arc de Triomphe; marble allegories of the Rhine and the Rhône for one of the fountains in the Place de la Concorde (1839); a St John Chrysostom (marble, 1840) for the Madeleine; and a marble statue of Louis Philippe in coronation robes, commissioned in 1839 (Versailles, Château).
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