Curated playlist
French male sculptors
- Pierre BontempsPierre Bontemps carved the faces of French kings and queens in stone, and yet most people who have stood beside his work never knew his name. Born around 1505, he lived and worked through one of the most ambitious periods of French…
- Edgar DegasEdgar Degas was born on the 19th of July 1834 in Paris, under the full name Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas. He later adopted the simpler spelling himself, a quiet act of self-invention that suited a man who spent his life reshaping how art…
- Michel ColombeMichel Colombe left behind the puzzle of a sculptor who outlived his own early work. Born in Bourges around 1430, he spent his career in Tours, at a moment when French taste in sculpture was caught between two traditions. The Gothic forms…
- Henri MatisseHenri Émile Benoît Matisse did not pick up a paintbrush until he was nineteen years old. He had been trained as a lawyer, and was working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France when his mother brought him art…
- Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp walked into a New York exhibition hall in 1917 and submitted a urinal for display. He had signed it with a pseudonym, "R. Mutt", and titled it Fountain. The show committee declared it was not art and turned it away. Duchamp…
- Paul GauguinPaul Gauguin was born in Paris on the 7th of June 1848, in the middle of a year when revolutions were sweeping across Europe. His father was a liberal journalist whose newspaper was shut down by French authorities, forcing the family to…
- Auguste RodinAuguste Rodin was born into a working-class family in Paris on the 12th of November 1840, and he died 77 years later on the 17th of November 1917 -- just five days after his birthday. Between those two dates, he produced works so unlike…
- Germain PilonGermain Pilon carved the dead back to life. Working in marble, bronze, wood, and terra cotta across the French Renaissance, Pilon built his reputation stone by stone in the great churches and royal chapels of France. He was born in Paris…
- Jean GoujonJean Goujon arrived in Paris around 1544 carrying the memory of Rouen, the north sea light of Normandy, and possibly the direct impression of Italian stone. What he built in the following two decades would become some of the most admired…
- Ligier RichierLigier Richier carved a standing corpse that holds its own heart. That sculpture, made from stone quarried near his hometown, still stands in a church in Bar-le-Duc today. It depicts René of Châlon, Prince of Orange, who died on the 15th…
- Jean-Léon GérômeJean-Léon Gérôme was born on the 11th of May 1824 in Vesoul, a small town in the Haute-Saône region of France, and by 1880 he had become arguably the most famous living artist in the world. That rise was not built on one triumphant canvas…
- Philibert de l'OrmePhilibert de l'Orme was born in Lyon sometime between the 3rd and the 9th of June 1514, the son of a master mason who employed three hundred workers and built prestigious buildings for the city's elite. That origin would follow him his…