DAVID D'ANGERS Pierre-Jean (EN)

Biographical article

Pierre-Jean David (1788–1856) was one of the emblematic figures of the Musées d’Angers, initially as a sculptor, but also as a donator. A committed sculptor, convinced of the resolutely republican civil and moral role of public sculpture, his goal was to create statues devoted to Great Men, and he worked tirelessly to fulfil this ambition. He travelled around Europe collecting the portraits of all the influential figures of his century and often donated his work to the patrons once he had completed the sculpture. Very early on, in 1811, he decided to send his first prize-wining works to the city of Angers: La Douleur and La Mort d’Épaminondas, for which he was awarded the Premier Grand Prix, which enabled him to join the Académie de France in Rome. Until his death, he made a point of having models of his principal works sent to his native city, in recognition of the financial support awarded by the municipality at the beginning of his career. He encouraged his heirs to do likewise, and his widow, Émilie, and her two children, Robert and Hélène, continued to donate works.

The collection

Aside from David’s own works, the sculptor and his family also donated very fine sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), Philippe-Laurent Roland (1746–1816), Augustin Pajou (1730–1809), François Delaistre (1746–1832), and Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1766–1810), as well as drawings by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Achille Devéria (1800–1857), Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), Antoine-Louis Girodet (1767–1824), and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), amongst many other artists. This already rich ensemble was complemented by paintings, miniatures, daguerreotypes, photographs, engravings, and family objects. Pierre-Jean David d’Angers’ post-death inventory gives us an idea of the nature and extent of the sculptor’s collection at the point of his death in January 1856 (AN (French national archives), MC/AND/LIX/608). Despite imprecisions relating to the denominations or content of the various lots evaluated, it appears that it consisted of a collection of highly varied works and objects, whose richness and interest have been highlighted by several studies (Caso, J., September 1980, pp. 85–97; Okada, A., 1986; Le Nouëne, P., and Lesseur, C., 1995; and Le Nouëne, P., 2005). Although it consists mainly of nineteenth-century works, drawings, and paintings, there are also Egyptian and Graeco-Roman antiquities, and works that are a priori more unexpected, such as ‘six frames containing Chinese paintings’ (no. 506) and an ‘album (Chinese drawings)’ (no. 527).

Although this passion for Asian arts and civilisations featured in a catalogue published in 1986 (Okada, A., 1986), it continues to be of interest today. The approximation and probably the imprecision of the terms used in the nineteenth  century to describe them—‘Chinese painting’ was sometimes confused at the time with Indian or Persian painting—indicate that his interest in Oriental texts was greater than that for illuminated manuscripts, for which the real craze and greater familiarity only developed around the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, this taste for Asian arts was evident in the collections of David d’Angers donated to the Musée d’Angers in 1901, and then in 1911, by the sculptor’s daughter, Hélène Leferme (thirty-two Indian miniatures were donated in 1901, attributed inventory numbers MBA 365.1 to MBA 365.32 and four placed under glass in 1911, and given the inventory numbers MBA 730 to MBA 733). David, just like his contemporaries, lived at a time when the ‘Orient’ was being discovered by Europeans, ‘this vast movement of openness (...), whose irresistible elan and lasting consequences Victor Hugo highlighted in his famous preface to Les Orientales (1829)’ (Okada, 2009, p. 19). Perhaps this interest was prompted by one of his friends, Théodore Pavie (1811–1896), a brilliant orientalist who taught Sanskrit at the Collège de France and who was a great traveller who had returned from his expeditions with many Asian documents and manuscripts. It is entirely conceivable that it was Théodore who donated the above-mentioned works to David. In any case, the sculptor also bought a Hindu painting (Almée, Hindu gouache, 31 x 17.5 cm, donated by Hélène Leferme, inventory no. MBA 730), which had belonged to Girodet, as attested by Hélène’s notes on the back of the drawing. It is unclear as to whether it was the work in itself or rather the painter’s memory that was the most important factor in this acquisition. As additional proof of his interest in these precious Oriental works, whose subtleness, finely drawn lines, beautiful details, and subtle spatial construction could only resonate with him, he copied—just as Girodet had done before him—a miniature by Murshidabad, dating from around 1760, entitled Femme se coiffant (‘Woman arranging her hair’) (BNF, Estampes (Prints), Réserve Od 53 4°, f.1), which he reproduced as a small pencil drawing (Femme se coiffant, graphite pencil on laid paper, 13.6 x 9.5 cm, inv. no. MBA 364.9.1172). It is also important to note that in the Catalogue de vente après décès de la bibliothèque de M. David d'Angers (post-death sale catalogue of Monsieur David d’Angers’ library), in April 1856, there were also several Asian works or works relating to the Indies: Le Bhâgavata Purâna ou Histoire Poétique de Krichna (no. 131 in the catalogue), translated and published in 1840 by Eugène Burnouf, Théodore Pavie’s master; La Bibliothèque Orientale (no. 132) by Herbelot, Visdelou, and Galand, from 1777–1779; Pérégrinations en Orient (no. 140), by Eusèbe de Salle, published in 1840; and Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (no. 179), by Raynal. There are two particularly interesting works in the Fonds David held in the Angers Municipal Library: Noms de quelques plantes, minéraux, animaux, usités dans la médecine chinoise (‘Names of several plants and animals used in Chinese medicine’, which is the copy of a Chinese manuscript drafted by a missionary (MS 1967), and a Chinese manuscript, entitled Noms d’instruments de musique qu’il serait intéressant d’acheter en Chine (‘Names of musical instruments that would be interesting to purchase in China’) (MS 1967 bis).