About Pradier, Jean Jacques 'James'

James Pradier (1792-1852) was a sculptor, born in Geneva on 23 May, 1792 he died at Rueil, France, on June 4, 1852. He was descended from an old Huguenot family and studied art under Charles Wielandy and David Detalla.

He won a scholarship which took him to Paris, where he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1811 and studied painting in the classical manner under Lemot. He won the Prix de Rome in 1812 for painting and the Grand Prix the following year.

He worked in Rome from 1814 to 1819 and began exhibiting at the Salon on his return, winning a first class medal with his debut. He concentrated on sculpture from 1820 onwards and specialised in busts of his contemporaries and neoclassical statuettes in the style of Clodion, but more erotic.

He won the Legion d’Honneur in 1824 and was advanced to the grade of Officer only seven years later. He was a member of the Institut and succeeded his old master Lemot as professor of sculpture at the Ecole. He won many important public commissions and is best known for the decorative sculpture on the Arc de Triomphe, the Madeleine and Napoleon’s tomb in Les Invalides.

Pradier was part of the neo-classicists artists in France who included Ingres and Canova. In 1846, Gustave Flaubert wrote on his style :
‘This is a great artist, a true Greek, the most antique of all the moderns.’

Many of his works in marble were also cast in bronze. These include the Niobe group (1822), The Three Graces (1821), Psyche (1824), Atalanta (1850), and Sappho (1852).

Bibliography:

Rosenthal, Leon,(1989) Romanticism, Parkstone Press Intenational, USA, 2008, p.184.