Robert Fulton, ca. 1804

  • Jean-Antoine Houdon, French, 1741-1828

Marble

  • Overall (including socle): 28 3/4 × 20 × 12 3/4 inches (73 × 50.8 × 32.4 cm)

Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.

49.23

On View

  • American, Level 2, West
  • Era of Revolution, Level 3, South

Department

European Sculpture and Dec Arts

Houdon, the greatest French neoclassical portrait sculptor, has captured the American inventor's complex character—intelligent, self-assured, energetic, and sensitive—qualified perhaps by the merest trace of discouragement, reflecting the problems with his imperfect experiments, thus far, with submarines and steam-powered ships attempted off the French coast. Fulton's strikingly handsome appearance is reinforced by his austere yet elegant French attire and fashionable hair style. He was thirty-eight, an American living in Paris, when he posed for the celebrated French sculptor. Houdon portrays Fulton's tenacity through restrained modeling. The choice of Fulton as a subject was consistent with Houdon's admiration of men of science and diplomacy, including such preeminent Americans as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.

Signed, on right shoulder: houdon f. AN XII

Decres Family (La Chapelle Vieille Forêt, France)

P.A. Rockefeller (New York, New York, USA)

Jonce McGurk (New York, New York, USA)

Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.

1949-present, gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Exh. cat., Paris Salon. Paris, 1804, no. 639. Grigault, P. "Houdon's Marble Bust of Robert Fulton." Bulletin of the DIA 28, no. 4 (1948-1949): pp. 79-80 (cover ill.). Grigaut, P. "A Marble Bust of Robert Fulton by Houdon." Art Quarterly 12, no. 3 (Summer 1949): pp. 257- 262 (ill.). Sculpture by Houdon. Exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum. Worcester, MA, 1964, pp. 124-127 (ill.). "Living Faces of Our Past." Life Magazine 57, no. 1, pp. 72-78 (ill.). "Family Art Game." DIA Advertising Supplement, Detroit News/Detroit Free Press, April 30, 1982, p. 31 (ill.). Brookner, A. Jacques-Louis David. New York, 1980, p. 94. Recent Acquisitions: A Selection 1989-1990. Exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1990, p. 30. Poulet, Anne L. Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment. Exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. Chicago, 2003, cat. 49, pp. 275–278 (ill.). Scherf, Guilhem. Houdon at the Louvre: Masterworks of the Enlightenment. Exh. cat., High Museum of Art. Atlanta, 2008, pp. 150, 176. Buckling M. and G. Scherf, eds. Jean-Antoine Houdon. Die Sinnliche Skulptur. Frankfurt, 2009, pp. 210–213 (ill.). Poindront, P. "Houdon, pere de la sculpture classique." L'objet d'art 454 (February 2010): p. 10.

Jean-Antoine Houdon, Robert Fulton, ca. 1804, marble. Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr., 49.23.