The Harvest Bronze By Henri Bouchard (1875-1960)

The harvest bronze by Henri Bouchard (1875-1960) Beciglia cast stamp Mario Beciglia (1879-1961) beautiful lost wax cast around 1840 brown patina Henri Bouchard, born December 13, 185 in Dijon and died November 30, 1960 in Paris, is a French sculptor and medalist. Biography . Son of a carpenter from Dijon, Louis Henri Bouchard entered as an apprentice with an ornamental decorator where he learned the basics of sculpture. In 1889, at the same time, he attended the school of fine arts in his hometown, where he was a pupil of the Dijon sculptor François Dameron. He enrolled at the Julian Academy in Paris and entered the National School of Decorative Arts, where he was a student of Hector Lemaire from 1889 to 1894. He then entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the studio of the sculptor Louis Eneste Barias from 1895 to 1901. In 1901, he won the Grand Prix de Rome on the theme of the Exile of Oedipus and Antigone expelled from Thebes. From 1902 to 1906, he was a boarder in Rome, from where he sent works such as the Reaper (1904), Docker of the Port of Naples, Girl with a Jug or Young Roman Dancer. He traveled from 1903 to 1905. In addition to Italy, Tunisia in 1903, Morocco in 1904 and Greece in 1905. These years sharpened his taste for everyday life and the work of the popular classes. Back in France in 1906, he lives and works in the Montparnasse district in Paris where, in the tradition of Jules Dalou or Constantin Meunier, he develops his naturalistic approach to the world of workers. He received his first state commission in 1907. From 1910 to 1917 he was appointed professor at the Julian Academy. His art becomes more stylized, rhythmic, more decorative too. He creates small decorative pieces and receives many commissions for monumental works and reliefs. In 1911, he traveled to Germany, where he painted a portrait of Claus Sluter. Bouchard traveled north in 1912: to England, Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1913, he married the painter Suzanne Shneller, whose bust he modeled. He will raise three children with her. During the First World War, he was mobilized in the camouflage section of the French Army in Amiens. He was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1914. Demobilized, Bouchard returned to Paris in February 1919. To meet the many orders placed with him, in 1924 he had a workshop built in Paris in the Quartier d'Auteuil, which will become the Henri Bouchard Museum, closed in March 2007, to be transferred to La piscine in Roubaix. He participated in the international exhibition of modern decorative and industrial arts in 1925. From 1928 to 1929, he was a professor at the National School of Decorative Arts, then from 1929 to 1945, he became a professor and workshop manager at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1930, he was elected a foreign associate member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (in the chair of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle). In 1933, he became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. He was appointed associate member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels in 1939. From 1940 to 1945, Bouchard was president of the Salon des artistes français, From 1941 to 1945, he participated in the Collaboration Group. He took part in the trip to Germany in 1941 at the invitation of the German occupier, along with eleven other artists. He wrote an article about this trip in the magazine l'illustration, in which he wrote: "So I said what I saw: the almost magical life that the Reich government knows how to make for its artists, who seem to be there the darling children of the nation. ". In 1942, he was a member of the honorary committee of the Arno Breker exhibition in Paris. The same year, following the law of October 11, 1941 on the mobilization of non-ferrous metals, three of his bronze sculptures were cast: the Monument to the Mayor of Beaune in Beaune Clearing in Charleville-Mézières and Le Faucheur in Aspet . In 1944, at the Liberation, he was recognized as a collaborator by the steering committee of the Front national des arts under the presidency of Pablo Picasso. The Public Prosecutor's Office will then classify the file after its study. In homage to Lucien Louis Bunel, he made the Monument to Father Jacques de Barentin, one of his last large sculptures, in 1948. On November 5, 1958, he delivered the eulogy of his colleague Paul Niclausse at the church of Saint Germain des Pres in Paris. Henri Bouchard died on November 30, 1960 in Paris, leaving a studio full of numerous sketches, plasters and sculptures. He is buried in the cemetery of Aiserey (coted'OR) alongside his wife Suzanne Schneller, By decree of December 13, 2006, the transfer of the sculptor's studio, preserved in the 16th arrondissement of Paris 16th (the museum Bouchard) since his death as well as 300 of his works, at the Musée de La Piscine in Roubaix. The sculptor's studio will be rebuilt there identically and has been accessible to the public since 2018.