Edme BOUCHARDON (1698-1762)

Lot 6
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Estimation :
1000 - 1500 EUR
Edme BOUCHARDON (1698-1762)
Labor Omnia Vincit - token for the King's Buildings, Circa 1742, Sanguine on paper, 23.1 x 26.3 cm. Charles-Nicolas Cochin wrote of him that he was "the greatest sculptor and the best draughtsman of his century". Trained by his father, an architect and sculptor, whom he assisted at a very young age on building sites in the Haute-Marne, Bouchardon moved to Paris in 1722, where he worked in the studio of William I Coustou. Winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in the same year, he was in the "eternal city" from July 1723, where his taste for ancient statuary was quickly expressed. A talented portraitist, recalled in 1732 by the director of the King's buildings, he was admitted to the Academy of Saint-Luc on his return to Paris and received a studio and accommodation in the square courtyard of the Louvre. Chosen for the building sites of Saint-Sulpice (1734-1738), the Neptune Basin in Versailles (1739), and the Grenelle Fountain in Paris (1739-1745), he showed his ability to meet any challenge when he imagined a gigantic equestrian statue (1752-1763) for the Louis XV square in Paris (Place de la Concorde). Between all these worksites, Bouchardon never stopped drawing. In addition to the sequel to the Cris de Paris engraved by Étienne Fessard, he produced numerous frontispieces and vignettes of works. As draftsman of the Académie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1737), he also provided highly inventive models for the Monnaie de Paris. This institution was responsible for composing the royal metallic history by providing iconographic descriptions and writing, in particular, the Latin inscriptions of medals and the French legends of tokens. Bouchardon is credited with a vast corpus of preparatory drawings for these medals and tokens, almost all on the same model, the sanguine, 21 cm. in diameter. The medals were intended to commemorate an episode of the reign, while the tokens underlined the virtuous role of a state service. Our desig
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