Alexandre Falguière (1831-1900)

Falguière was born in Toulouse. A pupil of the École des Beaux-Arts, he won the Prix de Rome in 1859; he was awarded the medal of honor at the Paris Salon in 1868 and was appointed Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1878.

Falguière's first bronze statue of importance was "Le Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs" (Victor of the Cockfight) (1864), and Tarcisius the Christian Boy-Martyr followed in 1867; both were exhibited in the Luxembourg Museum and are now in the Musée d'Orsay. His more important monuments are those to Admiral Courbet (1890) at Abbeville and the famous Joan of Arc. Other works include Eve (1880), Diana (1882 and 1891), Woman and Peacock, and The Poet, astride his Pegasus spreading wings for flight. He sculpted The Dancer, based on Cléo de Mérode which today is also in the Musée d'Orsay.

To these works should be added the Honoré de Balzac, which he executed for the Société des gens de lettres on their rejection of that by Auguste Rodin; and the busts of Carolus-Duran.

Falguière was a painter as well as a sculptor. Falguière became a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Beaux-Arts) in 1882.

Falguière died in Paris in 1900 and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where his monument was made by his pupil Marqueste.