A revolutionary sculptor

David Hide and Carol Hayton consider the work of David d'Angers

The first Romantic sculpture, Paganini; image from Musées d'Angers

Lots of people ask why we aren't commissioning a bust of Shelley for our public memorial.

When we started the Project, we did have a bust in mind. However, after much consideration, we changed our thinking.

A recent visit to a museum dedicated to one of the leading French Romantic sculptors, David d'Angers, by our chair and treasurer, provided support to our decision with reference to the romantic movement of which both Percy Bysshe Shelley and David d' Angers were part.

David d'Angers was born in 1788, just a few years before Shelley and on the eve of the French Revolution. In his work as a sculptor he sought to immortalise great individuals of his time, including a preeminent group of artists, poets and writers, such as Goethe, Paganini and Victor Hugo.

With the busts that he sculpted he sought to remain faithful to the physical appearance of the artists, many of whom he knew and visited, while conveying certain traits of the individual. The bust of Paganini is considered the very first Romantic sculpture.

The difficulty in producing a truly romantic sculpture of Shelley is that there is no image that we can say, remains faithful to the great romantic poet.

We therefore concluded that, rather than have a generic bust of 'a poet' , we would have something that truly references something personal to Shelley, which is the words he wrote.

David d'Angers sculptures including many of his romantic and revolutionary heroes can be seen in the remarkable Galerie David d' Angers in Angers.

Bust of Goethe