The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 84
JOSEPH CHINARD (1756–1813)
19
Italy or France, 2nd half 18th century
Faun and Kid
After the Antique
White marble
116 cm (45¾ in.) high
50 cm (19¾ in.) wide
signed
CH i NARD
provenance
Heim Gallery, Autumn, 1984 (no. 37)
Christie’s London, 17 June 1994, lot 393, “A French white marble figure of the faun
and kid by Joseph Chinard”
Harrods, London (possibly through Imogen Paine), 1990s
Private collection, South East England
fig. 1
Roman, 130–50 ad, Faun and kid,
marble, 136 cm high
Madrid, Museo del Prado, inv. no. E00029
This exquisitely modelled group of a Faun carrying a kid goat upon his shoulders,
was carved by the pioneering Neoclassical sculptor Joseph Chinard (1756 – 1813),
after one of the most revered antiquities that were formerly in the collections of
Queen Christina of Sweden, then Livio Odescalchi and later, King Philip V of
Spain, at Palacio de La Granja de San Ildefsonso, Segovia.
Joseph Chinard was one of the greatest portraitists of his age. Born in Lyons
to a family of silk merchants, he first trained under the painter Donat Nonotte
at the Ecole Royale de Dessin in Lyons. He then worked with the local sculptor
Barthélemy Blaise (1738–1819) and by 1780 he was working independently. Thanks
to a local patron Chinard was able to go to Rome, where he remained until 1787,
with a further visit in 1791–92, when he was briefly imprisoned for having upset the
papal authorities. Back in Lyons Chinard received numerous public commissions
and put his art to the service of the French Revolution. He visited Paris for the
first time in 1795 and became part of the circle of the Lyonnais banker Jacques
Récamier, whose beautiful wife, Juliette, would be the sitter for some of his most
exquisite portrait busts. During the Consulate and the Empire Chinard enjoyed
tremendous success. Napoleon’s military campaigns offered him a new heroic
iconography and he received a number of public commissions while producing
portrait busts of members of the imperial court. During the last five years of his
life, Chinard divided his time between Paris and Lyons, exhibiting regularly at the
Paris Salon. Most of the works exhibited were portrait busts, forming a remarkable
gallery of the personalities of early nineteenth-century France. Chinard’s mastery
of marble carving and terracotta modelling enabled him to create distinctive
images combining stylization and realism.
The present sculpture is signed by the artist on the tree trunk, an element that
also appears on the original composition and acts as a creative way in which to
