Description
George Washington Bust by Houdon. In 1784, the Congress of Virginia passed a resolution to have a statue of President Washington made for the State Capitol. Governor Harrison authorized Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, to select a European artist he considered worthy of this task. Benjamin Franklin was consulted and the choice fell upon Jean-Antoine Houdon the foremost portrait sculptor of his time. In July 1785, Houdon sailed for Philadelphia, accompanied by his friend Franklin and three of his workmen. Advised of the master’s arrival in September of that year, Washington hastened to invite him to Mount Vernon. After two weeks’ work, Houdon took a life mask, other plaster impressions, minute measurements of Washington’s body and sketches back to Paris. His imposing and elegant statue was completed in 1792 and today still adorns the front of the Capitol in Richmond. Jean-Antoine Houdon (20 March 1741 – 15 July 1828) was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment. Houdon’s subjects include Denis Diderot (1771), Benjamin Franklin (1778-09), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1778), Voltaire (1781), Molière (1781), George Washington (1785-88), Thomas Jefferson (1789), Louis XVI (1790), Robert Fulton, 1803-04, and Napoléon Bonaparte (1806).
