François Rude : Le souffle romantique

François Rude (1784-1855) is the author of the most famous sculpture of all, Le Départ des volontaires de 1792, which has graced the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile in Paris since 1836. Although his republican and popular icon, renamed La Marseillaise, a masterpiece of Romantic sculpture for the violence of its gesture, its exorbitant eyes and its mouth deformed by its cry, has passed into posterity, Rude is not the artist of a single work.

This monograph restores François Rude to his central place in the landscape of the early nineteenth century and highlights his constant desire to reform the art that influenced several generations of sculptors: Dalou, Rodin, Bourdelle and Carpeaux. His reference to ancient models, his fidelity to nature and his constant concern for expressiveness, dynamism and narrative make Rude's art a meeting point between tradition and modernity.