Winter

Jean Antoine Houdon

1787 · Bronze · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Winter — Jean Antoine Houdon

A frileuse is a woman subject to cold. A marble version (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), dated 1783, was originally intended as an allegory of Winter. For the Museum's bronze, cast by Houdon himself and coming from the collection of the duc d'Orléans, Houdon stripped the spiraling columnar composition to its bare essentials. The girl's tremulous flesh is offset by her tightly drawn shawl, elegant but hardly adequate.

Artist
Jean Antoine Houdon
Date
1787
Medium
Bronze
Culture
French, Paris
Department
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Credit line
Bequest of Kate Trubee Davison, 1962

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