Bogota's Glory - Henri Bouchard (1875-1960)

Sculpture in bronze with a nuanced yellow-brown patina
Signed "H. Bouchard" on the base
Cast by "Siot" (stamp)

France
circa 1927
height 75 cm
width 31 cm

Bronze reduction of the large statue of about 2.50 m, cast by the Cooperative Foundry of Artists and disappeared during the shipwreck that occurred during its transport to Bogota, Colombia.
His plaster model was exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1926. A bronze commission followed for the National Museum of Bogota.

A similar model is reproduced in "Bouchard, L'atelier du sculpteur. A la découverte du musée Bouchard", Association des amis d'Henri Bouchard, 1995, p°84.

Biography :
Henri Louis Bouchard (1875-1960) was a French sculptor and medalist. Son of a Dijon carpenter, Henri Bouchard joined an ornamental decorator as an apprentice, where he learned the basics of sculpture. In 1889, he attended at the same time, the courses of the School of Fine Arts in Dijon, where he was a pupil of the sculptor François Dameron. He enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris and entered the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, where he was a pupil of Hector Lemaire from 1889 to 1894. He then entered the École des beaux-arts de Paris in the studio of the sculptor Louis-Ernest Barrias from 1895 to 1901. In 1901 he won the Grand Prix de Rome on the theme of "The Exile of Oedipus" and "Antigone driven out of Thebes". From 1902 to 1906, Bouchard was a boarder at the Villa Medici in Rome, from where he sent works such as "Le Faucheur" (1904), "Le Débardeur du Port de Naples", "Fillette à la cruche" or " Jeune danseuse romaine ". He planned a time to dedicate a monument to the workers. He traveled from 1903 to 1905. Besides Italy, he visited Tunisia in 1903, Morocco in 1904 and Greece in 1905. These years sharpened his taste for everyday life and the work of the people.

Back in France in 1906, Henri Bouchard lived and worked in the Montparnasse district in Paris where, in the tradition of Jules Dalou or Constantin Meunier, he developed his naturalistic approach to the world of workers. He received his first order from the State in 1907. From 1910 to 1917, he was appointed professor at the Académie Julian. His art became more stylized, rhythmic, more decorative too. He created small decorative pieces and received numerous commissions for monumental works and reliefs. In 1911, he traveled to Germany, where he painted a portrait of Claus Sluter. Bouchard traveled north in 1912: to England, Belgium and the Netherlands. He was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1914. Demobilized, Bouchard returned to Paris in February 1919. To respond to the many orders he had received, he had a workshop built in Paris in the Auteuil district in 1924. He participated in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925. From 1928 to 1929, he was professor at the National School of Decorative Arts, then from 1929 to 1945, he became professor and workshop manager at the School of Fine Arts of Paris. In 1933, he became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From 1940 to 1945, Bouchard was president of the Salon des Artistes Français.

From 1941 to 1945, Bouchard participated in the Collaboration Group. He was part of the trip to Germany in 1941 at the invitation of the German occupier, along with eleven other artists. He wrote an article on this trip in the magazine L'Illustration, in which he wrote: "So I said what I saw: the almost magical life that the Reich government knows how to give to its artists, who seem to be there the cherished children of the nation." In 1942, he was a member of the honorary committee of the Arno Breker exhibition in Paris. In 1942, following the law of October 11, 1941 on the recovery of non-ferrous metals, three of his bronze sculptures were destroyed for overhaul. In 1944, at the Liberation, he was recognized as a collaborator by the steering committee of the Front National des Arts, which met under the chairmanship of Pablo Picasso. The Public Prosecutor's Office will then classify the case after its study. He produced "Père Jacques", one of his last large sculptures, in 1948.