Monumental Balzac

MONUMENTAL BALZAC / Petite histoire des monuments du grand écrivain

The life of public monuments is far less peaceful than you might think! The statues erected in tribute to Honoré de Balzac are eloquent examples of this, starting with the very first, the work of sculptor Paul Fournier, which was inaugurated in Tours in 1889 and destroyed during the Second World War.


In Paris, the Société des Gens de Lettres also wished to pay tribute to Balzac, who had been one of its first presidents. In 1888, it commissioned its first sculptor, Henri Chapu, who died without getting beyond the sketch and model stage. The next artist was none other than Auguste Rodin, who on this occasion created one of his greatest masterpieces, after seven years of painful gestation. In 1898, his Balzac provoked a controversy of great importance to the history of art in general, and to that of public monuments in particular, around issues such as the freedom of the artist and the resemblance between the monument and the character it was intended to honor. The work was eventually rejected by its commissioner, and a third artist, Alexandre Falguière, created the statue inaugurated in Paris in 1902.