Romans had been.Some people think he was even better than the Romans.The most famous statue Houdon made was of a French writer named Voltaire, who is shown seated in a chair.
Have you ever wondered why so many statues have eyes without pupils?One reason the eyes are blank is because the sculptor tried to make the exact shape of the eyes. As you know, there isn't a hole in a real eyeball and so the sculptor felt it would not be right to make a hole in the statue's eyeball.If a sculptor wanted to show the iris-the colored part-and the pupil-the dark center-he painted them on the eyes or put glass or crystal eyeballs in the statue.Carving the eyes without pupils was good sculpture, but it did make the eyes look blank.Michelangelo very lightly carved a circle and dot on his David's eyes, but most of his other statues have blank eyes.
喬治·華盛頓半身像,烏敦作品,現存于巴黎的盧浮宮(由波士頓的大學印刷協會提供)
But Houdon thought, just as you probably do, that a portrait statue ought to have eyes with
irises and pupils.So Houdon invented a way of his own for doing this.He made a deep hole for the pupil and made the iris in relief.He also left some of the marble for the white part of the eye a little raised so it would catch the light.Houdon’s idea worked very well.His portrait busts look alive.Some of the busts even seem to have a twinkle in their eyes.Do you see what I was saying about how artists can make a difference in important ways?Houdon did this by showing other artists how to make the eyes of a statue look more lifelike.
When Benjamin Franklin was in France, he had a portrait bust made by Houdon. Franklin liked the bust of himself so much that he asked Houdon to travel to the newly formed United States to make a statue of George Washington.It took Houdon and Franklin almost two months to sail from France to America, and that was on a fast trip in 1785.Some of the side views of Franklin on U.S.stamps have also been taken from Houdon's bust of Franklin.That is especially fitting, as Franklin was the first U.S.postmaster.
Houdon's bust of Washington has never left Mount Vernon, and you can still see it
when you visit the home of Washington.Houdon also made a full-length marble statue of Washington that is now in the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond.
And now, even if you are not a stamp collector, you know more about the portrait on one stamp than many stamp collectors know.