Pierre-Paul Prud'Hon
(Sylvain Laveissiere, N. Metropolitan Museum Of Art)
In an age of great painters like David, Gericault, and Delacroix, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's (1758-1823) anomalous genius seems to stand slightly apart and below. A romantic Neoclassicist and a proto-Romantic classicist, the French master could boast a considerable achievement, amply expatiated and reverently documented in this handsome exhibition catalog by Laveissiere, who is compiling the catalogue raisonne on Prud'hon. While every aspect of the artist's creative range is given its due, his complex allegorical compositions and his extraordinarily accomplished and justly famous nude academies will continue to garner the greatest appreciation. Not slighted, however, is his genuine achievement as illustrator and painter of portraits and mythologies. Collections with an interest in this critical art historical moment will wish to acquire this now-fundamental volume. [Library Journal]
The Language of the Body : Drawings by Pierre-Paul Prud'Hon
(Pierre-Paul Prud'Hon (Illustrator), Robert Gordon (Editor), John Elderfield (Contributor)
)
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (1758-1823) was a painter and decorator who enjoyed considerable success before withdrawing into collaboration with Constance Mayer. He did less and less painting of his own but spent a great deal of time on what was considered student practice--chalk studies of nudes. Prud'hon was a masterly draftsman, and the drawings (académies) reproduced in this generously illustrated book are impressive. They are also a bit strange. The female nudes are graceful nymphs doing nothing in particular. The male nudes, in contrast, are usually actively posed and frequently display girlishly pretty heads incongruously attached to heavily muscled adult bodies. Mr. Elderfield's text never truly accounts for this sexual disparity, but he makes a brave attempt at it, and the drawings can easily and happily be enjoyed for their own sake. [The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams]
