David d'Angers

Pierre-Jean David, born in Angers in 1788, was the son of a wood carver and ornamental sculptor who fought as a musketeer in the Republican army against the Chouans. He trained under Jean-Jacques Delusse before moving to Paris in 1808 to study with Philippe-Laurent Roland. In 1809, he entered the studio of the painter Jacques-Louis David, adopting the name David d'Angers to honor his hometown and distinguish himself from his master.

In 1810, he won the second grand prix at the École des Beaux-Arts with Othryades. The following year, he competed in the Prix de Rome for Epaminondas (won by François Rude), though his placement that year is not recorded as second. He spent about four years in Rome (1811–1815), visiting Antonio Canova's studio and traveling to Venice, Naples, and Florence.

After the Bourbon restoration, David d'Angers avoided Paris and went to London, where some contemporaries mistakenly blamed him for the political actions of the painter David. He eventually returned to Paris and built a successful career.

His medallions and busts were in high demand, as were commissions for large monuments. Among his most famous works is the Gutenberg statue in Strasbourg's Place Gutenberg, but he personally valued most the statue of the drummer boy Joseph Bara—who reportedly kept drumming until killed in the Vendée war—and the monument to Greek liberator Markos Botsaris. He created over 500 medallions, and his sitters included notable figures from France, England, and Germany, which he visited professionally in 1827 and 1829.

In 1828, David d'Angers sculpted a bust of the Marquis de Lafayette and sent it to the United States Congress via President John Quincy Adams. In his letter, he asked that it be placed near the Washington monument, calling Lafayette and Washington "two brothers in arms" and "two men of order and of law." The bust was accepted and displayed but was destroyed in the Library of Congress fire on December 24, 1851.

His reputation rests on the Pantheon's pedimental sculpture, the marble Wounded Philopoemen in the Louvre, and the equestrian monument to General Jacques-Nicolas Gobert in Père Lachaise Cemetery. He also created sculptures for seven other tombs there, including bronze busts of Honoré de Balzac and Samuel Hahnemann.