Jean-Jacques Feuchère

Overall the condition of the bronze is excellent. There are slightly visible joints at the back of both wings. There is some minor wear to the patina consistent with age.
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For any modern student of 19^th century French sculpture, Jean-Jacques Feuchère's Satan has become one of the icons of the period, because it was selected as the front cover illustration of the pioneering exhibition The Romantics to Rodin. French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections in 1980. The relevance of Feuchère's Satan was graphically illustrated by the selection of Rodin's Thinker for the back cover of the catalogue.

For Peter Fusco, writing the entry for the bronze in the exhibition, the Satan 'epitomizes the interests of Romantic sculptors'.  The 1830s witnessed a plethora of sculptures on a satanic theme, including works by Jean-Jacques Flatters, Carlo Marochetti, Jean- Bernard Duseigneur and Antonin Moine. Many shared the common inspirations of Milton, Dante and Goethe.  Amongst the later sculptures influenced by Feuchère's Satan, Fusco lists Duret's Chactas Meditating on the Tomb of Atala, Carpeaux's early masterpiece Ugolino, Joseph Geefs' Angel of Evil and, of course, Rodin's Thinker.

Exhibited at the Salon in 1834, Feuchère's Satan was highly praised: 'among all the angels and demons, there is one figure that incontestably merits particular attention because of the original character it has been imprinted with, because of the novelty of its composition and the conscientious craftsmanship with which it is rendered, it is the Satan of M. Feuchère, a personification, with plenty of verve and ardour, of the evil genius at odds with being powerless.'

At the time of the Romantics to Rodin exhibition in 1980, the 78.7cm high bronze shown there was the only large cast known to Fusco and Janson.  Since then only one or two more casts have appeared on the market, which underlines the fact that large casts of this model are extremely rare.

RELATED LITERATURE
Decamps, p. 74; Romantics to Rodin, p. 266-267, no. 137; Von Houdon bis Rodin, pp. 112-113, no.14