Background
Alexander Falgier was born on September 7, 1831 in Toulouse.
Alexander Falgier was born on September 7, 1831 in Toulouse.
Falguiere studied in the studio of the sculptor Francois Juffroy.
His first bronze statue of importance was the " Victor of the Cock-Fight " (1864), and " Tarcisus the Christian Boy-Martyr " followed in 1867; both are now in the Luxembourg Museum. His more important monuments are those to Admiral Courbet (1890) at Abbeville and the famous “Joan of Arc”. Among more ideal work are “Eve” (1880), "Diana" (1882 and 1891), "Woman and Peacock" and "The Poet", astride his Pegasus spreading wings for flight. His "Triumph of the Republic” (1881 - 1886), a vast quadriga for the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, is perhaps more amazingly full of life than others of his works, all of which reveal this quality of vitality in superlative degree. To these works should be added his monuments to "Cardinal Lavigerie" and " General de La Fayette " (the latter in Washington), and his statues of " Lamartine " (1876) and " St Vincent de Paul " (1879), as well as the " Balzac, " which he executed for the Societe des gens de lettres on the rejection of that by Rodin; and the busts of " Carolus-Duran" and "Coquelin cadet " (1896). Falguiere was a painter as well as a sculptor, but somewhat inferior in merit. He displays a fine sense of color and tone, added to the qualities of life and vigor that he instills into his plastic work. His " Wrestlers " (1875) and " Fan and Dagger " (1882; a defiant Spanish woman) are in the Luxembourg, and other pictures of importance are " The Beheading of St John the Baptist " (1877), " The Sphinx " (1883), " Acis and Galatea " (1885), "Old Woman and Child" (1886) and "In the Bull Slaughter-House. " He died in 1900.
He became a member of the Institute (Academie des Beaux-Arts) in 1882.