Acquisition of Eugène Devéria's medallion by David d'Angers

The Orleans collections took a radically Romantic turn under the direction of Eudoxe Marcille, from 1870 to 1890. His aim was to bring together representative collections of Romanticism, at a time when the 1830s generation was beginning to fade from memory. Sculpture featured prominently, with Henry de Triqueti and David d'Angers at the forefront. Marcille had met David d'Angers in the Devéria brothers' studio, which he joined as a pupil between 1829 and 1830. With a front-row seat to the dazzling beginnings of the Romantics who met weekly at the Devéria home, he developed a taste that, forty years later, would be at the root of a twenty-year acquisition policy that would determine the identity of the Musée d'Orléans.

This wax, made in 1828, belonged, like all the wax medallions, to Victor Pavie, a member of the Cénacle that met at the Devéria home. These red waxes, modeled on the spot or from sketches drawn during the evenings of the Romantic group, later gave rise to the bronze and plaster medallions that today leave a broad physiognomy of those who made Romanticism.

In 2023, the Musée d'Orléans acquired the preparatory wax for Achille Devéria's medallion, which can now be complemented by that of his brother and binomial Eugène. This medallion, cast in bronze the same year, was created when Eugène Devéria, barely 22, had just achieved extraordinary success at the Salon with his Naissance d'Henri IV, conceived as part of the triptych-manifesto that the two Devéria brothers were working on with Louis Boulanger(Mazeppa) and Victor Hugo(Préface de Cromwell). David drew his inspiration from a self-portrait by Eugène Devéria (Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts), who painted many of them, in which we find his characteristic physiognomy, with its disheveled hairstyle, beard and crooked moustache in the style of the time of Louis XIII.