Hippolyte Moulin
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Hippolyte Alexandre Julien Moulin (1832- 1884) was a 19th Century French sculptor.
Moulin, a shopkeeper's son, entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1855 but was unable to afford to continue the lessons and had to become a language teacher in Paris to support himself. He subsequently studied with Auguste-Louis-Marie Ottin and with Antoine-Louis Barye.
His bronze statue A Lucky Find at Pompeii (Une Trouvaille à Pompeii) (1863) depicts a nude boy with a spade dancing for joy with one leg raised, because he has unearthed a Roman statuette. His nude pose reflects that of the statuette itself, possibly indicating that the statue depicts the excavator imagining himself in the original statuette's pose.
The statue won a medal at the Paris Salon of 1864 and became his most famous work.
The life-size original was bought by the French Government for 7,000 francs and exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in 1867. It now stands on a tall pedestal in the Musée d'Orsay alongside Alexandre Falguière's Winner of the Cockfight on an adjacent pedestal - another bronze nude dancing boy poised on one leg that had also been exhibited at the 1864 Salon.
Moulin won further Salon medals in 1867 and 1869, and another at the Exposition Universelle of 1878.
His other works include Victoria Mars (plaster exhibited at the Salon of 1872) and A Secret from On High (Secret d'en Haut) (plaster 1873; marble 1875, now also in the Musée d'Orsay alongside other marble statues.)
A Secret from On High depicts a life-size nude Mercury (Hermes) whispering a secret to a herm - a column topped by a bust of himself - knowing that it will never repeat what he tells it.
Moulin spent his last few years in a rest home for the mentally ill.
Reference
Biographical information adapted from The Romantics to Rodin by Peter Fusco and H.W. Janson (ISBN 0875870910)
Trivia
Bronze copies of A Secret from On High have occasionally been used as props on British television drama series. In ATV's Father Brown episode "The Arrow of Heaven" (1974) it is briefly seen amongst numerous pieces owned by an eccentric art collector, while in the BBC's I, Claudius (1975) it can be seen masquerading as an ancient Roman statue.
Another statue that uses an almost identical pose to A Lucky Find at Pompeii is the female nude Dancing Bacchante with an Infant Faun (1895) by Frederick William Macmonnies.
External link
- Webshots Community photo: A secret from On High (misidentified as Pan and Baccgus; links to very big version) (http://community.webshots.com/photo/170455224/170462437zAFFAn)
- Insecula (French language): index to pages on A Secret from On High and A Lucky Find at Pompeii (http://www.insecula.com/contact/A008530.html)
- Insecula: index to three views of Falguière's Winner of the Cockfight in which Moulin's adjacent A Lucky Find at Pompeii is also prominently visible (http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/O0013388.html)