Jean-Jacques Feuchère (1807–1852), Satan/Mephistopheles. Signed ‘Feuchère’, 1833. Bronze, rich mid and dark brown patination. Height: 80 cm © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

OXFORD.- The Ashmolean announced that Arts Council England has allocated to the Museum an important bronze, Satan/Mephistopheles , by JeanJacques Feuchère (1807–52). The sculpture has been donated by Lord Archer through the Cultural Gifts Scheme on behalf of himself and his wife, Dame Mary Archer. The sculpture will be a focal point of the Ashmolean’s Nineteenth Century Gallery which is to be refurbished and reopened in spring 2016. 

The cast, 80 cm high, is one of only three known largescale casts of the sculpture - another is in the Los Angeles County Museum - and is among the most impressive examples of bronze sculpture produced in France during the ‘July Monarchy’ (1830–48). A smaller version of the cast is in the Louvre but larger versions are very rare. There is no comparable example of Feuchère’s work in a UK public collection. 

Jean-Jacques Feuchère was born in Paris and worked as a painter, sculptor and engraver and was a pupil of Jean-Pierre Cortot and Claude Ramey. He was famed for his technical skill in modelling domestic bronzes, but he was also responsible for a number of major public commissions including the vast relief of Napoleon Taking the Bridge at Arcola for the Arc de Triomphe and the magnificent Arab Horsemen on the Pont d’Iéna. 

Satan/Mephistopheles was a popular choice of subject in 19th-century France, explored in both the visual arts and in literature. Feuchère’s treatment undoubtedly draws on Dürer’s famous engraving of Melancholy; while the decorative details – the hooked nose, downcast eyes, clawed feet - evoke the gargoyles of Paris’s medieval buildings. It is one of Feuchère’s most interesting works and was reproduced many times in smaller scale. The three known large casts that the artist produced are, however, exceptional and significantly more vivid and expressive than the smaller versions. When exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1834, the work, which won the second-class medal, was praised as ‘a personification, with plenty of verve and ardour, of the evil genius at odds with being powerless’. 

Mr Matthew Winterbottom, Curator of European Art, Ashmolean Museum, says: ‘Feuchère’s Satan is one of the most forceful and expressive examples of brooding melancholy in Romantic art and is often seen as a precursor of Rodin’s Thinker. The Ashmolean is profoundly grateful to Lord and Lady Archer and to Arts Council England, for making this important work available to the Ashmolean. The sculpture will be displayed in one of the Museum’s most popular galleries for the enjoyment of all of our visitors.’