John Paul Jones

A staunch realist, Houdon was the foremost French sculptor of the eighteenth century. He was a superb portraitist, sculpting numerous busts of French nobles, wealthy bourgeoisie, and foreign royalty, all of which display the strikingly life-like quality he was known for. He is primarily remembered today for his series of the great men of the Enlightenment including Voltaire and Diderot and Americans such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. He is also remembered for his 'écorché' (1767), a detailed anatomical figure of a flayed man, a work that became a staple tool in European and American art schools. A cast of it was acquired by the Pennsylvania Academy in 1805, the only contemporary work in the groups of casts selected in Paris for the Academy by Nicholas Biddle and Houdon. John Paul Jones, the popular naval hero of the American Revolution, visited Paris in 1780, where he was widely fêted, and where a Masonic lodge commissioned Houdon to make this portrait. Jones was so pleased with it that he ordered at least twenty copies for his friends. The Academy's plaster bust was given to Major General William Irvine, then a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, about 1790. On display at the Pennsylvania Academy by 1832, it probably a gift of the sitter.