The Three Graces
James Pradier (1790-1852) · 1831
Three naked young women stand in a ring, arms resting on each other's shoulders, in the ancient formula for the Graces, the companions of Venus who personified charm, beauty and joy. Pradier follows the antique group that every sculptor knew, but gives his figures the elongated elegance and finely finished skin of the early nineteenth century. Look at the small cippus beside them, the little pillar that bears the signature and the date 1831, and at the way the three heads incline towards one another so that the group closes into a circle of affection.
The marble block was set out in 1829 after a plaster model finished in 1825, and Pradier exhibited the group unfinished at the Salon of 1831. The royal household bought it in September of that year, and it stood in the museum at Versailles for almost a century before coming to the Louvre in 1928. Pradier, a Genevan who made his career in Paris, was the most successful sculptor of the July Monarchy, admired for exactly this kind of polished, sensual classicism.
Did You Know? The king bought the group while it was still unfinished, straight from the Salon of 1831.
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