He left school at the age of 13 to work as a wood carver in his father's cabinet making shop. He learned drawing with the founder of the
Ingres Museum in Montauban, then sculpture at the art school in
Toulouse. At the age of 24 he won a scholarship to the
École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris.
In 1888 he did his first sculptures of
Beethoven, producing authoritative work with an emphasis on order, the spirit of geometry, construction and invention. He became one of the pioneers of 20th century monumental sculpture.
Auguste Rodin became a great admirer of his work and in 1893 Antoine Bourdelle joined Rodin as his assistant where he soon became a popular teacher, both there and at his own studio where many future prominent artists attended his classes, so that his influence on sculpture was considerable.
The Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Japan), the
Cleveland Museum of Art, the
Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (Rome),
Harvard University Art Museums, the
Hermitage Museum, the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the
Honolulu Academy of Arts, the
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas),
Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo, Netherlands), the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Musée Bourdelle (Paris),
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, Argentina), the
National Galleries of Scotland, the
National Gallery of Australia and the
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium are among the public collections holding works by Émile Antoine Bourdelle.
Artists who studied with Antoine Bourdelle included:
*
Thanassis Apartis, Greece
*
Pablo Curatella Manes, Argentina
*
Josefina de Vasconcellos, England
*
Alberto Giacometti, Switzerland
*
Angela Gregory, United States
*
Otto Gutfreund, Czechoslovakia
*
Bror Hjorth, Sweden
*
René Iché, France
*
Raoul Josset, France/United States
*
Emile Lahner, Hungary
*
Aristide Maillol, France
*
Vadym Meller, Ukraine
*
Bencho Obreshkov, Bulgaria
*
Germaine Richier, France
*
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Portugal
*
Sreten Stojanovic, Serbia
*
Helen Wilson, United States
*
Teodors Zalkalns, Latvia
*
Béni Ferenczy, Hungary
During his last years, Bourdelle received several commissions for monuments. He was a founder and vice-president of the Paris
Salon des Tuileries, and in 1924 became a commander of the
Legion of Honor.
Antoine Bourdelle died at
Le Vésinet, near Paris, on
October 1, 1929 and was interred in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.
Today, at 18 rue Antoine Bourdelle, the
Musée Antoine Bourdelle sits amidst brick houses in a small street between the
Gare Montparnasse and the offices of the famous French newspaper
Le Monde. The
museum consists of Bourdelle's house, studio and garden where he worked from 1884 to 1929.
<gallery>
Image:'La Grande Penelope', bronze sculpture by --Antoine Bourdelle--, 1912, --Honolulu Academy of Arts--.jpg|'La Grande Penelope', bronze sculpture by
Antoine Bourdelle, 1912,
Honolulu Academy of Arts
Image:Antoine Bourdelle Sappho.jpg|‘Sappho’ by
Antoine Bourdelle
Image:Bourdelle Osaka01s3200.jpg|
Antoine Bourdelle's ‘La Libert'e’ in front of Daido Life Insurance Company headquarters in Osaka, Osaka prefecture, Japan
Image:Bourdelle sculptress p1070128.jpg|
Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, The sculptress at work, 1906, bronze,
Stanford Museum, Stanford University, California
Image:Ingres par Antoine Bourdelle.jpg|
Dominique Ingres by
Antoine Bourdelle
Image:Le Jour et la Nuit par Antoine Bourdelle.JPG|’Le Jour et la Nuit’, marble sculpture by
Antoine Bourdelle, 1903
Image:Gustave Eiffel Monument.jpg|Gilt bronze portrait of
Gustave Eiffel by
Antoine Bourdelle beneath the
Eiffel Tower
Image:Monumento al Gral Carlos M Alvear - de Antoine Bourdelle - Buenos Aires .JPG|Monument to General Carlos M. de Alvear by
Antoine Bourdelle, Plaza Francia, Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Image:Mécislas Goldberg par Antoine Bourdelle.JPG|Bronze portrait of the art critic Mécislas Goldberg by
Antoine Bourdelle
Image:Old hyogo prefectural office bld06 2048.jpg|’Adam’ by
Antoine Bourdelle in front of the Old Hyogo Prefectural Office Building in Kobe, Japan
Image:Vincent d'Indy par Antoine Bourdelle.jpg|Bronze portrait of composer
Vincent d'Indy by
Antoine Bourdelle, Musée Bourdelle
Image:Himeji City Museum of Art02s3872.jpg|
Antoine Bourdelle sculpture at Himeji City Museum of Art in Himeji, Hyogo prefecture, Japan
</gallery>
* Bourdelle, Émile-Antoine, “Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, Sculptures and Drawings”, Perth, Western Australian Art Gallery, 1978.
* Ottawa.National Gallery of Canada, “Antoine Bourdelle, 1861-1929”, New York, C. E. Slatkin Galleries, 1961.
* Colin Lemoine, “Bourdelle”, Paris, Cercle d'art, 2004
* “Antoine Bourdelle, passeur de la modernité", exhibition catalogue (curators Roxana Theodorescu, Juliette Laffon and Colin Lemoine / Catalogue Colin Lemoine), Bucarest, National Museum of Art , 2006
* Colin Lemoine, “Le Fruit : une œuvre majuscule d’Antoine Bourdelle”, Ligeia, January-June 2005, n°57-58-59-60, p. 60-78
* Colin Lemoine, “...sans ce modelé à la Rodin, à la XVIIIe siècle qui beurre le tout : Bourdelle et la question d'un primitivisme occidental”, Bulletin du musée Ingres, May 2006, n° 78, p. 49-66
* Cléopâtre Sevastos, “Ma vie avec Bourdelle”, Paris-Musées-Editions des Cendres, 2005 (annoted edition by Colin Lemoine)
* Véronique Gautherin, “L'Oeil et la main” (2000)
* “Antoine Bourdelle, d'un siècle l'autre. L'eurythmie de la modernité”, exhibition catalogue by Colin Lemoine, Japan (Kitakyushu, Niigata, Takamatsu, Iwaki, Nagoya, Seoul), 2007-2008.
