Henri Alfred Jacquemart

Rhinocéros, by Alfred Jacquemart, outside the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

Henri Alfred Marie Jacquemart (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi alfʁɛd maʁi ʒakmaʁ]) (February 24, 1824 - January 4, 1896), often known as Alfred Jacquemart, was a noted French sculptor and animalier.

Jacquemart was born in Paris, studied painting and sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts as a pupil of Paul Delaroche, exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1847-1879, and received a number of honors. He traveled in Egypt and Turkey, and was commissioned by the city of Alexandria, Egypt, to create a colossal statue of Muhammad Ali of Egypt. Ultimately, however, he earned his reputation for his many monuments in France. In 1870 Jacquemart became a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

Selected works

• Sphinxes, La Fontaine du Palmier, Place du Châtelet, 1858.
• Viceroy Mohammed Ali, Alexandria, ordered April 1869.
• Four lions by Jacquemart, originally meant to stand guard by the statue of Mohammed Ali, but fattened and lengthened by two meters and placed at the opposite entrances of Qasr al-Nil Bridge, Cairo.
• Soliman Pasha (1788-1860), 1874.
• Mohammed Laz-oglou Bey, Cairo, 1874-5.
• Hunter and Hounds, Beverly Hills, California, Date Unknown. Originally at Château-Thierry, it was installed in Beverly Hills in 1925 on Armistice Day to commemorate a local resident's son who was killed in the Battle of Château-Thierry (1918). The inscribed plaque misspells Jacquemart's name and confuses his birth and death dates.

One of the two bronze lions in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris

Sphinxes, Fontaine du Palmier, 1858

References

• Jane Horsell, Les Animaliers, 1971.
• James Mackay, The Animaliers, 1973.
• Christopher Payne, Animals in Bronze, 1986.
• Pierre Kjellberg, Bronzes of the 19th Century, 1994.
• George Savage, A Concise History of Bronzes, 1968.
• E. Benezit, Dictionnaire des Peintres et Sculpteurs, 1966.
• Stanaslas Lami, Dictionnaire de Sculpteurs de l'ecole Francaise, 1914.
• Insecula entry
• Cairo Statues